The evolution of cyber threats has forced organizations across all industries to rethink their security strategies. As attackers become more sophisticated — leveraging encryption, living-off-the-land techniques, and lateral movement to evade traditional defenses — security teams are finding more threats wreaking havoc before they can be detected. Even after an attack has been identified, it can be hard for security teams to prove to auditors that they have fully mitigated the issues that allowed the attackers in.
Security teams worldwide have prioritized endpoint detection and response (EDR), which has become so effective that threat actors have changed their tactics to avoid attack vectors protected by host-based defenses.
These advanced threats are particularly vexing for critical infrastructure providers in financial services, energy and utilities, transportation, and government agencies that may have proprietary systems that cannot be protected by traditional endpoint security, have unique protocols that may not be recognized by existing security tools, or are governed by regulations requiring full disclosure and proof of mitigation.
Elite security teams have turned to the ground truth that can only be provided by the network to both identify suspicious behavior and demonstrate full mitigation and compliance. This ground truth provides an immutable record of all network activities and enables threat hunters to proactively search for potential threats.
FINANCIAL SERVICES:
Defending against silent threats to financial data
The financial services industry faces a perfect storm: it’s the most targeted sector globally, operates under strict regulatory requirements, and manages highly sensitive data that commands premium prices on criminal markets. For financial institutions, network detection and response (NDR) is essential for identifying unauthorized data access, protecting microsecond transactions, and demonstrating regulatory compliance.
Detecting unauthorized data access and exfiltration
Banks and investment firms deploy NDR solutions to monitor for subtle indicators of data theft. Unlike many industries where attackers seek to disrupt operations, financial services attackers often aim to remain undetected while accessing valuable data. NDR platforms help identify suspicious data access patterns and exfiltration attempts, even when disguised within encrypted channels.
Take a hypothetical scenario where a major financial institution is dealing with an attacker who has established persistence for more than six months and was slowly exfiltrating customer financial data using encrypted channels during normal business hours. This type of activity could be missed by SIEM and EDR tools, but NDR can detect anomalous traffic patterns that other tools miss.
Maintaining a microsecond security advantage
High-frequency trading (HFT) environments face unique security challenges due to ultra-low latency requirements that make traditional inline security tools impractical. Custom hardware often cannot support endpoint agents, creating visibility gaps, while proprietary algorithms require protection from theft and manipulation.
Advanced NDR solutions address these challenges through passive monitoring that introduces zero latency while maintaining full network visibility. They provide sophisticated protocol analysis for proprietary trading protocols that conventional tools cannot decode, plus microsecond-precision timestamping allows the detection of subtle manipulation attempts.
Demonstrating regulatory compliance
With regulations like the Digital Operations Resilience Act (DORA), Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2), and FINRA rules, banks must maintain comprehensive audit trails of network activity. NDR solutions provide the detailed forensic evidence necessary for both compliance verification and post-incident investigation.
NDR deployments provide continuous network monitoring and evidence preservation required by regulators. When a financial institution experiences a security incident, NDR can demonstrate exactly what happened, how they responded, and provide evidence of whether a breach has been fully remediated, which is increasingly becoming a regulatory expectation.
ENERGY AND UTILITIES:
Bridging IT/OT security gaps
With traditional IT networks and operational technology (OT) environments controlling physical infrastructure, the energy sector has become a prime target for criminal and nation-state actors. The recent Volt Typhoon attacks exemplify threats actively compromising critical infrastructure by targeting systems that can’t be protected by traditional endpoint security.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued Order No. 887 requiring internal network security monitoring (INSM) for high-impact bulk electric system security stacks, expanding beyond perimeter- and host-based security controls to include detection of anomalous network activity.
Identifying reconnaissance of energy infrastructure
Advanced threat actors typically conduct extensive reconnaissance before launching attacks. NDR solutions help identify these early-stage activities by detecting unusual scanning patterns, enumeration attempts, and other reconnaissance indicators against critical systems.
OT systems weren’t necessarily built with cybersecurity in mind, though they have strong physical security capabilities. These systems cannot run traditional endpoint security technology and also have their own unique vulnerabilities. Because they need to be accessible quickly in emergencies, they often don’t have stronger security, like complex passwords.
“I’ve often heard customers reflecting on the fact that they don’t have time to remember a 15-digit complex password that changes every three months or needs to be reset at the moment because someone forgot it,” said Vince Stoffer, Corelight Field CTO. “They need access quickly to address whatever issue may be at hand, which can result in organizations configuring default or simple passwords that are easy to remember, but also easy for an attacker to brute force their way through.”
Monitoring IT/OT convergence points
Energy companies need to monitor traffic between IT and OT networks, watching for attempts to pivot from corporate networks into critical operational systems. Security teams can’t put endpoint agents on most OT systems, but they can monitor network traffic to and from these environments.
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners established cybersecurity baselines for electric distribution systems that require organizations to store and protect security-focused logs from authentication tools, intrusion detection/intrusion prevention systems, firewalls, and other security tools for detection and incident response activities. For OT assets where logs are non-standard or not available, they expect organizations to collect and store network traffic and communications between those assets and other systems for forensic purposes, which NDR makes possible.
