McAfee Proactive Security Proves Effective in Recent MITRE ATT&CK™ | McAfee Blogs

McAfee Soars with Superior Protection Results   

Bottom Line: McAfee stopped the MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation Carbanak and FIN7 threats in their tracks within the first 15% of the major steps of the attack chain (on average), delivering on a critical security operations center (SOC) strategy: Stop the attack as early as possible.  

In April 2021, MITRE Engenuity released the results of the Carbanak and FIN7 evaluations that leveraged Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP’s) from the MITRE ATT&CK framework. McAfee and 28 other vendors tested the capabilities of our cybersecurity solutions across a wide range of attack vectors. These multi-stage simulated attacks leveraged a full range of known TTPs to execute the Carbanak and FIN7 attack campaigns. 

The Carbanak attack requires stealth and time. Threat actors count on operating undetected inside your infrastructure long enough to penetrate and own your crown jewel assets and information. They methodically step through complex custom TTPs to achieve their objectives. The sooner an attack can be detected and stopped, the lower the risk of a successful breach, damage to assets, and exfiltration of critical information.  

Shift left: Stopping Threats Before They Can Gain a Foothold 

McAfee displayed superior protection by blocking 100% across all 10 tests. On the other hand, several endpoint security providers failed to detect and block all threats. CrowdStrike, for example, was unable to block 30% of protection tests.  

Additionally, McAfee was able to block the attacks within the first 15% of attack steps on average across all tests. On the other hand, CrowdStrike allowed 50% of the attack chain steps on average to execute before blocking. The earlier in the attack chain that a threat is detected, the more likely it will be shut down before it causes damage. 

McAfee combines data and telemetry with comprehensive analytics-based detections that accelerate the pivot to defensive execution. This Time-Based Security metric determines if a blue team will have meaningful, timely, and actionable information. McAfee scores well on this metric by including specific references to MITRE Engenuity’s ATT&CK framework with centralized incident pivots to enriched telemetry, enabling faster detection, investigation, and reaction, and therefore lower exposure. Prioritizing Time-Based Security* (TBS) contributes to McAfee’s ability to block early and mitigate further damage. McAfee significantly outperformed CrowdStrike on the dimension of Time-Based Security.  

How did McAfee achieve this success in the evaluation and against such a sophisticated threat? 

Core to McAfee’s success is the alignment of products and capabilities around the ability to “shift left” in the attack cycle. Shifting left, or engaging as early as possible in the kill chain timeline, allows defenders to detect and stop an attack, minimize risk, and achieve these results at the lowest cost. 

For scenarios where threats are not blocked, McAfee provides extensive and actionable alerting and intelligence to ensure that responses and remediations are timely.  In the case of the MITRE Carbanak+FIN7 testing, McAfee demonstrated clear superiority over CrowdStrike in terms of Alert Actionability*. 

(For more information on Time-based Security and Alert Actionability, please review the following blog: SOC vs MITRE APT29 evaluation – Racing with Cozy Bear | McAfee Blogs)  

Defenders, Now is Your Time to Prevail Against Threat Actors 

Sophisticated adversaries surround us, and MITRE ATT&CK evaluations emulated their techniques and procedures. It’s time to let your teams know that with the right tools from McAfee and Shift Left best practices, intelligent defenders will prevail.  

Sneaky attackers traverse infrastructures and assets opportunistically and unpredictably. The complexity and variability in the attack chains associated with these threat actors make threats challenging to identify. McAfee will continue to evolve extended detection and response capabilities that go beyond the endpoint. The integration of these capabilities with solutions such as McAfee’s MVISION XDR enables the security operations team to benefit from unified visibility and control across the hybrid enterprise: endpoints, network, and the cloud.  

Most important is the integration of the ecosystem to fight and defeat attackers. McAfee MVISION XDR orchestrates both McAfee and non-McAfee security assets to deliver actionable cyber threat management and support both guided and automated investigations. 

As illustrated by the recent MITRE Carbanak+FIN7 protection tests, the industry recognizes the value of proactive capabilities to detect and block early, reducing reactive cyber defense efforts and damage. This dynamic enables your team to stop these sophisticated attacks earlier and more effectively. McAfee empowers your security operations teams to achieve faster and more effective results.  

To find out more about the MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation results, please reach out to sales@mcafee.com.  

* These critical capabilities are defined by McAfee algorithms designed to maximize value to SOC and XDR needs.  Please see this McAfee MITRE blog for details on these algorithms 

Assessments of performance are McAfee’s and not those of MITRE Engenuity.  

MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations are paid for by vendors and are intended to help vendors and end-users better understand a product’s capabilities in relation to MITRE’s publicly accessible ATT&CKⓇ framework. MITRE developed and maintains the ATT&CK knowledge base, which is based on real word reporting of adversary tactics and techniques. ATT&CK is freely available and is widely used by defenders in industry and government to find gaps in visibility, defensive tools, and processes as they evaluate and select options to improve their network defense. MITRE Engenuity makes the methodology and resulting data publicly available so other organizations may benefit and conduct their own analysis and interpretation. The evaluations do not provide rankings or endorsements.