The Cornerstone of Effective Security Platforms: Lessons from a Decade in the EDR space

Over the past decade, I've had the privilege of being at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation, working for a pioneering EDR company. This journey has given me unique insights into the evolution of security platforms and the principles that underpin their effectiveness. 

Throughout this time, one lesson has stood out above all others: the critical importance of accuracy and precision in security products. Now, with the non-predictability nature of AI, it has become more crucial than ever.

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This blog examines the core principles of detection and response solutions and their relevance to AI security. We'll explore the unique challenges posed by AI, compare emerging approaches in this new domain, and how Pillar Security addresses these critical issues.

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The core essence of detection and response security solutions

Achieving accuracy and precision in cybersecurity hinges on solving multiple complex technological problems. Although the complexity varies across different cyber domains, the core layers of effective solutions remain similar. These layers can be visualized as a pyramid, with each level building upon the previous to create a robust security protection:

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• Collecting the relevant data: at the foundation lies the focus on gathering rich high-quality data, such as telemetry and activity logs. 
• Performing the right analysis: this layer usually leverages real-world threat intelligence from both proprietary and public sources to derive meaningful insights in real time. 
• Identifying suspicious and risky patterns: advanced algorithms and ML are employed to proactively detect and recognize potential threats before they fully materialize.
• Generating accurate and precise alerts: the solution produces high-fidelity, context-rich alerts that cut through the noise, enabling security teams to prioritize tasks and focus on genuine threats efficiently.
• Risk mitigation & remediation: The solution must enable users to take immediate action based on alerts, either manually or automatically. This includes the ability to isolate or block suspicious activities, killing processes, etc. 

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This basic approach isn't limited to EDR (or EPP/XDR); it forms the foundation of effective detection and response security solutions across various domains, including identity management, network security, application security, and data protection. By adhering to these core principles, organizations can build comprehensive and adaptable cybersecurity strategies.

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The unique challenges and risks of security for AI 

As we enter the era of AI and LLMs, the cybersecurity landscape is undergoing another profound transformation, similar to the cloud transformation. AI and LLMs represents not just a new cybersecurity domain but also a fundamental shift in how we build software (e.g., moving from coding to prompt engineering). 

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Staying ahead of potential threats, modern security teams must equip themselves with security platforms that anticipate and address AI-specific risks, enabling governance while not impeding rapid adoption of AI across the organization. 

Conventional security approaches often fall short in providing the necessary visibility, interpretability, and control, due to: 

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1. AI as Software 2.0: The shift from explicit programming to data-driven models requires a new security approach focused on protecting not just code, but also training data, prompts and tools. 
2. New risks: AI systems introduce novel threats like prompt injection, jailbreaking, and data poisoning. To address these unique risks, organizations such as OWASP, MITRE, and NIST have developed new frameworks guiding the market in protecting against these AI-specific threats. 
3. AI is a Black Box: The opacity of AI decision-making processes complicates efforts to identify vulnerabilities and explain outcomes.
4. New Compliance Controls: Emerging AI-specific regulations demand robust monitoring, governance, auditing practices, and ensuring transparency in their AI operations.
5. Lack of Visibility: The distributed nature of AI deployments makes it challenging to maintain a comprehensive view of AI assets and ensure consistent security practices.
6. Knowledge Gap: AI security demands a unique blend of security, data science, and machine learning expertise, creating a significant skills gap for many security teams.

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The complexity of AI security is further amplified by the fact that each AI adoption use case has its own set of risks, whether organizations are implementing off-the-shelf models, using open-source models, or building their own. This diversity of challenges makes achieving accuracy and precision in AI security more crucial and complex than ever, necessitating tailored protection strategies.

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An emerging market with different solution approaches 

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AI Firewalls

The first generation of security for AI solutions adopted the firewall approach, typically referred to as an LLM firewall or AI firewall.

As GenAI and LLMs applications proliferate across organizations, these AI Firewalls are struggling to keep pace due to inherent limitations. These include performance issues caused by inaccurate scanning and inadequate protection against diverse attack types, such as multi-modal and multi-turn interactions. 

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This scenario echoes the early days of EDR, where traditional firewalls and antivirus software primarily focused on blocking known threats. These solutions lacked the capability to empower security teams with protection against unknown threats, proactive threat hunting, comprehensive investigations, and full visibility into their environments.

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AI Detection and Response (AIDR and other new terms)

AI Detection and Response offers significant improvements over AI Firewalls, providing more comprehensive protection. The Detection and Response approach addresses the unique challenges of AI while incorporating core detection and response functionalities: collecting relevant data, conducting thorough analysis, identifying suspicious patterns, generating accurate & precise alerts and effectively managing risk mitigation and remediation processes.

This proactive and continuous approach ensures a more effective and adaptable security solution for the evolving landscape of GenAI applications. 

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Pillar’s AI Detection and Response approach 

Recognizing AI's unprecedented rapid adoption, evolution, and potential risk implications, Pillar has developed a unified protection layer to facilitate secure and seamless AI adoption for businesses. Our deep expertise in adversarial cybersecurity, threat intelligence, and AI forms the foundation of our identity and shapes the key differentiators of Pillar's platform:

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1. Powered by real-world threat Intelligence

Our primary goal was to build proprietary threat detection and evaluation engines trained on real-world attacks, enabling us to collect the right data and perform accurate analysis. Given the emerging nature of this market, reliable threat intel feeds have yet to be available for AI security.

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Addressing this challenge, we've leveraged strategic integrations with leading LLM ecosystem solutions. This approach enables us to analyze and process vast amounts of app interactions from thousands of AI applications and over 500,000 chat conversations. Our comprehensive strategy delivers highly contextual alerts with minimal false positives.

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2. Proactive & adaptive security

Each GenAI use case presents its own set of risks. To address this, we've developed proprietary red teaming capabilities that empower teams to identify and mitigate real GenAI app risks continuously and automatically. Our engine simulates realistic attack scenarios tailored to our customers' specific use cases, uncovering hidden weaknesses, improving defenses, and building confidence in AI resilience against evolving threats.

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3. End-to-end AI lifecycle security

The proliferation of AI use cases across organizations can make tracking and monitoring challenging. Without clear visibility, organizations risk overlooking potential vulnerabilities or failing to apply necessary security controls uniformly.

Pillar addresses this challenge by providing a single, integrated platform that secures the entire AI lifecycle - from development through production to usage. This comprehensive approach offers unparalleled visibility and control, ensuring real-time protection and compliance at every stage of the AI journey.

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Conclusion

As AI continues to reshape the business landscape, organizations face unprecedented challenges in securing their AI implementations. Drawing from our founding team's combined 50+ years of experience, we recognize the critical importance of accuracy, precision, and proactive protection in security solutions.

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Pillar is dedicated to addressing these challenges, enabling swift and secure AI adoption through our comprehensive approach. Our unified AI security layer provides continuous red teaming, runtime protection, adaptive guardrails, and granular governance controls, empowering organizations to confidently harness AI's potential across their entire infrastructure.

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