Security consultant mentioned 'honeypots' — what are they, and do we really need one?

Internal honeypots are usually just a fake SMB file share or an open database port left dangling on the network. Once an attacker gets inside an office network, they scan around for lateral movement. The second they poke at that dummy port, the central system gets pinged that there's an intruder on the loose. The concept is technically brilliant, but managing it properly takes real expertise.

The consultant is just trying to sell you a flashy enterprise service to lock you into a monthly retainer. In a 35-person company, even if a honeypot catches a hacker on your server, do you actually have an internal incident response team to handle it right then and there? Put that budget toward hardening your backup setup first.

We set up an open-source honeypot on our internal network out of curiosity two years ago. It fired three alerts total in a whole year: two were the accounting intern running a network scanner, and one was a printer IP conflict. We never caught a single real outside attack. Tying up over $5,000 a year on this has zero ROI at small scale.

Instead of handing that money to the consultant, look into free canary token services. You drop a dummy file named something like 'payroll-2024.xlsx' onto your file server. The second anyone opens it, you get an alert in your inbox. Costs zero dollars, takes five minutes to set up.

What endpoint protection software are you guys currently running, and are your public-facing ports being regularly scanned and tested? For a consultant to jump straight to deception tech before those fundamentals are locked down feels completely backwards to me.

someone tried to sell us a similar security bundle, don't waste monthly money on it. btw turn on mfa for vpn, enforce strong server passwords and ur good honeypots are massive overkill for a 35-person distributor.

This is literally leaving a decoy wallet out for a burglar when your front door isn't even locked. Gotta hand it to the consultant though creative way to drum up extra recurring revenue.

edit: I wrote something wrong above, sorry about that.

I went through the same thing two years ago. Mistakes made on the what does honeypot mean side are usually reversible but expensive.

If I were you, I'd go this route.

Im a small business let me explain from my side. Start with a small trial; dont commit to everything at once.

If I were you I'd go this route.

Absolutely. If I were to add anything: Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

Your time to detect an issue directly determines its cost. This is my opinion, I'm not claiming it's absolute truth.

I'm in the same situation, that's why I'm asking. If 2FA is on, a stolen password alone is useless.

The biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say. I'm also curious if anyone does it differently.

Thanks this was very helpful.

i agree.

Let me write how it's done in practice. Solutions that work at a small scale collapse when you grow; I learned this late.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Correct in theory, but it doesn't work that way in practice. People defend habits, not processes. Resistance comes from there.

Security isn't absolute; it's about making attacks not worth the effort. Hope this helps.

I think it's hard to be that definitive about what does honeypot mean. When making a decision, first look at what data you have on hand.

This is my opinion, I'm not claiming it's absolute truth.

Generally correct but one part is missing. When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

If you scold false alarms, nobody will report again. btw of course, it varies if your situation is different.

Let me write how it's done in practice. Payment information changes are never verified through the channel they came from.

Proven by experience.