Focus on the Attacker rather than the Attack: Illusive Networks

The Silicon Review

Agile approach stops cyberattackers before they stop you.

Illusive brought together top cyber-attack specialists and pioneering cyber technology entrepreneurs with decades of collective experience in cyber warfare and cyber intelligence. It was built to tackle what has been a significant and urgent problem for cybersecurity practitioners—the challenge to stop Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and other advanced attacks that bypass security controls and silently gain access to organizations’ most risk-sensitive and business-critical digital assets.

Given the frequency of successful targeted attacks, it decided not to continue with old approaches and expect to get different results. A new approach is needed. Illusive looks at the problem from the perspective of the attacker and exploits the attacker’s weakness. As fire needs oxygen, attackers – once they have found their way into a network — need reliable data that will lead them toward their target. By saturating the environment with deceptive information, Illusive creates a distorted reality that the attacker cannot confidently navigate. It’s a solution that disrupts the attacker’s operations — without disrupting yours. The company provides tools that help security teams detect and resolve advanced attacks, to prevent cyber incidents from becoming business crises.

Deceptions in Financial Services

Financial institutions are one of the most high-value targets for attackers who “follow the money” and those intent on systemic disruption. Despite the vast resources financial institutions devote to cybersecurity, one challenge has been especially difficult to solve: the challenge to detect and stop APTs before real damage is done.

Deceptions in Healthcare and Life Sciences

Whether your organization provides healthcare services, health insurance, or cutting-edge medical devices and therapies, health information systems have become increasingly digital, interconnected, and consumer-driven. In the process, they’ve also become attractive targets for data theft, identity theft, and insurance fraud and worse, as the recent spate of ransomware attacks has shown, cyber attacks on healthcare institutions can also disrupt vital services. The impact: loss of patient trusts, significant financial losses, regulatory scrutiny—and above all, the risk to patient safety.

Deceptions in Legal Services

Mergers and acquisitions, SEC filings, corporate restructuring, litigation, patent applications, employee contracts—everything important happen with legal counsel. Law firms traditionally have been underinvested in security defences, so they are easy targets for advanced cyber attackers. In many cases, law firms are much easier targets for attackers than the firm’s clients themselves.

Deceptions in Manufacturing

With relatively little PII and payment data to protect, many manufacturers have felt relatively safe from the crosshairs of attackers. However, cyberattackers see things differently. With large investments in intellectual property (IP) and the evolution of Industry 4.0, manufacturers have become attractive targets.

Today’s smart manufacturing relies on connected networks for manufacturing operations, production asset management, maintenance, and field service. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are critical components of smart manufacturing processes for collecting, aggregating, and delivering data. Complex connected networks and IoT devices—plus extended supply chains—create vast opportunities for attackers to make their way in. Once embedded in the network, it may take an attacker weeks or month to find what they’re after, but if they get to critical systems, catastrophic damage can be done in an instant.

Deceptions in Retail

Retailers maintain troves of the customer, payment, cardholder, purchase history, and other data that are irresistible to attackers. From department store and big-box brands to grocery and restaurant chains, retailers have one thing in common: a vast and growing attack surface.

Digital transformation and automation of supply and distribution chains have moved order-taking, payment processing, inventory management, and marketing operations online. Cloud infrastructure helps preserve razor-thin margins but also expands the security perimeter. “Smart” shelves, RFID merchandise trackers, wireless POS systems, and a growing number of smartphone apps designed to improve customer experience add infinitely more avenues of potential entry for attackers. Customer trust and loyalty separate retail winners from losers, so while there is an increasing risk of downtime and data breaches, cyber incidents can also have a greater business impact than ever.

Moving Towards Success with the Company

Ofer Israeli, CEO & Founder

Having pioneered deception-based cybersecurity, founder and CEO of Illusive Networks Ofer Israeli lead the company at the forefront of the next evolution of cyber defence. Prior to establishing Illusive Networks, Ofer managed development teams based around the globe at Israel’s seminal cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies and was a research assistant in the Atom Chip Lab focusing on theoretical Quantum Mechanics. Ofer holds B.Sc. degrees in Computer Science and Physics from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.