The endpoint market has been hot for years.  At one point, there were over 80 new endpoint vendors trying to displace the traditional anti-virus vendors.  The endpoint security market was transitioning from endpoint protection to endpoint detection and response (EDR).  EDR is all the rage, but do you really need one?

While the endpoint market has been on fire, Microsoft has been quietly advancing its endpoint capabilities with Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) and System Monitor (Sysmon).  Either (or both) of these sensors, integrated with a sophisticated Security Analytics (i.e., next-generation Security Incident & Event Management (SIEM)) brain, and you have a pretty advanced endpoint detection and response platform.

To demonstrate what I mean, we recently had Corey Thuen, founder at Gravwell, present a technical segment on Paul’s Security Weekly specifically talking about Sysmon endpoint monitoring.  By integrating Sysmon events into Gravwell’s Data Fusion Platform via their new Sysmon Kit, you can collect and monitor the following event types and key properties:

• Process creation, including these key properties:
  • Computer
  • ProcessId
  • ProcessGuid
  • Image
  • OriginalFileName
  • Description
  • CommandLine
  • User
  • Hashes
  • ParentImage
  • ParentProcessId
  • ParentCommandLine
• Network creation, including these key properties:
  • Computer
  • Image
  • SourceIp
  • SourceHostname
  • SourcePort
  • DestinationIp
  • DestinationHostname
  • DestinationPort

And that’s just to start…. Sysmon v12 also generates the following events:

• A process changed a file creation time
• Sysmon service state changed
• Process terminated
• Driver loaded
• Image loaded
• CreateRemoteThread
• RawAccessRead
• ProcessAccess
• FileCreate
• RegistryEvent (Object create and delete, Value Set, Key and Value Rename)
• FileCreateStreamHash
• ServiceConfigurationChange
• PipeEvent (Pipe Created, Pipe Connected)
• WmiEvent (WmiEventFilter activity detected, WmiEventConsumer activity detected, WmiEventConsumerToFilter activity detected)
• DNSEvent
• FileDelete
• Error

That’s a lot of telemetry from a free endpoint monitoring tool.  And powering the rock-solid decisions of this telemetry?  Gravwell – Skip the collection hurdle, champion data unity, and accelerate powerful decisions.

To get a deeper dive, watch the technical segment on Paul’s Security Weekly here.  Or visit securityweekly.com/gravwell for more information.