How does Honeypot work?

Honeypot is a decoy for a cybercriminal to get into our network, and it can get into the internal network in many ways:

• A social engineering attack leading to an employee running malware on a station,
• Breaking wireless network security or breaking physical security and plugging a malicious device into a network socket,
• An ‘inside job’ type of attacker, or an employee with hostile intentions,
• Systems accessible from the Internet to customers, partners and employees for which a ‘zero-day exploit’ will be published,
• Still other systems accessible from the Internet that have numerous security flaws (where vendors overemphasize the security of their products, and there are no effective cybersecurity certification systems on the market),
• Recent popular attacks on the supply chain, where you get a ‘Trojan horse’ along with a new version of software,
• And so it goes on, because as technology evolves, new attack vectors emerge, which cybercriminals efficiently and quickly exploit.

With a deliberate attack targeting an organization, the easiest way is a social engineering attack, because the human being is always the weakest link here. It’s hard to equally raise everyone’s awareness of the risks, prudent behavior, duty to protect information and knowledge of the organization’s existing processes related to a security incident.

Speaking of Honeypot in an organization’s network infrastructure, fake resources are created that appear valuable from the attacker’s point of view. An attacker searching the network is directed to these resources through a series of decoys. Features that a good Honeypot should have:

• The trap scenario is valuable enough for its trail to be followed by an attacker,
• It is easy for the attacker to find (low hanging fruit),
• It must not turn out to be a false resource too quickly, the scenario must be advanced enough,
• Connecting to it must not generate false alarms.

Security incidents should be handled around the clock through a dedicated team. Solutions that actively protect against attackers generate events on a continuous basis – often irrelevant to the specifics of the organization – and even more often false. The advantages that come with launching a Honeypot solution in a company:

• Generate unambiguous security incidents when an attacker is detected who has begun reconnaissance within the organization (i.e., reconnaissance within the IT infrastructure),
• Despite the threats, you maintain business continuity of critical business systems – the attacker penetrates non-essential resources for the organization,
• Reducing the potentially negative impact of a cyber attack – additional time is used to handle a cyber security incident,
• Simplicity of the solution – the ability to benefit from an additional layer of protection for the organization without having to work with hard-to-reach cyber security specialists,
• Raising the level of cyber security due to surrounding legal and organizational requirements.

And in addition, when you choose a Honeypot solution from TrapTech, you gain:

• Plug and Forget – keeping administrative work to a minimum once the TrapTech solution is implemented,
• The possibility of notification with the help of additional communication channels, e.g. SMS,
• Marketplace – the aggregated experience of a society of cybersecurity professionals co-creating pitfalls,
• Ability to create custom traps based on the standard provided.

When creating an analysis with regard to benefits, let’s weigh what will happen when we fall victim to a cyberattack and the presence of a hacker on our network without our knowledge:

• Theft of confidential data, entire databases, unauthorized modification and even destruction,
• Disruption of business continuity which results in unforeseen downtime and translates directly into financial losses,
• The loss of the brand and significant damage to the earned reputation leading to customers fleeing to competitors,
• Financial penalties imposed by authorities, contractual penalties and blackmail by attackers.

In summary, by implementing Honeypot in your organization you will lower the negative effects of a cyber attack. The attacker getting inside the organization begins operations by conducting reconnaissance. The traps set must have a number of subsequent intentional security flaws which will further stop the attacker. And you as an administrator will gain valuable time to defend yourself.