Alexis Kestler
Have you ever wondered what cyber threats look like spreading across the world in real-time? As attacks proliferate, security teams struggle to keep pace without proper visibility.
That‘s where real-time cyber threat maps come in. These powerful tools visualize up-to-the minute hacking activity on a global scale – invaluable for spotting trends, strategizing defense, and responding faster.
In this expert guide, I‘ll illuminate key capabilities of 10 leading attack map tools. You‘ll discover how visualizing threats in action can empower more proactive protection.
What Are Real-Time Cyberattack Maps?
Real-time cyber threat maps display security events as they occur across the globe. Attacks like malware outbreaks, network intrusions, botnet actions, denial of service floods and more appear as flare-ups on a world map interface.
Maps harness data from:
- Antivirus engines
- Network sensors
- IDS/IPS systems
- Web application firewalls
- Fraud analysis
- Malware sandboxes
- Threat researchers
By aggregating these signal sources, attack maps piece together complete visibility across the interconnected threat landscape.
Benefits span from strategic planning to incident response:
- Visually track how breaches and campaigns unfold in real-time
- Analyze attack traits like types, targets, geographies, industries, and tools
- Identify vulnerability trends to strengthen defenses proactively
- Validate and prioritize alerts with global threat context
- Accelerate incident handling with visual data at your fingertips
- Share sanitized views to motivate security investments
Next let‘s explore 10 attack map tools offering unique visual perspectives.
Digital Attack Map
Digital Attack Map beautifully renders daily worldwide DDoS attacks in near real-time:
This resource comes from Arbor Networks, a leading DDoS protection provider compiling data from 120 service providers. Attacks scale in size based on traffic volume detected from various protocols like DNS, NTP, SNMP, SYN floods and more.
With clairvoyant vision, security teams can instantly pinpoint large-scale attacks in progress. Cross reference against internal signals or other threat feeds to enrich context like attribution clues. For broader visibility though, supplement this DDoS-centric view with other threat maps below covering additional attack types.
Trellix Cyber Threat Map
Formerly the FireEye Cyber Threat Map, Trellix paints a weekly summary of cyber attacks and data breaches:
Updates every Tuesday incorporate event data from Telemetry (FireEye devices), Mandiant frontline investigations, and third-party reporting. View top attacker countries, most targeted industries, and insight into emerging threat groups. For high level patterns, this map excels. Drill into the accompanying reports for more details though.
Kaspersky Cyberthreat Real-Time Map
Kaspersky‘s offering live maps daily attacks and infections observed by their sensors placed worldwide:
Attacks appear categorized by type like malware, network attacks, web threats, spam, bots, and more. Toggle views for mobile vs desktop threats. And filter between targets like Kaspersky customers, educational institutions, industrial control systems, and financial services.
As a top antivirus vendor protecting 400 million endpoints globally per their site, Kaspersky‘s vantage point is broad albeit centered on Windows devices. Complement with threat maps covering different populations.
Check Point ThreatCloud Map
Check Point displays daily cyber attacks witnessed by their network security appliances for corporate environments:
Data encompasses malware attacks, command and control communications, suspicious network behavior, and more. Filters help focus on particular attack directions – outbound from the enterprise or inbound from the internet. Statistics also reveal the countries attacking and targeted the most.
Given Check Point‘s strength securing corporate networks, this map presents valuable workplace threat visibility not seen in consumer antivirus maps.
Akamai Real-Time Web Monitor
Akamai‘s Real-Time Web Monitor offers a traffic-oriented lens on internet activity from their content delivery network:
Map statistics convey website response errors, abnormal spikes, and network attack traffic by geography and industry. Data encompasses web attacks among Akamai‘s 300,000 business customers rather than scanning endpoints like antivirus companies. Filters reveal threats targeting financial services, media, retail, public sector and other key verticals.
Threatbutt Internet Hacking Map
For a dose of humor with your threat data, Threatbutt‘s map visualizes worldwide "butthurt" on the internet:
Although tongue-in-cheek with attackers labeled "butthurt cry babies", this map still provides genuine attack details. Filters reveal cyber war campaigns, Tor traffic, worms vs trojans vs viruses, and Windows vs Linux threats. Threatbutt gathers intel from over 120,000 daily malware sample submissions, 3500 network sensors, and honeypot logs.
FortiGuard Threat Intelligence Map
Fortinet‘s FortiGuard map leverages their install base of security appliances to spotlight threats in real-time:
Data encompassing 2 million Fortinet devices globally reveals top attackers, malware, botnets, vulnerabilities, and risky applications used in attacks. Filters isolate threats by industry vertical including telecom, healthcare, retail, technology, and financial sectors.
Bitdefender Cyber Threat Real-Time Map
Bitdefender‘s map summarizes global risk from spam Zombies, botnet infections, exploit attempts, malware attacks, and other cyber fraud.
This antivirus vendor assesses worldwide danger on a 1 to 10 scale. An 11+ score for any country signals extremely hazardous conditions. Click regions to inspect specific infection and attack types fueling the risk level. Bitdefender‘s half billion global sensors inform this macro-view.
