Reactive security doesn’t do enough to protect corporate assets and data, says Illusive Networks CEO and founder Ofer Israeli. Instead, organizations should use deception technology to actively defend their environments.

“We cannot keep taking a reactive approach to security and expect it to work against adversaries that are out there today,” Israeli said. “Almost all of the technologies in the security realm are built with a reactive mindset, and that means that attackers always have first-mover advantage. They’re utilizing that, and they’re always a step ahead of us. We’re playing catch up, and we cannot play catch up fast enough.”

Illusive, a 6-year-old security startup, specializes in active defense and deception. Its agentless platform removes vulnerable credentials and pathways that allow attackers to move laterally through a network. It also replaces those with decoy versions that look like the real thing to trick attackers into revealing their presence on the network.

Last month the vendor closed a $24 million Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $54 million, and said its revenue grew 228% over the last 12 months. Spring Lake Equity Partners, Marker, New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors, Cisco, Microsoft, and Citi participated in the Series B.

And in September, Illusive partnered with Microsoft and integrated its technology with several Microsoft products including its Azure public cloud.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent move to remote work has massively expanded organizations’ attack surface — and sharpened the need for a more proactive approach to security.

Attackers use deception. This includes everything from fake emails to stolen credentials, and they use it to trick organizations into downloading ransomware or allowing them access to valuable data. So the point of deception technology in cybersecurity is to turn the tables on the attackers and essentially turn every endpoint into a trap.

“One of the biggest challenges is a misperception that deception equates honeypots, and honeypots have been around for 20, 25 years,” Israeli said. “Many people, when they hear deception, immediately think honeypots, I tried that 15 years ago, and it didn’t really work for me. So there’s this misperception that deception is still the world of honeypots, which is very much not the case.”

Unlike honeypots, Illusive’s distributed deception platform stops attackers’ movements. Plus, it uses analytics, which means it provides better intelligence and data forensics for speedier response.

Deception platforms use decoys or lures that look like real credentials or systems. But because they are fake, the attackers are the only ones engaging with them. As Gartner points out in its 2020 Hype Cycle for Security Operations, “These artifacts should not be interacted with — hence almost zero false positives — but attackers are statistically bound to trigger one as they perform lateral movement in organizations.”

Israeli points to Gartner, which positioned deception platforms in the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” on its Hype Cycle, as well as the new Mitre Shield framework as proof of deception technology’s growing importance.

Mitre Shield is a free knowledge base of proactive defense techniques. “They built out 33 various controls or methods to protect against attacks, and 27 out of the 33 controls are deception,” Israeli said. “We cover well over 80% of the Shield framework, and it’s a very strong signal to the world of how imperative it is to get something like what Illusive does into their environment.”