Why are Real-Time Security Alerts Critical for Situational Awareness?

Table of Contents

What are Real-Time Cybersecurity Alerts?

Different Types of Alerts Based on Role, Location, and Sector

Why Are Alerts Important for Improved Situational Awareness?

Conclusion

View More guides on Cyber Situational Awareness

Why are Real-Time Security Alerts Critical for Situational Awareness?

  • Cyber Situational Awareness

Posted on: August 31, 2021

Why are Real-Time Security Alerts Critical for Situational Awareness?

What does a security analyst want? Many things. However, one of the things on their wishlist is to get access to a continuous feed of enriched security alerts. Receiving expertly analyzed and actionable alerts will definitely solve half of their problems. It will help them proactively mitigate risks, such as data breaches, malware, or vulnerabilities, and stay ahead of the adversaries.

Having a state-of-the-art threat alert aggregation platform or threat intelligence platform can enable a quick incident response to threats, thereby making a significant difference in an organization’s bottom line. Real-time alerts can make you aware of any incident, allowing you to stop similar threats in their tracks.


What are Real-Time Cybersecurity Alerts?

Real-time cybersecurity alerts are automated notifications that can warn organizations, their employees, peer groups, vendors, clients, or any other stakeholder against an intrusion or threat. Alerts can allow organizations to take immediate steps to safeguard their network and their data.

Security teams need the capability to receive and share human-readable threat alerts in real-time. They can obtain alerts from internally-deployed TIP, ITSM, SIEM, or other security tools, and external sources such as RSS Feeds, regulatory bodies, OSINT, and so on for early malware and vulnerability warning.

Different Types of Alerts Based on Role, Location, and Sector


Role-Based Alerting

When alerts are received, shared, and acted upon in real-time based on a recipient’s role it is referred to as role-based alerting. Such types of alerts can be received or shared via the web, email, or mobile, to channel continuous and improved situational awareness.

With the help of an advanced situational awareness platform, organizations can aggregate unique threat intelligence feeds and early threat notifications to provide actionable alerts to their employees based on their role in the organization. This will enhance collaboration between various employees through discussions around threats in a closed and trusted environment.

By using an advanced situational awareness platform, you can control the alerts that you want your team members to see and restrict their access to key areas with specific roles. Moreover, employees can see alerts based on the team they belong to. This prevents critical information from proliferating to unauthorized users and minimizes alert fatigue by reducing the number of trivial alerts the recipients receive.


Location-Based Alerting

Location-based alerting refers to the real-time alerts that you create, receive, and share based on your location. An accurate alert aggregation platform equips security teams with a framework to understand, assess, and measure location-specific alerts. As a recipient moves from location to location, he/she can obtain and share related geographical alerts. To achieve sound situational awareness, you can create, receive, or share these kinds of alerts via different media such as mobile, email, or the web. Moreover, location-specific alerts increase security awareness, improve decision-making, minimize risks, and enhance operational effectiveness. 


Sector-Based Alerting

While communicating with organizations in different sectors, you need customizable alerting with rich context. With the help of an advanced alert aggregation platform, you can create, receive, and share real-time alerts based on the sector you work in, cater to, or any other sector. 
Moreover, you can send alerts consisting of technical details and contextualized information to multiple sectors simultaneously. These alerts can be communicated via the web, mobile, or email for better situational awareness.

Why Are Alerts Important for Improved Situational Awareness?

The increasing dependence on cyberspace has significantly amplified the need for situational awareness. In this scenario, understanding the threat landscape environment and having the capabilities to predict and respond to potential threats is imperative. The tools and networks in your environment can exhibit vulnerabilities presenting risks to your data and operations. Therefore, your security teams need meaningful cyber situational awareness to protect sensitive data, support fundamental operations, and safeguard critical infrastructure. A heightened situational awareness can be achieved via an automated threat alert aggregation and information sharing platform or that allows the consumption or sharing of alerts across different roles, locations, and sectors.

Conclusion

Time is important when it comes to responding to threats invading your network. You can prevent damage to your organization only if you receive timely security alerts. In order to contain the damage before it turns miserable and to quickly respond to threats, organizations need a robust platform that can provide real-time cybersecurity alerts. 

The Virtual Cyber Fusion Suite