One of the primary ways canaries help IT teams is they can provide information about the attacker’s methodologies. Users can preconfigure them so they can be deployed and ready to strengthen security within minutes. They are a cost-effective method of gathering information about threats, empowering IT staff to respond quickly and appropriately. Similarly, canaries in your network send messages to admins or others when they encounter a threat.Ĭanaries can be deployed easily, and they do not need a lot of time-consuming maintenance.

When a canary inhaled poisonous gases in a mine, its demise alerted workers and overseers to the dangers in the mine. Like the canaries used to protect miners, the canaries deployed to protect networks provide advanced alerts to users, informing them of potential dangers. Canary tokens and devices can therefore provide incident responders with valuable information regarding the methodology and identities of the attackers. With a canary token, if an attacker opens the file or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) with the token embedded, information about the attacker and the token automatically gets transmitted to your network’s defenders. At that point, admins or other users become aware of the attack and can take precautions or mitigation measures as needed. If an attacker attempts to penetrate your system and engages with a canary device, a message is automatically sent to whomever you choose, typically through a text message, email, or another notification system. Canary tokens are significantly different in that they are embedded in files and designed to trigger alerts when an attacker accesses them. Once the attacker penetrates the honeypot, administrators can study their behavior. A canary honeypot mimics a system that may be attractive to an attacker. In this way, canary devices are honeypots. Canaries can pretend to be anything from a Cisco switch to Windows file servers to mainframes or workstations. In cybersecurity, a canary refers to a virtual or physical device, originally developed by the cybersecurity company Thinkst, that can imitate almost any kind of device in a wide variety of configurations. Up until the late 20th century, canaries were used by miners to detect dangerously high levels of toxic gases like carbon monoxide to protect them from inhaling dangerous substances.

Honeypot security