Detecting protocol anomalies in industrial systems
Energy companies leverage NDR’s protocol analysis capabilities to identify anomalies in industrial control system communications that might indicate tampering or unauthorized commands. For example, consider a power generation facility using the Modbus protocol to control turbine operations. NDR monitoring might detect unexpected commands attempting to set turbine speed to dangerous levels or commands from unauthorized IP addresses, flagging deviations from established communication patterns before equipment damage or safety incidents occur.
TRANSPORTATION:
Securing increasingly connected systems
Increasingly interconnected systems within the transportation industry create greater risk as cybercriminals can access more data and potentially disrupt operations along entire supply chains.
Monitoring fleet management and control systems
Transportation organizations need to monitor communications between central management systems and vehicle fleets, ships, or aircraft. Modern transportation operations rely heavily on real-time data exchange, including GPS coordinates, route optimization, fuel management, and emergency communications. These communications often traverse multiple networks, creating numerous opportunities for interception or manipulation.
“We hear from customers that to help maintain efficiency and streamline operations, their fleets and signaling infrastructure are increasingly connected. NDR gives them visibility into these connections, allowing them to detect attempts to interfere with safety-critical systems before physical operations are affected,” said Stoffer.
NDR can identify anomalies such as navigation commands from unauthorized sources, GPS spoofing attempts, or suspicious modifications to autopilot systems, enabling transportation operators to respond to threats before they impact passenger safety.
Protecting passenger data and payment systems
Transportation companies process large volumes of passenger data and payment information, making them attractive targets. NDR helps monitor for unauthorized access to these systems, particularly from internal networks where attackers might move laterally after initial compromise.
NDR’s behavioral analysis capabilities can detect anomalous database queries, unusual file access patterns, or unexpected network connections to payment processing systems that indicate data harvesting activities.
Detecting operational disruption attempts
For transportation, operational disruption can have immediate safety implications. Railway signaling systems, air traffic control communications, and traffic management platforms represent critical control points where malicious interference could result in catastrophic incidents.
NDR solutions help identify attacks designed to disrupt scheduling, routing, or communication systems before they impact physical operations by monitoring specialized protocols and communication patterns that control transportation infrastructure.
GOVERNMENT:
Defending against advanced persistent threats
Government agencies are continuously targeted by advanced persistent threats (APTs) from nation-state adversaries, requiring them to defend high-value assets and classified information across complex environments while complying with stringent federal cybersecurity frameworks such as NIST 800-53, CMMC, and FISMA.
Identifying long-term persistence and data collection
Government organizations deploy NDR to identify subtle indicators of APTs that might establish a long-term presence within networks. These attackers focus on intelligence gathering over extended periods rather than immediate disruption, making them particularly dangerous to national security interests.
“The threats we faced when I headed up security at the Defense Intelligence Agency were well-funded, stealthy, sophisticated, and persistent,” said Jean Schaffer, Corelight Federal CTO. “Now in the zero trust era, where every user and device must be continuously validated, NDR plays a critical role by providing the non-erasable visibility needed to detect lateral movement attacks, even when they’re using legitimate credentials and living-off-the-land techniques that evade endpoint detection.”
NDR’s continuous network monitoring capabilities can analyze baseline network behavior to identify anomalies such as unusual data flows during off-hours, gradual increases in outbound traffic to suspicious destinations, or subtle changes in communication patterns indicating lateral movement.
Ensuring Zero Trust compliance
Zero trust is critically important to public sector organizations, driven by federal mandates requiring agencies to adopt zero trust architectures by the end of fiscal year 2024. NDR plays a pivotal role in enabling zero trust by providing foundational network visibility that zero trust models require.
Since zero trust assumes a breach has already occurred, NDR delivers real-time monitoring of all network communications, supports identity and access validation, and eliminates blind spots that traditional security tools miss.
Providing attribution evidence
For national security agencies, understanding who is behind an attack is often as important as detecting the attack itself. NDR provides rich forensic data that helps analysts identify tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) associated with specific threat actors, supporting attribution efforts.
The platform captures detailed network communications, connection patterns, and command-and-control infrastructure usage that form unique behavioral fingerprints for different adversary groups, enabling agencies to correlate current incidents with historical threat intelligence.
Common threads across industries
Despite their different priorities, several common themes emerge across these sectors:
- The value of network ground truth: All industries recognize that network traffic provides an objective record of activity that attackers struggle to falsify or erase.
- Complementary security approach: Organizations across sectors deploy NDR alongside EDR and SIEM, recognizing that different security technologies excel at detecting different types of threats.
- Encrypted traffic analysis: As encryption becomes ubiquitous, all industries value NDR’s ability to provide detailed data and threat detection for encrypted communications, even when decryption is not a viable option.
- Support for legacy systems: Each sector relies on NDR to monitor systems where agents cannot be deployed due to operational constraints, age, or proprietary nature.
As cyber threats continue to evolve in sophistication, NDR’s role in security architectures will likely continue to grow. The technology’s ability to provide visibility across diverse environments while detecting subtle indicators of compromise makes it particularly valuable for organizations protecting critical infrastructure and sensitive data.
For security teams evaluating NDR solutions, understanding these industry-specific use cases can help guide implementation strategies and ensure the technology addresses their organization’s particular security challenges. For more information about Corelight’s Open NDR platform, visit corelight.com.
