Latest Trend Micro Acquisition to Provide MSSPs with Better SOC Capabilities

Trend Micro is acquiring Anlyz, a provider of security operations center (SOC) technology.

This latest Trend Micro acquisition will enable enterprises and MSSPs to improve operational efficiencies, cost effectiveness and security outcomes.

Meantime, a new Trend Micro report shows each payment to ransomware attackers subsidizes nine future attacks. Although only 10% of ransomware victims pay their extorters, they are enabling attacks on numerous other organizations by doing so. (More on that below.)

The Anlyz acquisition will extend Trend Micro’s orchestration, automation and integration capabilities. The deal encompasses intellectual property, industry expertise and more than 40 technical employees. They’ll focus on bolstering Trend Micro’s security platform strategy.

Through its Anlyz acquisition, Trend Micro will expand its engineering team of more than 3,000 people, adding a new R&D center in Bangalore, India.

MSSPs Can Growth their Strategic SOC Services

MSSPs can grow their strategic SOC services while minimizing the complexity of the underlying security stack. Trend Micro’s enterprise customers will benefit from an extended detection and response (XDR) and incident response orchestration platform.

Anlyz delivers security, orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) capabilities for MSSPs to manage the incident response process across multiple clients. It also offers log aggregation, enabling data ingestion and enrichment across a range of data sources and security solutions.

Trend Micro will leverage Anlyz’s SOAR solution and set of product connectors to broaden its platform, and enable additional integration and automation options across customers’ IT ecosystems.

Trend Micro and Anlyz have been technology alliance partners since 2021. They share more than 30 joint customers that are positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

MSSPs will Need Less Vendors

Kevin Simzer is Trend Micro‘s COO.

Trend Micro’s Kevin Simzer

“By blending Anlyz’s automation, orchestration and integration capabilities with what we have today with Vision One, Trend will deliver new capabilities across several market segments,” he said. “We’ll provide a full SOC tech platform for MSSPs, an inclusive XDR solution for midmarket customers, and enriched SOC capabilities for very large enterprise customers.”

Research from Gartner shows vendors that ease integration with other IT and security technology and tools have a significant market advantage, Simzer said.

“Through this acquisition, MSSPs will be empowered to grow their services while reducing the number of technology vendors needed,” he said. “And our customers will benefit from a comprehensive XDR platform that can maximize analyst productivity and help relieve resource constraints.”

Trend’s MSSP channel customers will benefit from:

• An anchor technology platform to manage the SOC function for their clients.
• A reduced requirement to architect individual custom solutions for their customers.
• Visibility, analysis and automation across Trend Micro, third-party products and customer instances.
• A scalable and flexible platform to appeal to all types of customers no matter the size and complexity of their IT environment.

Trend Micro Ransomware Report

Key findings of Trend Micro’s ransomware report include:

• The 10% of victims that agree to pay usually do so quickly and are generally being forced to pay more per compromise.
• Risk is not homogeneous. It differs across regions, sectors and organization sizes.
• Victims in some sectors and countries pay more often than others. That means their peers are more likely to be targeted.
• Paying a ransom often only results in driving up the overall cost of the incident with few other benefits.
• Ransomware monetization activities are at their lowest in January and July-August. These are potentially good times for defenders to rebuild infrastructure and prepare for future threats.

Trend Micro’s Jon Clay

Jon Clay is vice president of threat intelligence at Trend Micro.

“Ransomware is a major cybersecurity threat to enterprises and governments today,” he said. “It’s also continually evolving, which is why we need more accurate, data-driven ways to model ransomware-related risk. This new research aims to help IT decision-makers better understand their risk exposure and provide policymakers with the information they need to craft more effective and impactful strategies.”