Quantify the value of Netskope One SSE – Get the 2024 Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study

close
close
  • Why Netskope chevron

    Changing the way networking and security work together.

  • Our Customers chevron

    Netskope serves more than 3,400 customers worldwide including more than 30 of the Fortune 100

  • Our Partners chevron

    We partner with security leaders to help you secure your journey to the cloud.

A Leader in SSE. Now a Leader in Single-Vendor SASE.

Learn why Netskope debuted as a leader in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™️ for Single-Vendor Secure Access Service Edge

Get the report
Customer Visionary Spotlights

Read how innovative customers are successfully navigating today’s changing networking & security landscape through the Netskope One platform.

Get the eBook
Customer Visionary Spotlights
Netskope’s partner-centric go-to-market strategy enables our partners to maximize their growth and profitability while transforming enterprise security.

Learn about Netskope Partners
Group of diverse young professionals smiling
Your Network of Tomorrow

Plan your path toward a faster, more secure, and more resilient network designed for the applications and users that you support.

Get the white paper
Your Network of Tomorrow
Netskope Cloud Exchange

The Netskope Cloud Exchange (CE) provides customers with powerful integration tools to leverage investments across their security posture.

Learn about Cloud Exchange
Aerial view of a city
  • Security Service Edge chevron

    Protect against advanced and cloud-enabled threats and safeguard data across all vectors.

  • SD-WAN chevron

    Confidently provide secure, high-performance access to every remote user, device, site, and cloud.

  • Secure Access Service Edge chevron

    Netskope One SASE provides a cloud-native, fully-converged and single-vendor SASE solution.

The platform of the future is Netskope

Security Service Edge (SSE), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), Cloud Firewall, Next Generation Secure Web Gateway (SWG), and Private Access for ZTNA built natively into a single solution to help every business on its journey to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture.

Go to Products Overview
Netskope video
Next Gen SASE Branch is hybrid — connected, secured, and automated

Netskope Next Gen SASE Branch converges Context-Aware SASE Fabric, Zero-Trust Hybrid Security, and SkopeAI-powered Cloud Orchestrator into a unified cloud offering, ushering in a fully modernized branch experience for the borderless enterprise.

Learn about Next Gen SASE Branch
People at the open space office
SASE Architecture For Dummies

Get your complimentary copy of the only guide to SASE design you’ll ever need.

Get the eBook
SASE Architecture For Dummies eBook
Make the move to market-leading cloud security services with minimal latency and high reliability.

Learn about NewEdge
Lighted highway through mountainside switchbacks
Safely enable the use of generative AI applications with application access control, real-time user coaching, and best-in-class data protection.

Learn how we secure generative AI use
Safely Enable ChatGPT and Generative AI
Zero trust solutions for SSE and SASE deployments

Learn about Zero Trust
Boat driving through open sea
Netskope achieves FedRAMP High Authorization

Choose Netskope GovCloud to accelerate your agency’s transformation.

Learn about Netskope GovCloud
Netskope GovCloud
  • Resources chevron

    Learn more about how Netskope can help you secure your journey to the cloud.

  • Blog chevron

    Learn how Netskope enables security and networking transformation through secure access service edge (SASE)

  • Events and Workshops chevron

    Stay ahead of the latest security trends and connect with your peers.

  • Security Defined chevron

    Everything you need to know in our cybersecurity encyclopedia.

Security Visionaries Podcast

2025 Predictions
In this episode of Security Visionaries, we're joined by Kiersten Todt, President at Wondros and former Chief of Staff for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to discuss predictions for 2025 and beyond.

Play the podcast Browse all podcasts
2025 Predictions
Latest Blogs

Read how Netskope can enable the Zero Trust and SASE journey through secure access service edge (SASE) capabilities.

Read the blog
Sunrise and cloudy sky
SASE Week 2024 On-Demand

Learn how to navigate the latest advancements in SASE and zero trust and explore how these frameworks are adapting to address cybersecurity and infrastructure challenges

Explore sessions
SASE Week 2024
What is SASE?

Learn about the future convergence of networking and security tools in today’s cloud dominant business model.

Learn about SASE
  • Company chevron

    We help you stay ahead of cloud, data, and network security challenges.

  • Careers chevron

    Join Netskope's 3,000+ amazing team members building the industry’s leading cloud-native security platform.

  • Customer Solutions chevron

    We are here for you and with you every step of the way, ensuring your success with Netskope.

  • Training and Accreditations chevron

    Netskope training will help you become a cloud security expert.

Supporting sustainability through data security

Netskope is proud to participate in Vision 2045: an initiative aimed to raise awareness on private industry’s role in sustainability.

