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Use CasesConfigure Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response (TDIR) Use Case Categories

Configure the Lateral Movement Use Case

Configure Exabeam Security Operations Platform to protect your environment against the Lateral Movement use case. Ensure that you collect the right data, set up investigation tools, enable response mechanisms, and import relevant Data Lake reports.

To protect against a use case, you might follow an end-to-end workflow that looks like:

  • Collect – Ensure that you bring in the correct logs for the use case and that all fields populate.

  • Detect – Use out-of-the-box rules and models to identify suspicious activity.

  • Investigate – Ask important questions about the data from log sources, rules, and models.

  • Respond – Isolate, neutralize, eliminate, and mitigate any threats you find.

  • Report – Gather all the evidence in a report so you can share your investigation with others or use for compliance purposes.

Let's configure everything you need to successfully follow each stage of this workflow.

Collect

Collect the data needed to investigate the Lateral Movement use case and ensure all context tables are populated correctly.

  • Ensure that you contacted Exabeam Customer Success and they helped you onboard and validate the log sources needed to implement the Lateral Movement use case.

  • Ensure you have the workstations out-of-the-box context table.View Threat Intelligence Context Tables

  • Create a custom context table for critical systems.Create a Context Table

  • Ensure that users and assets have the correct labels based on the context tables. For example, if a user is in the user_is_privileged context table, navigate to the user's profile to verify they have the privileged label.

Detect

Ensure you have all mechanisms in place, like rules, models, watchlists, and Threat Hunter searches, to successfully identify suspicious activity.

Rules and models

Validate out-of-the-box rules and models to ensure you accurately detect anomalous activity.

  • Import the latest content packages on the Exabeam Community. These content packages contain the latest rules and models, which aren't available to install in Content Updates settings. You must download them from the Exabeam Community, then import them.

  • Ensure that related rules and models are triggering correctly.

Threat Hunter searches

To quickly search for events that may indicate someone is moving through your network and searching for valuable data, create and save the suggested Threat Hunter search queries.

Threat Hunter search

Search criteria

Users or assets exhibiting MITRE ATT&CK® Lateral Movement or Remote Services TTPs[a]

  • Rule Tags:

    • Remote Services

    • External Remote Services

    • Exploitation of Remote Services

    • Lateral Movement

    • Pass the Hash

    • Pass the Ticket

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users or assets exhibiting the MITRE ATT&CK® Proxy tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)[a]

  • Rule Tags:

    • Proxy

    • Multi-hop Proxy

    • Application Layer Protocol

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users who failed to log in to a system they never successfully logged into

  • Reasons – SEQ-UH-07

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users who triggered a third-party security alert and accessed systems for the first time

  • Activity Types – Security Alerts

  • Reasons:

    • A-AL-DhU-F

    • AL-HLocU-F

    • LL-UH-F

    • RA-F-F-CS

    • RA-GH-F-new

    • RA-UH-F

    • RL-GH-F-new

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users who accessed more hosts than is normal for the entire organization

  • Reasons:

    • AL-OHcount

    • RA-OHcount

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Abnormal communication between hosts

  • Reasons – A-RLA-AA-A

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users connected to a known malicious host

  • Reasons:

    • A-NET-TI-H-Inbound

    • A-NET-TI-H-Outbound

    • A-NET-TI-IP-Inbound

    • A-NET-TI-IP-Outbound

    • A-NETF-TI-H-Outbound

    • A-NETF-TI-IP-Outbound

  • Dates – Last 7 days

Users who accessed a critical host

  • Reasons:

    • RA-UH-CS-NC

    • NEW-USER-F

    • RA-F-A-CS

    • RA-F-F-CS

  • Dates – Last 7 days

[a] MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are trademarks of The MITRE Corporation ("MITRE"). Exabeam is not affiliated with or sponsored or endorsed by MITRE. Nothing herein is a representation of the views or opinions of MITRE or its personnel.

Configure Settings to Search for Data Lake Logs in Advanced Analytics

If you have an on-premises deployment, ensure that you configure certain Advanced Analytics settings so you can search for Data Lake logs from a Smart Timelines™ event.

If you have a cloud-delivered product offering, ensure that you configure Data Lake as a log source.

Investigate

Ensure you have the tools you need, like tasks and incident types, to investigate the evidence you collect from log sources, rules, and models.

Case Manager Incident Type

In Case Manager, ensure that you have the out-of-the-box Lateral Movement incident type, or create one if it isn't available out-of-the-box in your Exabeam version. Ensure the incident type has all corresponding incident fields.

Case Manager Tasks and Phases

In Case Manager, define a clear response plan to ensure everyone across your organization responds to a Lateral Movement incident consistently. Under each phase, prescribe the relevant tasks for investigating, containing, and remediating a Lateral Movement incident.

The out-of-the-box Lateral Movement incident type comes with suggested phases and tasks. If you don't have the out-of-the-box Lateral Movement incident type, create the following suggested phases and tasks for your custom Lateral Movement incident type.

Phase: Detection & Analysis

  1. Task name – Review normal activity for the user

    Task instruction:

    • Validate if the user recently changed roles or is involved in a new project.

