Frank Costa, President Nexgen Protection Services –

One honeypot definition comes from the world of espionage, where Mata Hari-style spies who use a romantic relationship as a way to steal secrets are described as setting a ‘honey trap’ or ‘honeypot’. Often, an enemy spy is compromised by a honey trap and then forced to hand over everything he/she knows.

In computer security terms, a cyber honeypot works in a similar way, baiting a trap for hackers. It’s a sacrificial computer system that’s intended to attract cyberattacks, like a decoy. It mimics a target for hackers, and uses their intrusion attempts to gain information about cybercriminals and the way they are operating or to distract them from other targets.

Firewalls also won’t help against an internal threat – an employee who wants to steal files before quitting their job, for instance. A honeypot can give you equally good information about internal threats and show vulnerabilities in such areas as permissions that allow insiders to exploit the system.

Overall, the benefits of using honeypots far outweigh the risks. Hackers are often thought of as a distant, invisible threat – but using honeypots, you can see exactly what they’re doing, in real time, and use that information to stop them getting what they want.

SOURCE:

Grant, D., New honeypot techniques for addressing targeted attacks, Security Today. 07.25.2024.

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