A little magic to stay ahead of cyber attacks

What is magic? Focused deception. Magicians use theatrics to divert the audience's attention away from the real trick, essentially deceiving us. The concept of focused direction is fascinating on its own: how to trick someone into thinking that they are in full control of the situation, only to realise much later that they never were. This is also being applied in the field of cyber security, in the form of deception technology.

PROTECTION THROUGH DECEPTION

What is deception technology and how does it work? Deception technology enables enterprises with the tools to detect as soon as someone breaks into your network and stop attackers from inflicting any damage. The system then feeds the attackers with misinformation that leads them to believe that they are gaining what they want. Just like a magic trick, deception technology misdirects the perpetrator into shifting their focus from the real target, delaying or preventing the threat actors from going deeper into the network and fulfilling their malicious intent. It is a modern development of the old "honey pot" security technique. But while the honey pot was typically based on an individual legitimate-seeming data file, actively monitored in the hope that it would attract malicious actors, today's deception technologies are far more layered, robust and automated. They mimic not only data but also networks, systems and applications, using virtualisation technologies to create artificial assets at scale. Once someone accesses any of these artificial assets, it is inherently viewed as a suspect act, alerting the security team as soon as any access has been detected.