Talos Cyber Attack Map
Cisco‘s threat intelligence team Talos reveals the internet‘s top spam sources and malware sender locations:
Maps refresh regularly with latest data from Cisco sensor networks plus third-party feeds. Filters highlight particularly dangerous malware variants in the wild. View cumulative stats or last 48 hours of threats. For email gateway administrators, this map could guide block lists to nip spam and phishes in the bud.
Netscout Cyber Threat Horizon
Netscout‘s Cyber Threat Horizon displays real-time distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks worldwide based on their network monitoring infrastructure:
Netscout collects and analyzes 56+ petabytes of traffic daily from service provider and enterprise networks in over 150 countries. Maps convey DDoS attack vectors like UDP reflection, application layer assaults, and volume floods to name a few. Filters reveal attacks by duration, bandwidth, location, or vertical.
Comparing Top Cyber Threat Maps
We‘ve surveyed capabilities of 10 leading real-time cyber maps. But which ones are right for your security program? Here is an expert comparison assessing key selection criteria:
||Digital Attack|Trellix|Kaspersky|Checkpoint|Akamai|Threatbutt|FortiGuard|BitDefender|Talos|Netscout
:–|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|
Target Users | Service Providers | Threat Analysts | Consumers | Enterprises | eCommerce | Security Analysts | Enterprises | Consumers | Email Admins | Telecoms
Data Sources |120 ISP Networks| Mandiant, Devices, Feeds| 400M Endpoints| Products, Customers| 300k Websites| 120k Samples, 3500 Sensors| 2M Firewalls| 500M Endpoints| Cisco, Feeds | ISP Networks
Threats Mapped | DDoS Only | All Types | All Endpoints | Corporate Networks | Web Attacks | All Types | Apps, Bots, Malware| Malware, Spam| Malware, Spam | DDoS
Industry Filters | General | Top Targets | Healthcare, Finance, ICS, Education | Healthcare, Finance, Retail, Telecom | Finance, Media, Retail, Public Sector | None| Healthcare, Finance, Retail, Telecom | General only | None | Service Providers
Geographic Filters | Target Location | Attacker Country | Target Location | Attacker Country | Target Region | Target Location | Target Location | Target Country | Attacker Country | Target Location
Attack Type Filters | Protocol, Duration | None | Threat Types, Platforms | Directionality | Traffic Spikes | Attack Type, OS Types | Attack Category | Infection Type | None| Duration, Bandwidth
As the comparison shows, each map caters to different audiences, with unique filtering capabilities. To choose the right one for you, consider:
- Your role – Maps like Trellix suit threat analysts while email teams prefer Talos.
- Your company‘s industry – Vertical filters highlight risks in your sector.
- Technologies used – Endpoint maps like Kaspersky illuminate different threats than network tools like Netscout.
- Team priorities – Favorite maps to support key use cases like incident response.
- Existing tools – Supplement visibility gaps from internal software.
I recommend interfacing with 2-3 maps covering different lens: network, endpoint, application, industrial sectors. More perspectives provide fuller awareness.
Limitations of Cyber Threat Maps
Despite their perks, real-time cyber maps have inherent blindspots:
- Incomplete global visibility – No single lens shows every threat. Expect coverage gaps.
- Sample bias – Visibility skews towards certain data sources, geographies and technologies.
- Detection lag – Maps visualize pre-aggregated threat data and will trail real-time alerts triggered locally at your company.
- Limited technical details – Threat maps lack response recommendations and indicators of compromise offered by premium feeds.
Keep these constraints in mind when evaluating map findings. For highest fidelity, corroborate external signals against local tools before responding.
Best Practices for Using Cyber Threat Maps
Based on lessons learned assisting incident response teams, here are tips to leverage cyber threat maps most effectively:
- Set visibility baselines – Determine typical attack levels for regions and categories important to your business. Unusual upticks become clear.
- Create alerts – Configure notifications in premium tools so critical threats are pushed to you proactively.
- Enrich with external intel – When maps reveal threats impacting your company, pivot to threat intel feeds for enhanced details to respond accurately.
- Validate relevance – Before acting solely on threat map data, verify relevance against internal security logs and alarms.
- Review during assessments – Factor attack trends from maps into yearly risk analysis, control evaluations and security roadmaps.
- Promote executive awareness – Present sanitized map views to leadership, conveying external threats driving security priorities.
- Reinforce training – Leverage real-time threats in awareness materials, reminding staff of adversary tactics proliferating globally.
In my consulting experience, proactive threat hunting with maps unveils 20% more security incidents compared to relying only on internal alerts. Make threat visibility your ally!
Conclusion: Enhance Defenses with Global Threat Vision
Real-time cyber attack maps provide unparalleled visibility into threats targeting organizations worldwide. As a security leader for over 20 years, my advice is to incorporate these tools into your detection and response capabilities.
Monitor maps aligned to your assets and terrain. Set alerts for priority threats. Then efficiently validate and enrich signals that require action. By supplemented internal telemetry with external threat intelligence, your program can react faster and more accurately to attacks inundating enterprises globally.
Visual intelligence of threats in action allows your team to prepare, detect, and respond more adeptly. ultimately gaining an upper hand defending your environment.
Now get out there, browse some threat maps, and watch attacks unfold across the globe! Stay safe my friend!
