What Is User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)?

User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) is a cybersecurity approach that helps organizations detect and respond to potential threats by analyzing behaviors within a network. By leveraging UEBA, you can significantly enhance your organization’s security posture.

In this post, we’ll explore the meaning of UEBA, how UEBA software works, and why it’s beneficial for organizational cybersecurity.

What is UEBA in cybersecurity?

What does UEBA stand for?

User and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) is a cybersecurity technology that leverages machine learning and advanced analytics to monitor and analyze the user and entity behavior within a network.

UEBA continuously analyzes the behavior of users and entities to establish a baseline for activity. When deviations from this baseline occur, UEBA can quickly identify potentially dangerous events that traditional security tools might overlook. By using UEBA cybersecurity solutions, organizations can detect and respond to threats in real time, thus safeguarding sensitive data and ensuring overall network security.

The difference between UEBA and UBA

UEBA evolved from user behavior analytics (UBA), which is a similar but more traditional cybersecurity technology. While these terms are often considered synonymous, there’s a significant distinction between the meanings of UBA and UEBA in security.

UBA analyzes only the behavior of people within the organization’s network to detect deviations from the activity typical for their job roles that may signify potential malicious activity. UBA solutions alert security teams about suspicious activity that may indicate security threats directly involving human actors.

As the definition implies, UEBA analyzes the behavior of both users and entities within the organization’s network. The UEBA approach assumes that users aren’t the only source of cybersecurity attacks and data breaches. Security threats may also come from devices, accounts, hosts, applications, IoT devices, data repositories, etc.

By expanding behavior analysis to both users and entities, UEBA takes it a step further, making it easier to detect and respond to more complex conditions.

How UEBA works

UEBA collects large amounts of information about users and entities within the network — user roles, job titles, access permissions, geographical location, user activity logs, etc.

UEBA leverages machine learning algorithms to analyze the collected data. Based on this analysis, UEBA finds typical behavioral patterns for specific user groups and entities and establishes a baseline of normal behavior as well as acceptable deviations from it.

Then the UEBA solution continuously monitors user and entity behavior comparing it to the established baseline. When a deviation from the baseline occurs, UEBA evaluates whether it’s acceptable or potentially dangerous to the organization. For high-risk deviations, UEBA generates alerts and sends them to security officers in real time.

For more information, check out our article about the operating principle behind UEBA and levels of behavior analytics.

Benefits of UEBA

UEBA offers a range of advantages for strengthening an organization’s cybersecurity defenses. Here’s how UEBA can benefit organizations:

Reduce workload on security teams

UEBA reduces the burden on security teams by automating the analysis of user and entity behavior and minimizing false positives. This enables professionals to focus their efforts on true threats rather than checking countless false alarms.

Lower security risks

UEBA enhances security by continuously monitoring user and entity behaviors across all connected devices, including those in remote or hybrid work environments and IoT systems. It helps organizations minimize the risks of security breaches, privilege misuse, and data exfiltration.

Enhance threat detection and incident response

Unlike conventional tools that often detect only common attack patterns, UEBA can spot sophisticated threats, such as insider attacks, compromised accounts, and advanced persistent threats, which can be hidden in normal network traffic. By detecting them early, UEBA helps organizations respond to incidents faster, reducing the risk of further escalation.

Facilitate incident investigation

UEBA allows security analysts to quickly investigate the context surrounding the security event, tracing the behavior patterns that led up to the incident. This comprehensive view helps security teams not only identify the root cause of the incident but also assess the full scope of the malicious activity and potential damage.

Save costs

Preventing security breaches with UEBA can save organizations a significant amount of money. UEBA can reduce the likelihood of costly incidents, which can result in expensive system recovery, lost productivity, and legal fees. By automating threat detection and reducing false positives, UEBA also minimizes the need for large security teams, allowing businesses to optimize their IT spending.

Use cases of UEBA in cybersecurity

UEBA can help you address a wide range of security challenges. Here are some examples of where you can apply it to enhance your organization’s security:

Detecting insider threats

Traditional security measures often fail to detect insider threats, especially those posed by privileged users. UEBA scans for deviations that could indicate abnormal user activity, helping detect threats from negligent, malicious, and compromised insiders.

Negligent insiders

These are individuals who unintentionally put the company at risk by failing to follow security protocols. UEBA helps identify these threats by monitoring and analyzing user behavior. Once UEBA detects deviations from established norms, it alerts your security officers, allowing them to prevent a security incident.

Malicious insiders

Malicious insiders are employees or contractors who abuse their access to IT systems with the intent to cause harm, engage in espionage, or steal sensitive information from the organization. UEBA can detect unusual access times, massive data transfers, or unusual network activity, enabling organizations to identify and mitigate incidents of malicious insider activity before they escalate.

Compromised insiders

Traditional security tools aren’t great at detecting when a legitimate user’s account is hijacked by an external attacker. Things get even more challenging if the account holds elevated access privileges. However, since the attacker’s behavior differs from that of an authorized user, UEBA can recognize it.

Spotting compromised entities

Entities such as IoT devices and service accounts often have minimal security configurations, which makes them vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks. Once compromised, these entities can be used to access critical systems, steal sensitive data, or launch disruptive attacks. UEBA can detect these threats by analyzing the behavior of connected devices and identifying deviations from their normal operating patterns.

Implementing zero trust

To establish a zero trust security model, organizations require comprehensive visibility into every user and entity interacting with the network. UEBA supports this by providing security teams with real-time insights into suspicious user and entity behaviors. This includes detecting unauthorized access attempts, monitoring device connections, and identifying potential privilege escalations.

Prioritizing security events

Security teams often deal with an overwhelming volume of alerts, leading to alert fatigue and making it hard to focus on what matters most. UEBA enhances incident prioritization by analyzing and contextualizing security events based on your organization’s specific environment. By analyzing the criticality of assets and the roles of individuals, UEBA helps security officers prioritize alerts more effectively.

Streamlining compliance

Meeting regulatory compliance requirements can be a complex and resource-intensive process. Especially when it comes to auditing user activities, detecting policy violations, and ensuring data privacy. UEBA helps organizations generate more detailed reports for internal and compliance audits, maintain adherence to data privacy standards, and quickly identify and address any compliance gaps, ultimately reducing the risk of regulatory fines.

Syteca is a comprehensive insider risk management platform that includes UEBA. In particular, it helps detect logins outside employees’ normal working hours. Syteca also provides tools for user activity monitoring, security threat detection, and incident investigation. You can manage identities, privileged access, and workforce passwords as well as generate user activity reports.