Issue 4 2021

Front Runners in Accessible Cybersecurity Offering advanced cybersecurity solutions to a wide variety of clients, Active Countermeasures’ AC-Hunter is a solution that threat hunts your network to identify which of your systems have been compromised across a myriad of networks. It also champions the sharing of how it accomplishes these things, working hard to make security training and implementation accessible to all. Run by a team approaching its work with enthusiasm and vigour, all of whom are self-professed ‘like-minded geeks’, Active Countermeasures is a USA based company aiming for excellence. Providing its clients with effective cybersecurity measures, it offers free training, leadership courses, and open source and commercial tools, all with the aim of increasing awareness and education. To this end, it offers webcasts available on its website that talk a client through covering C&C in the Mitre ATT&CK Matrix, network knowledge, and onboarding for programmes such as RITA. These lectures are informative and accessible; and with the diversity of topics covered within its field, users are guaranteed to find something of use to them. Its training also helps to bolster this, with a threat hunting training course that you can register for through its online portal. This training will take a user through course slides, course video recordings, hands-on lab studies, FAQ documents, and downloadable notes to enhance learning. At the end of the training, the user will have gone through all the relevant processes to receive a certification that will surely help them to further their knowledge and career. A visitor to its site can also download the slide deck and watch the threat hunt training course recording through a YouTube link. Recently, it has even updated the options for the lab performance segments of its module, and encourages returning students to have a look through what has changed before they dive back in. For students performing the practical lab sections of their training, they can either download a copy of the VMWare virtual machine upon which to perform Feb21505 it; or start their own Linux system and run the class install script. Both of course have their merits, but Active Countermeasures leaves it up to the student which one they see fit to do. In terms of its flagship product, however, it specialises in network threat detection software, offering its sophisticated AC-Hunter solution. AC-Hunter is a programme that will hunt down all threats to a client’s network to make it safe; it will identify which systems have been compromised and sends alerts for further investigation. It’s also completely easy to use. With no agents to install, AC- Hunter is an intuitive and user-friendly solution that seamlessly integrates itself with no mess or fuss. It verifies all devices, including IoT, IIoT, and BYOD, regardless of what operating system of hardware a client is using. It has a singular task and approaches it with efficacy and quickness, enabling threat hunting success no matter the experience level of the client’s IT team. In this way, it makes itself usable by persons of all levels of experience, from seasoned professionals to junior analysts and new hires. When talking about cybersecurity, it is often the case that an existing solution will fall into one of two categories. Active Countermeasures has come to divide these into protection based and response-based measures. On the ‘protection based’ side of things, the solutions are focused on keeping attackers out by way of firewalls, intrusion detection, and two-factor authentication. On the ‘response-based’ side, however, the solutions are designed to be implemented once the attackers enter the network, cracking down on incidences as they are happening; this is where measures such as incident handling come into play. Often, issues arise