The rise in ransomware attack volume and sophistication is a wake-up call to IT service providers and their customers. Traditional perimeter-focused defenses, such as firewalls, are no longer sufficient against stealthy and financially motivated attackers. There are several ways to achieve a managed detection and response (MDR) outcome:

MDR’s defense-in-depth benefits MSPs by enhancing threat visibility, augmenting skills and expertise, responding to current vulnerabilities, and adding proactive prevention, detection and response. Here is a recommended approach for MSPs evaluating MDR and what it entails:

Do you have a SIEM for full visibility? Organizations must protect an ever-increasing attack surface that encompasses physical servers, workstations, endpoints and mobile devices. To ensure comprehensive visibility, you need to correlate log data in a security information and event management (SIEM) platform for quick search, analysis and incident response. Cybersecurity experts view SIEM as a foundational capability that organizations of all sizes and maturity levels should adopt.

Do you use MITRE ATT&CK for better threat correlation? Developed by MITRE, the ATT&CK framework is based on real-world threat observations. The framework’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) enable security defenders to improve threat hunting and complete discovery of ongoing attacks. Implementing MITRE ATT&CK on your own can be complex and time-consuming. Our threat protection platform, EventTracker, natively maps the ATT&CK knowledge base into its console for enhanced visibility and threat enrichment, so you benefit from the MITRE ATT&CK framework without doing the heavy lifting.

Do you have EDR to protect the endpoint? A significant percentage of today’s threats originate from always-on endpoints like laptops, tablets, servers and virtual machines. Organizations can improve threat detection time with endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities, especially when protecting legacy and unpatched devices. Stopping an attack early in the cyber attack lifecycle restricts adversary access, reconnaissance and damage. Our deep learning capabilities even accelerate threat prevention across a broad range of operating systems and file types. The business case for EDR is simple, with its proven results to protect your critical devices from zero-day attacks and mutating malware.

Can you automate cybersecurity? Automation can reduce mundane tasks repeated hundreds of times a day by cybersecurity analysts, leaving more time for proactive tasks like threat hunting. Streamlining cybersecurity reduces false positives and ensures that service providers and their customers see only validated and high priority threats. We speed up the predict, prevent, detect, and respond process while improving analyst efficiency and accelerating threat detection. Netsurion’s security simplifies IT operations and provides learn-once-defend-everywhere insights.

Do you have a SOC for 24/7 incident response capability? A security operations center (SOC) allows organizations to fully monitor, detect, investigate and respond to cyber threats 24/7/365. Hackers don’t work only Monday through Friday, and neither should your cybersecurity protection. But the obstacles to build and maintain an in-house SOC are significant. The high cost of hardware and software alone is daunting, but even more expensive is recruiting, training and retaining cybersecurity analysts. Netsurion delivers SOC-as-a-service with analysts who work as an extension of your in-house team.

MDR solutions and provider capabilities can vary widely. Make sure to tailor your assessment and selection process to current as well as future requirements.

MSP Checklist for a More Proactive Defense  

Consider the following criteria when navigating the MDR selection process:

Future Steps

MDR solutions are gaining traction with MSPs because they offer powerful yet practical cybersecurity capabilities while potentially consolidating technology and costs. Netsurion offers unified MDR capabilities to service providers such as:

Our managed detection and response solution overcomes the challenges of DIY point tools. Read Gartner’s MDR report to learn how to align your staffing and budget with technology that drives the outcomes you need for today’s advanced threats.

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