Are you ready to face the digital battlefield? The corporate cyber risk landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and pandemic-era investments have significantly expanded digital attack surfaces. From cloud systems to distracted home workers, remote access infrastructure to distributed endpoints, and complex supply chains, bad actors are eyeing up large and attractive targets. The cybercrime underground is leveling up too, with its own complex supply chains, malware-as-a-service offerings, and innovations in tactics, techniques, and procedures.
Against this backdrop, threat prevention, while desirable, is not always possible. That’s why organisations need to consider evolving their approach to a more holistic one, based around prevention, detection, and response. This gives teams the capability to block malicious actors from entering and damaging their systems. And if prevention fails, they still have detection and response capabilities to spot suspicious events and resolve any threats before they can penetrate too far.
Current security challenges for IT teams
In the ongoing arms race that is cybersecurity, it often seems as if our adversaries hold all the cards - supported by a cybercrime underground worth trillions of dollars, providing all the tools, knowledge, and data needed to launch attacks.
CISOs and their teams are increasingly being pulled in several directions at once. Investments in digital transformation during the pandemic have significantly expanded the corporate attack surface. Remote working environments represent a particularly dangerous visibility and control gap - encompassing everything from unpatched endpoints to distracted or negligent users. Yet many security teams are understaffed and overwhelmed by too many ineffective point solutions, which add complexity and reduce productivity.
The potential financial and reputational damage caused by a serious security breach has never been more acute. Yet the ability of organisations to effectively mitigate the risks associated with such incidents is, if anything, diminishing. Data breach costs globally stood at an all-time high average of over $4.2 million in 2021.
100% prevention is simply not realistic. A determined attacker will always find a way to compromise vulnerable targets. The focus must therefore be on complementing this approach with detection and response. Yet here too, organisations are falling behind. The average time it took globally to identify and contain a breach in 2021 was 287 days. Inevitably, more and more businesses are turning to MDR - it is said that half of organisations globally will be using MDR to contain threats by 2025.
What is Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and how does it work?
XDR is an evolution of EDR which optimises threat detection, investigation, and response in real time. XDR unifies security-relevant endpoint detections with telemetry from security and business tools such as network analysis and visibility, email security, identity and access management, cloud security, and more. It is a cloud-native platform built on big-data infrastructure to provide security teams with flexibility, scalability, and opportunities for automation.
It enables you to gain unparalleled visibility into the IT environment from a single pane of glass and spot anomalies indicating threats via high-fidelity alerts. XDR is an evolution of EDR, which optimises real-time threat detection, investigation, response, and hunting.
Generally, XDR solutions form a whole new submarket of digital security tools, built on the premise that prevention always fails and that, eventually, cybercriminals will successfully attack your system. That’s why the detection and response phase is substantial, and various IT experts and automated systems usually supervise both. In fact, 91% of enterprises globally are using or plan to use deployment services, technical support, cybersecurity support, and a cybersecurity threat hunting/monitoring as a service.
What is Managed Detection and Response (MDR)?
MDR is XDR that a third party manages, sometimes combined with other tools. Typically, this approach is recommended for companies that lack the staff and don’t have large IT departments or a security operations centre – including smaller businesses, which generally lack the in-house knowledge and expertise needed to staff a security operations centre.
What are some of the benefits of MDR?
You’ve been through the basics and are considering adding an extra layer of protection to your business’s digital security infrastructure. Here’s why MDR could be what you’re looking for.
It’s a great combo of human and tech expertise
MDR combines tools, technology, and human expertise. Your partner provides you with the know-how of its IT professionals, trained specifically for this field. This brings a holistic approach to your digital security infrastructure. The MDR partner blocks malicious actors from entering and damaging your systems. Even if prevention should fail, the MDR vendor should have enough detection and response capabilities to resolve any threats before they cause any harm. All in all, automated analysis is combined with human assessment.
MDR ensures threat detection, prioritisation, and response are under control
MDR teams are trained to spot even the most sophisticated attacks, be able to identify them as early as possible, and take action and start solving them immediately. They hunt the threats proactively and perform automated checks. Also, MDR systems turn data into actionable information and flag alerts with higher fidelity, which leads to effective prioritisation. All data is constantly evaluated, and the response comes immediately when needed. Thanks to this, compromised systems can be remediated and threats eliminated, be it password resets, endpoint patching, or reimaging computers.
Outsource so your staff can focus on more valuable tasks
A general benefit of outsourcing? It lets your internal staff focus on strategic tasks and leave the day-to-day agenda to your external partner. This way, you can prevent your IT specialists from being overwhelmed with tasks, which can lead to burnout. So, thanks to MDR, you don’t have to invest time and energy into preventing and solving an issue, and you won’t be overwhelmed by alerts. MDR providers are usually highly qualified to perform all the necessary actions to tackle the latest risks connected to remote working or hybrid workspaces.
How to choose your MDR vendor?
Look for one that has:
- A proven track record of delivering high-quality threat intelligence and technology
- A high detection rate, low false positive rate, and light footprint
- 24/7/365 operations that monitor the threat landscape constantly
- Customer service (preferably), including hyperlocal language support combined with global presence and delivery
- The ability to optimise the service for your organisation’s specific needs. It should manage the back-end technology per your risk profile and infrastructure.
Don't wait until it's too late
Security decision-makers face a challenging period of converging trends. The corporate digital attack surface has expanded significantly. At the same time, threat actors are increasingly emboldened, determined, and well-resourced. Security operation managers are struggling to deflect more sophisticated attacks when teams are stretched to the limit, point solutions are underpowered, and resources remain scarce.
Breaches are inevitable, but they don't have to result in serious financial and reputational damage in adversaries can be found and incidents resolved at speed. MDR was made for this. It hands off the heavy lifting to a dedicated provider, minimising security risk for the customer while freeing staff to work on high-value tasks and revenue to spend strategically elsewhere.
ESET's MDR capabilities combine industry-leading technology solutions, including XDR, with world-class security research and threat intelligence built on more than thirty years of experience. XDR and MDR solutions have changed the digital security landscape. To learn more about our offering, click here.