Cybersecurity threats are fast-evolving. Even the most seasoned professionals often struggle to keep up with the latest attack vectors. Wouldn’t it be handy to have a cheat sheet that lists and categorizes how adversaries may breach your environment to help you look for clues, prioritize actions, and stay ahead?

The good news is that such a cheat sheet does exist. The MITRE ATT&CK Framework is every cybersecurity professional’s best friend, helping them identify suspicious activities, predict attackers’ next move, and prioritize their incident response tactics.

Let’s review the MITRE ATT&CK Framework, its importance and top applications, how it complements NIST CSF to strengthen your high-level strategy with technical guidance, and how you can effortlessly incorporate it into your cybersecurity services.

What is the MITRE ATT&CK Framework?

MITRE is a nonprofit organization managing federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) to support various U.S. government agencies in aviation, defense, healthcare, homeland security, cybersecurity and more.

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework (pronounced Mitre Attack Framework) catalogs cyber adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and supports them with real-world examples to show how hackers execute attacks.

ATT&CK stands for: Adversarial Tactics, Techniques & Common Knowledge.

The globally recognized knowledge base employs a hierarchical structure to help security teams understand how cybercriminals behave, build awareness and strengthen their defense against constantly evolving cyber threats.

The 3 matrices and 14 tactics of the MITRE ATT&CK Framework

The three main matrices of the MITRE ATT&CK Framework provide a roadmap and guidance on adversary behaviors and attack patterns specific to different environments:

• The enterprise matrix focuses on tactics and techniques for attacking Windows, macOS, and Linux systems within corporate networks. It helps organizations identify vulnerabilities, enhance detection capabilities, and strengthen their defense against cyber threats.

• The mobile matrix emphasizes threats against iOS and Android platforms and addresses mobile-specific concerns. It helps cybersecurity professionals develop robust strategies to protect sensitive data in mobile environments.

• The ICS (Industrial Control Systems) matrix aims to protect against threats in the industrial environment. Its focus on operational technology (OT) addresses the intersection of cyber and physical security to help safeguard industrial processes and critical infrastructure.

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework describes 14 tactics hackers use to carry out attacks, updated twice yearly based on public threat intelligence and incident reporting. It includes the latest techniques used in each tactic, mitigation strategy, detection method and additional references.

These tactics are:

1. Reconnaissance

2. Resource Development

3. Preliminary Access

4. Execution

5. Persistence

6. Privilege Escalation

7. Defense Elusion

8. Credential Access

9. Discovery

10. Lateral Measure

11. Collection

12. Regulation and Direction

13. Exfiltration

14. Impact

Why is the MITRE ATT&CK Framework Important?

The detailed and up-to-date knowledge base of adversary TTPs provides comprehensive threat intelligence, helping organizations strengthen their threat detection and response mechanisms. For example, you may map security logs and alerts to ATT&CK techniques to identify security gaps.

It establishes standardized terminologies and descriptions to enhance communications among security professionals, researchers, and vendors while supporting coherent security strategies, reporting and incident response activities. It also guides security teams to prioritize and implement controls and measures most effective against threats relevant to their environments.

The framework’s real-world scenarios support red teaming and penetration testing. Security teams can map observed behaviors to ATT&CK techniques to quickly understand the nature of an attack and the adversary’s possible next steps. They may also use the framework to evaluate security vendors and ensure products and services are effective for their environments.

Top applications of the MITRE ATT&CK Framework

The versatile MITRE ATT&CK Framework supports various aspects of a cybersecurity strategy:

Threat Intelligence and Analysis

Analysts map observed behaviors to ATT&CK techniques to contextualize threats, understand how adversaries operate and predict an attack’s progression.

Detection and Monitoring

SOC teams correlate logs and alerts with ATT&CK techniques to identify suspicious activities and configure SIEM systems based on those techniques to enhance intrusion detection capabilities.

Incident Response

The framework provides insights into an adversary’s actions to help predict their next steps and guide mitigation strategies specific to the attack tactics and techniques.

Threat Hunting

Threat hunters use the framework to identify potential adversary behaviors in their environments and discover hidden threats before they cause damage.

Defensive Strategy Development

Organizations compare their existing security controls and detection mechanisms against the ATT&CK matrices to identify gaps in their strategies and prioritize resource allocation.

Training and Awareness

The framework supports security personnel training and ongoing education. Also, security teams use the information to run tabletop exercises to improve their preparedness.

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework vs. NIST CSF

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework is highly technical and tactical, providing comprehensive documentation of adversary behaviors. It supports the nuts and bolts of a cybersecurity strategy, such as threat detection, incident response, threat hunting and red teaming. The granular approach is structured based on attack lifecycle stages, detailing specific techniques hackers may use.

Meanwhile, the NIST CSF (Cybersecurity Framework) guides organizations to manage and improve their cybersecurity posture. It offers a broad, strategic view of cybersecurity practices based on five functions: Identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. It helps security teams build and assess cybersecurity programs to manage risks and ensure regulatory compliance.

These two frameworks complement each other and should be used together to combine high-level strategy with specific, actionable intelligence.

For example, you may use the NIST CSF to structure and guide your overall cybersecurity program and implement the ATT&CK framework to fine-tune aspects like threat detection and incident response. You may also map the detailed techniques in the ATT&CK framework to the categories and subcategories in the NIST CSF to improve specific controls and detection capabilities.

Implementing MITRE ATT&CK Framework with XDR to strengthen your defense

When you partner with enhanced.io, we harden your client environments based on the NIST CSF and implement Stellar Cyber, an XDR (extended detection and response) platform that developed the XDR Kill Chain to incorporate the MITRE ATT&CK Framework into a modern security tool.

Stellar Cyber leverages the benefits of the ATT&CK Framework while addressing its shortcomings like an absence of high-level stages, the inability to distinguish internal vs. external attacks, and a lack of robust tagging mechanisms for alerts. The XDR Kill Chain also leverages AI technology to help analysts process alerts more efficiently, allowing security teams to focus resources on high-priority items.

Learn more about our SOCaaS packages designed for MSPs to see how easy it is to incorporate trusted frameworks into your cybersecurity offerings.

You may also be interested in:

9 Reasons MSPs Should Use SOC-as-a-Service

Shackleton Technologies Partners with enhanced.io for Robust Cybersecurity