Here’s a practical and actionable checklist for enhancing
Network Detection and Response (NDR) capabilities, organized by categories such as visibility, detection, threat intelligence, response, and operational maturity.
NDR Enhancement Checklist
1. Visibility & Coverage:
- Deploy sensors in key network segments (core, cloud, perimeter, remote sites).
- Ensure coverage of east-west and north-south traffic.
- Enable monitoring for cloud environments (VPC flow logs, Azure NSG, etc.).
- Include IoT/OT devices in visibility scope.
- Validate encrypted traffic monitoring (SSL/TLS metadata analysis).
2. Detection Capabilities:
- Tune behavioral analytics to reduce false positives.
- Enable detection for:
- Lateral movement
- Beaconing
- DNS tunneling
- Anomalous port/protocol usage
- Map detections to MITRE ATT&CK techniques.
- Regularly test detection logic using simulations (e.g., Atomic Red Team, CALDERA).
3. Threat Intelligence Integration
- Ingest threat intel feeds (commercial, open-source, internal).
- Correlate IOCs (IPs, domains, hashes) with network traffic.
- Enable auto-enrichment of alerts with TI context.
- Feed validated IOCs back to threat intel platforms (TIP, SIEM, SOAR).
- Monitor for threats related to specific threat actors or campaigns.
4. Incident Response & Automation
- Integrate NDR solutions with SOAR or SIEM for alert routing and automation.
- Enable workflows for:
- Auto-quarantine of compromised hosts
- Blocking malicious domains/IPs
- Ticket generation or analyst alerting
- Use threat scoring or priority tagging to accelerate triage.
- Log all response actions for audit and compliance.
5. Threat Hunting & Forensics
- Enable long-term storage of network metadata (30+ days recommended).
- Use search and pivoting capabilities for manual threat hunting.
- Correlate with user and asset context (via CMDB or IAM).
- Run retrospective searches when new IOCs are released.
6. Reporting & Metrics
- Track key metrics:
- Dwell time
- Detection-to-response time
- False positive rate
- IOC match rates
- Create executive dashboards showing threat trends and incident impact.
- Review detection performance monthly and adjust policies accordingly.
7. Architecture & Integration
- Confirm integration with:
- EDR/XDR
- Firewall/NGFW
- Asset Inventory/CMDB
- Identity Providers (e.g., AD, Okta)
- Deploy HA or failover setups for mission-critical networks.
- Validate NDR platforms coverage in zero trust, segmented, or encrypted networks.
8. Maturity and Program Alignment
- Define NDR solutions use cases aligned to business risks.
- Train analysts on NDR investigation workflows.
- Test detection using red/purple teaming.
- Participate in ISACs or intelligence-sharing communities.
- Continuously update detection logic and threat intelligence sources.
Bonus: Quarterly Optimization Tasks
- Update threat intel feeds and integrations.
- Review and tune detection rules and baselines.
- Test integrations with incident response platforms.
- Conduct tabletop or simulation exercises using Network Detection and Response alerts.
