What is Advantio Managed Detection & Response - MDR?

What is Advantio Managed Detection & Response - MDR?

With every day passing there is news of yet more cyber threats and as a result, organizations remain on alert seeking to stay abreast of the latest developments. Colleagues are reminded of the need to change passwords frequently and to update patches as and when they come available. However, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes to protect data on a daily basis.

In some ways, the context is more challenging than ever before due to a range of different factors. For example, the attack footprint is much larger as so many people are now working from home, and accessing data via their computers outside of a controlled corporate environment.

As companies look to resource up, they are faced with several additional key challenges.

Key Challenges:

• Talent Shortage
  There is a real lack of Cyber talent in Europe and thus it is incredibly difficult to resource up - especially if you are an unknown employer brand. As a result, organizations struggle to identify, recruit, and retain the talent that is needed to operate their security operations centers (SOCs). 

• High Cost of Running Security Operations Centres
  The cost of running a Security Operations Centre (SOC) is significant ranging from additional costs required to ensure 24/7 coverage, to costs for hardware and software. Costs associated with building a robust security operations center include both product licensing fees and personnel costs across both security and compliance. 

• The Burden of Achieving (and Maintaining) Regulatory Compliance
  Because of the risks associated with failing compliance, organizations dedicate significant resources to processes, and to working with auditors to ensure the completion of each step. 

• Outdated and Poorly Understood Security Products and Processes
  Organizations can struggle with legacy security systems, cloud services, and processes that did not deliver the required security outcomes or are otherwise underutilized or misused.

As a result of these factors, a growing number of companies are outsourcing their Managed Detection and Response (MDR) capabilities to dedicated SOC’s.  

Security Operations Centre - A Definition

A Security Operations Centre is a dedicated unit housed in a secure center that consists of specialist cyber experts equipped with the latest tools designed to reduce cyber risk and keep enterprises secure by focusing primarily on threat detection.  

In recent years, there has been a growing trend for companies to outsource their MDR requirements to dedicated SOC’s to manage the risk on their behalf. 

“MDR services are designed to reduce the time between detecting and responding to threats. Additional security operations functions, such as exposure management, cloud security, digital forensics and incident response (DFIR), and log management have emerged to complement the threat monitoring, detection and response offerings.” (Gartner) 

Modern SOC:

A Modern SOC consists of a Managed detection and response service that provides clients with a remote service delivered via a modern security operations center (MSOC).  

The SOC is configured to monitor and rapidly detect any threats and to ensure robust and timely mitigation protecting the clients’ infrastructure alongside containment services to isolate any threats. 

“MDR service providers deliver these capabilities using technologies — at the endpoint, network, application and, increasingly, cloud services layers — that generate or collect security log data and alerts. In addition, telemetry provides contextual information (for example, identity and user, vulnerabilities and business-criticality) to improve and validate threat detection. They apply threat intelligence. Threat hunting augments real-time threat detection. It can find attackers employing tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that have avoided customers’ prevention and detection capabilities, or validate the nonexistence of a threat in an environment.” (Gartner)
 

Features Include: 

• Secure Centre: Dedicated secure center with 24/7 coverage 

• Cyber Experts: Specialist staff with requisite cyber security training

• Advanced Tech Stack: The latest tech stack consisting of a wide range of cyber software tools 

• Security Playbooks: Defined work processes so they have clear playbooks to deal with threats as they occur 

• Threat Monitoring: Dashboards and monitors with live feeds from various applications  

• Incident Response: An ability to resolve issues (rather than just “monitor and alert”)  

• Threat Hunting: A process that leverages previously collected information to find indicators of compromise (IoC) connected to tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs)  

Advantio MDR 

The following represent some of the key elements of Advantio’s MDR. 

• IT Operation (AWS secure infrastructure) 
• Log Management and Correlation (SIEM)  
• MSOC Services (including MDR) L1, L1/L2 
• Threat Management & Incident Response 
• Vulnerability Management (VA, PT) 

• Managed Endpoint Protection (EDR) 
• Patch Management Service 
• Data Vault 
• Customer Portal (under development) 
• PCI Compliance Management (as an option 

So what are some of the key benefits of outsourcing security to an MDR provider? 

Key Results

1. Cost-Effective Approach (A Lower Security TCO)Most organizations lack the time, knowledge, or resources to build a program from the ground up. MDR offers a solution that could meet both security and compliance requirements with ease
2. Access External Skills & Expertise
   Most organizations lack the time, knowledge, or resources to build a program from the ground up. MDR offers a solution that could meet both security and compliance requirements with ease. 
3. Achieve ComplianceSeveral organizations need to achieve data and security compliance with specific mandates as a prerequisite before onboarding new customers. 
4. Latest Tech Stack (Enhanced Security Control)With their legacy SIEM solutions, organizations did not effectively optimize their alerts, allowing hundreds or even thousands of non-critical alerts to flood their systems each month. 
5. Reduction in Time to Detect
   Having a dedicated team focused on threat detection increases the odds of a more timely detection which helps to minimize the risk of damage.  

Summary 

Outsourced MDR is growing in popularity as a solution for clients keen to improve their cyber security coverage. MDR includes a broader set of technologies and coverage compared to traditional EDR services. MDR focuses primarily on threat monitoring, detection and response. With Advantio’s MDR service, we deliver the most scalable, secure, and fully PCI DSS compliant platform.

Our Managed Security Services can include design, monitoring, and management of the IT infrastructure assets, depending on which service elements the customer chooses. In terms of threat hunting, this is a human-centric activity and aims to prevent attacks before they happen. Finally, we provide our services by way of shared infrastructure, dedicated infrastructure, and virtualized applications 

To learn more about Advantio’s Managed Detection and Response Service please schedule a call.