Find out more
Supporting Sustainability Through Data Security
Help shape the future of cloud security

At Netskope, founders and leaders work shoulder-to-shoulder with their colleagues, even the most renowned experts check their egos at the door, and the best ideas win.

Join the team
Careers at Netskope
Netskope dedicated service and support professionals will ensure you successful deploy and experience the full value of our platform.

Go to Customer Solutions
Netskope Professional Services
Secure your digital transformation journey and make the most of your cloud, web, and private applications with Netskope training.

Learn about Training and Certifications
Group of young professionals working

Detecting Ransomware Using Machine Learning

Nov 23 2022

Co-authored by Yihua Liao, Ari Azarafrooz, and Yi Zhang

Ransomware attacks are on the rise. Many organizations have fallen victim to ransomware attacks. While there are different forms of ransomware, it typically involves the attacker breaching an organization’s network, encrypting a large amount of the organization’s files, which usually contain sensitive information, exfiltrating the encrypted files, and demanding a ransom. Therefore, a sudden increase of encrypted data movement in the corporate network traffic can be a strong indication of ransomware infection. To effectively detect such behavior patterns, at Netskope, we have developed the capability to detect encrypted files using machine learning (ML) and generate encrypted data movement alerts as part of Advanced UEBA (user and entity behavior analytics). This has helped our customers to identify ransomware attacks as they unfold in their network. One example is to detect ransomware on unmanaged devices. In this blog post, we will explain the technology behind encrypted file detection and Advanced UEBA, which is part of a pending patent application.  

ML-based encrypted file detection

The sequence of bytes in an encrypted file tends to be more random than unencrypted files, which is often manifested in some statistical measures of randomness and information density in the file. Therefore, these statistical tests can be helpful in determining whether a file is encrypted or not. We have explored various statistical tests, including:

  • Chi-square Test
  • Entropy
  • Arithmetic Mean
  • Monte Carlo Value for Pi
  • Serial Correlation Coefficient   

However, our analysis shows that using any of these statistical tests alone is not sufficient to identify encrypted files and can generate excessive false positives. For example, some compressed files also look random according to some of these tests.

To reduce the false positives from individual statistical tests, we developed a classification ML model to classify whether a file is encrypted or not. The model takes all of the statistical tests and other characteristics of the file as input features, based on millions of real and synthetic files of different file types. The model uses LightGBM, a decision tree-like ML algorithm, to automatically learn the difference between encrypted files and unencrypted files. In our experiments, the ML model was able to achieve good accuracy with low false positives.

UEBA alerts

The encrypted file classification ML model determines whether an individual file is encrypted or not. In a ransomware attack, there are usually hundreds or thousands of encrypted files involved. To further reduce false positives and help our customers identify the user accounts that were involved, we use Advanced UEBA to generate user-level alerts to flag users with anomalous encrypted data movements that are indicative of ransomware attacks.

The goal of behavior analytics is to detect anomalous user behavior that indicates potential threats such as malicious insiders, compromised accounts, data exfiltration, ransomware, and other threats, through machine learning and statistical analysis. The figure below shows examples of ransomware detection policies in Advanced UEBA.

In the case of ransomware attacks, an infected user may upload a large number of encrypted files to a managed cloud app. This can be deemed anomalous and highly unlikely when compared to the normal behavior profile of the same user, their peer groups, and all other users in the same organization. This is illustrated in the figure below. As a result, an UEBA alert is generated for this user.

Netskope UEBA uses a scoring metric, User Confidence Index (UCI), to holistically evaluate the riskiness of users. The UCI Score helps security administrators easily identify the top risky users and take remediation actions based on the score. 

UCI is calculated based on all the alerts associated with a user that occurred in the past, weighted by the severity and abnormality of the alerts, as well as the time decay factor. UCI ranges from 0 to 1000, the higher the score, the less risky the user. In the UCI dashboard, users are rank-ordered by the UCI score so that it’s easy for security administrators to view the riskiest users. As part of the adaptive access control feature, security administrators can configure policies based on the UCI score to block or alert the user’s access or activities. Below is an example of a user’s confidence score drop due to the ransomware infection, indicated by the uploads of encrypted files with ransomware extensions to a managed cloud app.

Netskope’s Advanced UEBA has more than 100 detections for insiders, compromised accounts, and devices. As threat patterns change over time, we will add more detection capabilities to make Advanced UEBA more powerful. Please visit here to learn more about Netskope’s Advanced UEBA.

author image
Yihua Liao
Dr. Yihua Liao is the Head of AI Labs at Netskope. His team develops cutting-edge AI/ML technology to tackle many challenging problems in cloud security.
Dr. Yihua Liao is the Head of AI Labs at Netskope. His team develops cutting-edge AI/ML technology to tackle many challenging problems in cloud security.