Mastering telemetry in cybersecurity to stay ahead of threats

Modern enterprise environments are complex, with thousands of devices, users, and applications interacting across networks, cloud platforms, and endpoints. This complexity creates massive amounts of data, which require advanced technologies to collect, analyze, and interpret. Telemetry plays a critical role here as it assists in gathering real-time data from various systems and components.

This raises the question: What does telemetry in cybersecurity exactly mean? What are its benefits and challenges? How can it be used for monitoring IT environments? These are just a few of the questions we’ll answer below!

What is telemetry in cybersecurity?

Telemetry in cybersecurity refers to the process of collecting data from various sources across an IT infrastructure. This data is used to monitor network and component health, performance, availability, and security.

The data is collected using various monitoring tools, such as EDR, XDR, or SIEM. These tools help break down millions of data points into actionable insights, allowing network administrators to respond to network issues quickly.

Why should cyber analysts use telemetry?

Telemetry monitoring can provide organizations with a variety of benefits, including:

1. Efficient data collection: Telemetry monitoring helps you efficiently collect various types of data, including network traffic patterns, user activity, configuration changes, security event data, and more. The collected data can then be centralized into a monitoring tool.
2. Risk identification: Once the telemetric data is collected and centralized, it can be further analyzed for potential vulnerabilities. This can, for instance, mean detecting misconfigurations or unusual behavior that could indicate a security risk.
3. Alert fatigue reduction: Telemetry monitoring reduces alert fatigue by filtering and prioritizing alerts by their severity level. This is important since SOC teams receive an average of 4,484 daily alerts, 67% of which are ignored due to alert fatigue.
4. Better decision-making: IT teams can make better decisions with the insights gained from telemetry data. For example, if a device shows signs of high CPU usage, the issue can be addressed before it escalates further.

How to use telemetry monitoring for better cybersecurity

Follow these next steps to use telemetry monitoring in your organization:

1. Understand different types of telemetry monitoring

Depending on the type of data collected and systems monitored, telemetry can be categorized into different types.

Network telemetry

Network monitoring refers to the process of collecting data from network devices, like routers and switches, to help you protect against network attacks. Key metrics include:

• Bandwidth capacity
• CPU utilization
• Interface errors
• Throughoutput

Endpoint telemetry

Telemetry for endpoint security involves monitoring endpoints, such as laptops, desktops, servers, and mobile devices. Endpoint monitoring includes the following metrics:

• Health and performance metrics (e.g. CPU usage, memory consumption)
• Installed software and configuration changes
• OS and application data on mobile devices
• Security events

Application telemetry

Operation teams often use application data to monitor application health, but it can also provide security insights. Application monitoring includes:

• Data processing (e.g. response times, number of queries)
• Database access (open database connections)
• Error rates and exceptions

Cloud telemetry

With the increased use of the cloud, your telemetry monitoring should include cloud monitoring. Cloud monitoring provides insights into cloud infrastructure and services, focusing on:

• Security events (access logs and suspicious activity in cloud services)
• Cloud availability
• API usage and latency

2. Use different tools for telemetry monitoring

Security analysts usually forward telemetric data to various third-party monitoring tools for further analysis. These tools help to process huge amounts of data into a digestible format, alert IT teams to potential issues, and resolve them.

You can use various tools for telemetry monitoring, including:

• Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools: EDR tools help to monitor, detect, and respond to issues on endpoints.
• Extended detection and response (XDR) tools: XDR tools are the most comprehensive and provide visibility across networks, endpoints, servers, and cloud workloads. 
• Identity and access management (IAM) tools: IAM tools help to manage and secure digital identities.
• Managed detection and response (MDR) tools: MDR software is a managed service in which security professionals monitor and respond to security incidents on your behalf.
• SaaS security posture management (SSPM) tools: SSPM tools help to manage and identify security risks in SaaS applications.
• Cloud monitoring tools: Cloud monitoring tools provide visibility into your cloud infrastructure, applications, and services.

The best tool depends entirely on your organization’s needs. For example, if you need to gather data from endpoints, like laptops and desktops, an EDR tool might be the best option. For a more unified solution, XDR software might be the best choice. 

3. Address telemetry monitoring challenges

To fully utilize telemetry monitoring, organizations should be aware of the different challenges and ways to address them. 

Some of the most common telemetry monitoring challenges include:

Storing and collecting large amounts of data

Enterprise IT environments are often complex and can include thousands of users and devices, hundreds of SaaS applications, numerous security tools, and multiple geographic locations. This makes storing and collecting telemetry data more challenging and expensive.

How to solve: Use security tools that have advanced data filtering and aggregation. These features help to narrow down only the most relevant information from a large dataset, saving you valuable time and money.

Poor compatibility across different tools

The tools you use for telemetry monitoring should be compatible with your existing IT tech stack and workflow to avoid data silos. This is especially important for enterprises with more diverse IT environments.

How to solve: Use telemetry monitoring tools with diverse integration capabilities. Look for integrations with different tools for monitoring IT infrastructure, such as RMM, antivirus, EDR, SIEM, and patch management software. 

Overlooking patch management

Installing patch updates for OS and third-party applications is crucial because hackers exploit unpatched vulnerabilities to cause 57% of data breaches.

How to solve: Use telemetry monitoring tools that offer built-in automated patch management or integrations with such tools. For example, Atera’s patch management tool is integrated with tools for telemetry monitoring, such as Bitdefender, Cynet, and ESET.

Atera’s integrated approach to telemetry monitoring

At Atera, we understand the value of a strong, unified IT management platform that combines telemetry monitoring with broader security and management features. That’s why  Atera integrates with the leading tools for telemetry monitoring, such as ESET, Bitdefender, and Cynet.

Atera’s telemetry monitoring integrations are accompanied by a range of built-in IT management features, such as:

• Atera RMM: Atera’s RMM relies on agents, which continuously monitor devices and gather data on their health and performance. The system automatically alerts the IT team when it detects an issue.
• SNMP monitoring: Older systems that don’t support telemetry monitoring can use SNMP monitoring. Atera’s IT management platform supports the monitoring of SNMP-enabled devices.
• Patch management: Atera’s patch management tool lets you automatically deploy patches for Windows, Mac, and Linux devices.
• Network Discovery: Atera’s Network Discovery tool scans all end-user networks and devices for security and provides a comprehensive overview of the connected devices.
• Action AI™: Atera incorporates Action AI into its platform to help 10X the efficiency of IT teams. The AI helps with device troubleshooting, generating remote session summaries, compiling ticket replies, and generating scripts.

For a more detailed look at Atera’s features, read our Atera review. 

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