Tackling the Hidden Cost of False Positives with AI

Samuel and his team offer Transformation-as-a-Service, consulting for and partnering with strategic enterprise customers to supercharge their digital and data transformation journeys. Before taking on his current role, he launched Hong Kong’s fastest growing MVNO, evolving HKBN from a single-play broadband company into an “infinite play” business that offers unprecedented value across broadband, telephone, OTT and mobile services.

Samuel also brings with him a breadth of experience advising Fortune 500 Financial Services clients on business growth and transformation strategies at Oliver Wyman NY. He holds dual bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Liberal Arts from Dartmouth College, US.

A primer into Aegis Intelligence

Take a look at the homepage of your phone. How many unread notifications do you have?

I had 20+ when I woke up this morning, and by the time I stepped into my office, the number had skyrocketed to 50+. If like me, you hate seeing the notification red dots, but also find that over half of the notifications are really not that important, you will love our latest additional feature to our AegisConnect solution – Aegis Intelligence.

Introducing Aegis Intelligence, the equivalent of placing an AI-powered Digital Guardian to your security apparatus. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a full-service Security Operating Center (SOC), or if your IT (or you yourself) are stretched thin trying to keep up with all a flood of security alerts, Aegis Intelligence will proactively detect, block, and deal with threats with you, and at times, on behalf of you.

As a leading network and technology service provider in the region, we have assisted numerous enterprises to set up and manage their security apparatus. From our experience, one of the biggest hidden costs that a Security Analyst facing is False-Positive alerts – i.e., alerts that incorrectly indicate that a vulnerability is present, as defined by NIST (Source: NIST SP 800-115).

According to a recent survey by Cybersecurity Insiders, almost half of respondents surveyed get over 10,000 alerts each day, and of these alerts, more than half are False-Positives.

Reviewing these alerts is not only time-consuming for the Analyst but also carries the genuine risk of overlooking real threats amidst the overwhelming number of alerts. In short, too many alerts, too little time.

False-Positive alerts can be caused for different reasons, including incorrect configurations, silo-ed solutions leading to fragmented datasets, or even a misinterpretation of data. With Aegis Intelligence, we help you declutter this noise by leveraging the power of AI to integrate and analyse security telemetry across your data sources – including firewall, endpoint, cloud workloads, network, identity, and access management, etc. Aegis Intelligence is powered by Palo Alto Network’s Industry-Leading Threat Hunting technology, which combines their patented behavioural analytics with their massive threat intelligence database. Honed over years of malware analysis across the globe, the platform is not only able to sniff out malicious activities, but also intelligently groups and triages the alerts into incidents, which are then scored to help the Analyst focus on threats that matter. This can slash the number of individual alerts by up to 98%, reducing alert fatigue and accelerating response time.

Coined by Nir Zuk, Palo Alto Networks CTO in 2018, XDR (Extended Detection and Response) is an evolutionary step above traditional reactive approaches that only provide a specific layer of visibility – such as EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) that is limited to finding and investigating threats on endpoint devices, or SIEM which focuses on log-based correlation and rule-based detection. In contrast, XDR harnesses the power of big data across multiple data sources, advanced analytics, and continuously learning AI to hunt and eliminate threats proactively, holistically and adaptively.

For over 20 years, HKBNES has honed our expertise in designing, implementing, managing, and securing large-scale city-wide networks. By combining strengths with Palo Alto Networks, we hope to bring your enterprise connectivity and cybersecurity protection to the next level with Aegis Intelligence – so you can sit back and relax knowing you are in the safe hands of our AI-powered Digital Guardian.