In this day and age, technology and business are inextricably linked. Digital transformation has ushered in unparalleled opportunities for organizations that act with agility in response to the blistering pace of change and look for ways to harness the potential of technology to advance their business.

However, the growing reliance on digital systems, coupled with their interconnectedness and convergence, has also introduced new challenges, particularly an evolving and increasingly complex cybersecurity landscape. Recent history has seen no shortage of examples and data to show that cyberthreats have become increasingly sophisticated, pervasive and costly. In other words, cybersecurity has evolved into a business enabler that is crucial to the long-term success of an organization, all while safeguarding its ability to innovate and derive value from technological advances.

With the stakes going up, many organizations face a fork in the road. With the looming threat of a debilitating security breach, the imperative for robust and comprehensive preventative measures resonates more than ever across companies of all sizes. Against this backdrop, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasingly eyeing enterprise-grade solutions, while large organizations feel the need to provide all operations with additional security beyond what their in-house security teams can manage.

This is where a detection and response (D&R) solution comes in, as it can help tremendously to improve the security status of any organization willing to leverage its full potential. But realizing the benefits of D&R solutions demands cybersecurity acumen. Thus, skilled professionals are needed to operate these platforms successfully, and those are perennially hard to come by.

How do you address this challenge without deploying more resources to hire said professionals? Why not rely on the resources and expertise of a cybersecurity vendor who can crack the conundrum?

Look no further than Managed Detection and Response (MDR), a holistic solution that combines prevention, detection, remediation, and threat management to address threats proactively, in a highly targeted and quick manner, tackling the most demanding aspects of deploying and deriving benefits from what can be a complex set of tools and processes.

Prevention and detection

While regular Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) can address the needs of less complex businesses, their management can delay a timely response. This challenge becomes more pronounced with more comprehensive solutions like Extended Detection and Response (XDR), which cover expansive attack surfaces.

Even with the added benefits of both AI-native automation and the human expertise of an in-house security operations center (SOC), businesses might still lack an in-depth understanding of a particular product or the threat landscape at large. This can cause problems during the threat detection phase, if not the entire incident response process, leading to false positives, missed detections, and wasted resources.

Additionally, a SOC team shoulders various responsibilities, notably achieving compliance with industry-specific regulations and meeting diverse security needs. Ideally, these tasks should have minimal impact on daily business operations while maintaining a focus on effective and timely incident response.

Considering the potential influences of these responsibilities on business functions, it’s prudent to open a conversation about offloading certain tasks through an MDR service. This involves pinpointing operations that are mission-critical and require continuous operation, highlighting the need for focused prevention.

Proactive response

Phrases like “proactively shrinking the attack surface,” “covering all endpoints,” and “cloud-first AI-native operation” may evoke futuristic sci-fi imagery, but they all represent current cybersecurity options and technologies that can be handled through D&R solutions such as XDR.

In the case of XDR, detection operates based on various rulesets and automatic incident mappers included within different platforms and solutions. But using XDR to its full potential requires help from people who have a close connection with the solution’s creators and developers — connecting telemetry and product into a single experience for the business that is wary of the threats it might face every day.

Therefore, to have a better focus on response, a SOC can offload a set of detection responsibilities to managed detection processes, leaving detection to those who work with threat data consistently and understand how to best align with a product to create a safe environment.

Response processes can equally benefit from external management. The advantages are particularly evident for SMBs that cannot or do not want to manage their own containment and remediation efforts and, as a result, face knowledge- and resource-related security gaps.

Moreover, larger businesses may want their IT staff to concentrate on daily operations while being confident in the knowledge that there is a safety net capable of protecting their businesses year-round, mitigating the issues of an overwhelmed internal team.

Achieving all of this with one solution might seem daunting, but it is not. An MDR service offers a comprehensive solution in a unified experience.

Managing the threat surface

A recent string of supply-chain attacks, including those targeting SolarWinds or MOVEit, and their repercussions have also put the spotlight on the need for businesses to beef up their third-party risk management practices.

As such, these days, it is not only businesses themselves that acknowledge the need for robust cybersecurity solutions. Government regulators and cyber insurance companies have established requirements to make businesses less complacent and more likely to invest in advanced protection. It’s crucial to recognize that an attack on a single business or its product can often have knock-on effects, leading to broader impacts and affecting business partners and customers alike.

While onboarding comprehensive D&R poses various challenges, as it is contingent on an organization’s own security expertise, budgetary constraints, and talent crunch, it stands as an effective answer to the trend of cyberattacks that is growing more severe by the day.

Making a difference

The bottom line is that cybersecurity should never be taken for granted. Every business needs to understand the requirements to meet various regulations and cyber insurance standards. The costs associated with data breaches, downtime, and financial and reputational damage can be crippling.

What’s more, effective protection must cater to businesses of any size, from SMBs to enterprises, and operating in any industry vertical. To achieve this, proactive threat hunting must serve as the first step in a multilayered security posture dedicated to addressing threats before they escalate into incidents.

Businesses increasingly realize that cybersecurity is not only about protecting their own assets, but also about preserving the trust of their customers and partners. In an age of constant data breaches, disruptions and other incidents, customers usually seek businesses that can provide them with the best-of-breed combination of technology and human expertise. This may eventually mean the difference between a successful business and an unsuccessful one.