Application Containment: How To Use Ringfencing To Prevent The...
The challenge facing security leaders is monumental: Securing environments where failure is not an option. Reliance on traditional security postures, such as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) to chase threats after they have already entered the network, is fundamentally risky and contributes significantly to the half-trillion-dollar annual cost of cybercrime.
Zero Trust fundamentally shifts this approach, transitioning from reacting to symptoms to proactively solving the underlying problem. Application Control, the ability to rigorously define what software is allowed to execute, is the foundation of this strategy. However, even once an application is trusted, it can be misused. This is where ThreatLocker Ringfencing™, or granular application containment, becomes indispensable, enforcing the ultimate standard of least privilege on all authorized applications.
Ringfencing is an advanced containment strategy applied to applications that have already been approved to run. While allowlisting ensures a fundamental deny-by-default posture for all unknown software, Ringfencing further restricts the capabilities of the permitted software. It operates by dictating precisely what an application can access, including files, registry keys, network resources, and other applications or processes.
This granular control is vital because threat actors frequently bypass security controls by misusing legitimate, approved software, a technique commonly referred to as "living off the land." Uncontained applications, such as productivity suites or scripting tools, can be weaponized to spawn risky child processes (like PowerShell or Command Prompt) or communicate with unauthorized external servers.
Without effective containment, security teams leave wide open attack vectors that lead directly to high-impact incidents.
Ringfencing inherently supports compliance goals by ensuring that all applications operate strictly with the permissions they truly require, aligning security efforts with best-practice standards such as CIS Controls.
Ringfencing policies provide comprehensive control over multiple vectors of application behavior, functioning as a second layer of defense after execution is permitted.
A policy dictates whether an application can access certain files and folders or make changes to the system registry. Most importantly, it governs Inter-Process Communication (IPC), ensuring an approved application cannot interact with or spawn unauthorized child processes.
Source: The Hacker News
