Why “Innocent” Network Traffic May Be Your Biggest Cyber Risk

Threat actors increasingly disguise malicious activity as normal network traffic: 80 % of attacks in CrowdStrike’s 2025 report were “malware-free,” relying on credential theft, DLL hijacking and other living-off-the-land tactics. Traditional edge devices and EDR miss much of this traffic—Verizon notes breaches via VPNs and other gateways have jumped from 3 % to 22 %. Security teams are therefore adopting a multi-layered detection strategy centred on Network Detection & Response (NDR). An effective stack layers signature/IOC checks, YARA-style malware rules, behavioural analytics, machine-learning anomaly detection and ad-hoc query searches. Consolidated in an NDR platform, these layers reduce false positives by roughly 25 % and cut incident-response times through AI-driven triage. Elite SOCs already “layer up”; the article argues that organisations that delay risk leaving a widening gap in their defences.

Modern attackers rarely lob obvious malware. Instead, they slip through the gaps, borrowing legitimate log-ins and tools you already trust. CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report says four in five attacks now look exactly like normal user behaviour. Meanwhile, Verizon’s data shows edge-device breaches have rocketed from 3 % to 22 % of incidents. Firewalls and EDR alone can’t keep pace.

Layered detection is the answer
Cyber-ready SOCs now build a five-layer stack that pivots around Network Detection & Response (NDR):
Layer What it adds Typical tech
Base Fast signature & IOC hits Suricata / ET Pro rules
Malware YARA rules spot polymorphic code Static file analysis
Behavioural Flags DGAs, C2 traffic, data theft Zeek logs, flow analytics
ML / Anomaly Learns “normal”, spots odd log-ins Supervised & unsupervised models
Query Instant searches for new IoCs Log search & ad-hoc alerts

Why NDR ties it together
Because NDR watches every packet without agents, it sees what endpoints miss, correlates detections into a single console and slashes triage time.
A 2022 FireEye study credits NDR with a 25 % drop in false positives and markedly faster incident response.
Bottom line: attackers get faster every day; unless your detection is equally layered, “legit-looking” traffic will keep winning.