Calls to Deploy Einstein 3 Accelerated (E3A) Faster – But are you ready?

At recent hearings, government officials called for more rapid deployment of E3A to help better secure government networks. But are Federal agencies really prepared for E3A?

The recent data breach that exposed the personal records of millions of government officials has spurred calls for greater information security across all Federal Agencies. To detect intrusions to government networks, DHS has developed a detection system known as Einstein. Einstein prevents government users from unwittingly accessing high-risk websites that are either known or likely threats. These high-risk websites in many cases appear to be innocent websites to the user, but quickly transmit embedded viruses that can immediately replicate across government systems and computers.   In response to the recent data breaches there are now calls to implement the latest version of Einstein – Einstein 3 Accelerated (E3A) – as quickly as possible.

Until recently, users and agency information security officials were not informed when Einstein was preventing access to high-risk websites. With E3A, however, U.S. Government agencies will now receive notices that agency staff were about to access a high-risk website, potentially putting systems at risk.   The value of knowing, however, also presents a new challenge for these agency security officials.

Under E3A, notices are automatically submitted to an E3A email inbox set up by agency officials. These notices provide specific, but cryptic data about the threat. Experience has shown that when implemented, E3A email notices can number in the tens of thousands – per day.

Manage E3A Through xTract

XLA has worked with a Federal Agency to manage its implementation of E3A, experiencing the challenges first hand. Even a small to mid-sized agency receives thousands of E3A notices that quickly clog the designated email inbox. Not every notice, however, is a threat. The big challenge is determining the real threats among the thousands of notices received each day.

To manage all of the E3A notices, XLA developed a tool called xTract^TM. xTract automatically ingests the thousands of E3A email notices and analyzes them in order to identify the few actual incidents. Agency officials can then generate work tickets to resolve specific problems or threats at the source.

By shrinking the flood of E3A notices to just a few actionable incidents, the challenge is reduced to a manageable size. Government officials can identify the threat, mitigate the threat, and develop policies or protocols to prevent a reoccurrence.

Is Your Agency Ready for E3A? – The xTract E3A Readiness Diagnostic

When an agency subscribes to the E3A service, thousands of email notices will immediately overwhelm the operations team. To meet this challenge, it must be proactively managed, not ignored. With the xTract “E3A Diagnostic” agencies can take the first step towards managing the E3A challenge.

XLA has taken its experience and developed a stand-alone xTract “E3A Diagnostic” to help IT security officials in U.S. Government agencies understand the scope of their challenge and prepare before implementation. The xTract E3A Diagnostic quickly allows agency security experts to develop plans and better manage the influx of thousands of E3A notices. Following the 4-week xTract E3A Diagnostic, agencies will better understand the number of email notices they will likely receive, the likely network operations impact from these notices, and the staffing requirements needed to identify and mitigate threats identified by E3A.

To learn more about xTract, visit www.xla.com/xtract. To schedule a meeting to learn more about the xTract “E3A Diagnostic” contact XLA at xtract@xla.com.

xTract extends the capabilities of the Government’s Einstein 3A threat reduction tool by helping Federal agencies manage the millions of notices generated by Einstein 3A, and take action on specific network threats or malware. But how does it work? This infographic walks you through the key information.