    • Validate if the user is on vacation or part of a separation event.

  2. Task name – Identify the anomalous activity

    Task instruction:

    • Determine if the user accessed resources from unexpected locations. Look for anomalous geolocation activity.

    • Determine if the user accessed resources they don't normally access.

    • Determine if the user generated activity at times that are not normal for them (User agent/browser/etc.)

    • Determine if the user accessed applications or functions within applications they don't normally access or use.

    • Determine how many systems were accessed.

    • Determine whether the user's peers emulate any similar activity.

    • Determine if the user has any additional anomalous activity; for example, accessed new applications, triggered security alerts, or exfiltrated data.

  3. Task name – Validate logs were sent to the SIEM

    Task instruction – Validate that logs for the impacted users or systems were sent to the SIEM or system of record.

  4. Task name – Assess impacted systems

    Task instruction – Determine if the potentially impacted systems are critical business or infrastructure systems.

  5. Task name – Proactively monitor impacted users and systems

    Task instruction – Add the systems and users to a watchlist to proactively monitor them.

Phase: Containment

  1. Task name – Tell the SOC Manager about the incident

    Task instruction:

    • If needed, inform your SOC Manager of the incident and include the incident's expected start and end date.

    • Determine whether additional team members or teams, like HR, Legal, or Physical Security, must get involved.

  2. Task name – Determine adequate response measures to contain the threat

    Task instruction:

    • If appropriate, disable the user account.

    • Quarantine affected systems.

    • Force multi-factor authentication (MFA) re-authentication or step-up authentication to the affected user accounts.

Phase: Eradication

  1. Task name – Preserve logs for impacted systems and users

    Task instruction:

    • Retrieve and preserve Data Lake logs associated with the user from the expected start to the present.

    • Upload the Data Lake logs to the incident.

    • If there's possible nefarious intent, obtain a forensic image of the system or isolate the physical machine from the network.

  2. Task name – Reset all affected credentials

    Task instruction – Reset all affected credentials in all systems.

  3. Task name – Re-issue authentication tokens for affected users

  4. Task name – Identify root cause

    Task instruction:

    • Determine whether a social engineering or phishing email was involved.

    • If a social engineering or phishing email was involved, determine how the team can increase user awareness for and better monitor similar occurrences.

  5. Task name – Determine if there was a technical exploit

    Task instruction – If there was a technical exploit, ensure you put a patch or workaround in place.

  6. Task name – Remediate

    Task instruction – Manually remove remnants like files, Microsoft registry keys, and autostart services, or re-image the impacted systems using the latest enterprise image and updated software patches.

Phase: Recovery

  1. Task name – Restore functional state of affected assets

    Task instructions:

    • After you re-image or clean the impacted systems, return the machines to users if it's safe to do so.

    • Ensure you restore the affected applications or network operations.

  2. Task name – Notify affected users

    Task instruction – Notify affected users that they were involved in a security incident and their credentials were reset.

  3. Task name – Implement relevant global security measures

    Task instruction – Implement any additional security measures to prevent a similar incident from happening.

Phase: Post-Incident Activity

  1. Task name – Update documentation

    Task instruction:

    • Ensure the incident contains documentation of all relevant events and actions taken.

    • Identify methods to improve the team’s response to future incidents.

  2. Task name – Hold post-mortem meeting

    Task instruction:

    • Meet with your team. Review the incident and lessons learned.

    • Document and track administrative and technical gaps identified during the incident.

Case Manager Incident Email Communication

To collaborate on an incident with people across your organization, ensure that you configure incident email communication.

Respond

Enable response mechanisms you need to isolate, neutralize, eliminate, and mitigate any threats you find.

In Incident Responder, create triggers for all turnkey playbooks.

Report

To share your investigation with others or for compliance purposes, ensure you have the relevant out-of-the-box Data Lake reports:

  • Exabeam - Authenticated User Accounts on Hosts

  • Exabeam - Cisco Firepower Summary

  • Exabeam - Failed Host Logon Attempts by Users

  • Exabam - Failed VPN Login Attempts and Remote Session Timeouts

  • Exabeam - Firewall Activity

  • Exabeam - Firewall and Router Configurations

  • Exabeam - Firewall and Router Device Interfaces

  • Exabeam - Microsoft Windows Overview

  • Exabeam - Netflow Traffic Summary

  • Exabeam - Network Applications by Volume of Traffic

  • Exabeam - Network Device Login - Authenticated Users

  • Exabeam - Ports by Volume of TrafficProtocols by Network Traffic

  • Exabam - Remote Session Overview

  • Exabeam - System Critical and Error Activity Summary

  • Exabeam - Top Allowed and Denied Destinations - Inbound

  • Exabeam - Top Allowed and Denied Destinations - Outbound

  • Exabeam - Top Allowed and Denied Sources - Inbound

  • Exabeam - Top Conversations by Volume of Traffic

  • Exabam - Top Destinations by Volume of Traffic

  • Exabeam - Top Sources by Volume of Traffic

  • Exabeam - User Account Lockout Activity