MITRE ATT&CK Framework: All you need to know

Many organizations may prioritize tracking specific adversary group behaviors that they know are of particular threat to their industry or vertical. The ATT&CK framework by MITRE continues to evolve as threats emerge and excogitate. The MITRE ATT&CK framework being a useful source for classifying threats and organization’s risk, gives defenders & red teamers common language when referring to adversarial behaviors.

What is MITRE ATT&CK Framework?

MITRE ATT&CK framework was introduced in 2013 by MITRE corporation – an American nonprofit organization that operates federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs).

In MITRE ATT&CK, the ATT&CK word represents – Adversarial Tactics, Techniques & Common Knowledge. Summing it up, the whole process of MITRE ATT&CK focuses on categorizing different techniques, tactics, and overall procedures to tackle the digital threats of user data breach proactively.

How MITRE ATT&CK works?

Most of the cybersecurity frameworks treat data breaches from a defensive point by focusing on the adversary and acting as a potential defender in detecting the threat and the severity. MITRE ATT&CK framework stands out in the approach towards treating a data breach. It looks at the problem from the attacker’s perspective and helps the organization from the adversary’s perspective.

MITRE ATT&CK framework addresses the real-time attack pattern of the hackers, which accompany the organizations in the best way to fill in the critical gaps in their security standards and come up with a robust breach-free network security system.

Challenges in implementing MITRE ATT&CK framework

The permutations of data in the ATT&CK framework are extremely thorough
As the ATT&CK framework has a massive pile of security data analysis and most organizations using the framework don’t have the support of complete process automation, it becomes challenging to map the available business data to the permutations of data availed by the framework.

The process can be time-consuming
It may take a longer time to understand how to apply the complex data structure of the ATT&CK framework into the security operations to emulate the attacks. But as the organization will continue to invest time in understanding the work structure and functionalities supported by the MITRE framework, the detection, monitoring, and response on the data threats will be a lot easier.

In the beginning, the whole implementation process and the operations may feel complex. However, the results and usefulness of the MITRE ATT&CK cybersecurity framework undeniably urges us to implement it for proactive threat detection and response purposes.

Key benefits of implementing MITRE ATT&CK

Bridge the cybersecurity skills gaps
It provides the knowledge base for advanced security analytics that lead to real-time experience in threat hunting and defense methodology implementation. Implementing the ATT&CK framework into the system can help to effectively bridge the cybersecurity skill gaps within the workforce involved in the process like network team, cloud team, QA team, and security analysts.

Finding network vulnerabilities
ATT&CK framework uses predefined real-time tactics and techniques to find out the network defenses and helps in detecting the network vulnerabilities like hardware issues, physical device security, and firewall issues.

Provides compiled, real-time tactics and techniques aimed at attackers behaviors
MITRE ATT&CK framework has provided the list of well-known attackers and has developed enterprise and mobile matrices to differentiate the behaviors. Such data has supported an immense range of security actions, including offensive measurements, defensive measurements, and representation.

Using ATT&CK with cyber threat intelligence
In-depth adversarial behaviors described by the ATT&CK framework support cyber threat intelligence activities. The environmental setup subjected in the framework act as a real-time roadmap for the security defenders to catch the system security strength and weaknesses against threats.

Conclusion:

MITRE has made a significant contribution to information security systems by introducing the advanced ATT&CK framework. Cyber Attackers are getting way better at learning and implementing the techniques to take advantage of any security gap in your system without getting detected by the security firewalls and defenders. At the same time, the implementation of MITRE ATT&CK is shifting our threat detection approach to behavioral-driven actions, which will help us improve our overall security posture and make the defense system proactive towards all kinds of cyberattacks.