Partner content: How to choose a provider that does MDR right

Amidst widespread economic uncertainty and the need to demonstrate ROI to relevant stakeholders, successfully nurturing digital initiatives can be difficult. However, given the evolving threat landscape in which attacks are increasingly frequent, sophisticated, and damaging, businesses cannot afford to compromise on cybersecurity.

There is a significant opportunity for those in the channel to deliver intelligent and reliable Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions to their customers.

MDR services are integral to strengthening an organisation's security posture, improving visibility, and minimising threats. A modern approach to threat detection, analysis, and investigation is needed to rapidly determine risks and minimise the need for manual human intervention.

The costs and the gains

Unless organisations are prepared to defend against daily cyber threats with the necessary resources, successful attacks will lock enterprises out of mission-critical systems, resulting in unnecessary downtime and the risk of large financial losses.

Enterprises are resigned to waiting until they have suffered a breach before bringing in specialist knowledge, or undertaking analyses that may just add to disruption and costs. This security stance, in which issues are remedied in a reactive fashion, introduces delays and vulnerabilities, and contributes to cybersecurity incident noise.

MDR delivers proactive threat monitoring, hunting and responses around the clock. However, it is not designed to replace traditional security or specialist human expertise, but instead supplement these approaches by providing direct access to a third party Security Operations Center backed by a robust -cybersecurity platform. MDR safeguards digital assets by determining legitimate threats and providing visibility in tandem with swift response to prioritised cybersecurity events.

Partnering with the right MDR provider

MDR addresses the urgent and complex challenge facing organisations about how to defend organisations from cyberthreats with limited security resources and time. This is why MDR services are fast growing -- but how do enterprises determine which provider best suits their environments?

The most important value of any MDR provider is to offer superior detection to minimise attacker dwell time, identify risks and indicators of compromise -- often concealed within reporting -- rapidly and with the fewest possible misses and false positives. Enterprises should carefully measure the mean time to detect cyberthreats, as well as the mean time to respond, when it comes to selecting software and vendors. These are key indicators of the depth of their detection and response capabilities.

Many MDR vendors claim to protect data in a modern and comprehensive way. But will their help be limited to notifying customers of incidents? Or will they leave their customers with the burden of dealing with the repercussions of those incidents? The best vendors rely on insights and intelligence from specialist analysts and historical real-world research, will offer an awareness of the techniques needed to properly analyse data from networks and infrastructure, and will remediate the threats facing their customers. Their expertise will encompass advanced threats, how investigations can be streamlined, and where to place automation.

MDR solutions should integrate seamlessly into existing technology stacks, preserving current processes and investments to maximise value across business and IT infrastructures as they evolve. They also should offer 100% transparency, so the customer has access to the same technology platform and underpinning as the third-party SOC team monitoring their environment.

The outcomes of effective MDR are vital, making selection criteria critical. Customers want service providers to provide guidance. They want expert insight into security and comprehensive modern approaches, especially if they do not have the resources in-house to deliver the level of security they require.

To learn more about how the right MDR solution bolsters cyber defences, click here.

This post is sponsored by Secureworks.