Managed detection and response

What is MDR?

MDR (Managed detection and response) is a type of cybersecurity service that uses the most advanced technology with human expertise to successfully hunt, monitor, and respond to possible threats. The most significant benefit of this type of cybersecurity is that it helps to quickly find, identify and limit the impact of a potential threat without any need for additional staff.

Challenges that organizations need to overcome

1. Lack of resources/staff

   Some organizations that were already encountering problems regarding their security teams might have a harder time adapting to the innovative security system. These advanced tools can do the very opposite of what they are looking for if they don’t have enough time and/or resources to optimize and deploy solutions against advanced threats fully.

2. Alert fatigue

   Managing a large number of alerts from these new technologies is another challenge. This is not a problem, but the number of alerts keeps increasing since endpoints keep growing in the form of remote workers, IoT, hybrid networks, and supply chain partners.

   Organizations need to have the required skills to determine how to respond to all these alerts. This requires more staffing and experience than usual. All this needs to be done quickly because if the potential threat is not analyzed in a short period and neutralized if necessary, it could harm the system.

   MDR was made to fill these gaps. Organizations will be able to quickly implement an MDR solution that will allow them 24/7 remote access to a network and access to expertise which would otherwise be very difficult to staff and find independently.

How does an MDR work?

The primary purpose of an MDR is to remotely monitor, detect and respond to potential threats that were detected in your system. Necessary visibility into security events is usually provided by an EDR (endpoint detection and response) tool.

All relevant threat intelligence, forensic data, and advanced analytics will be passed on to human analysts, who will further analyze the alerts and determine what should be the appropriate action to reduce the risk. The threat will be removed, and the affected endpoint will be restored to its pre-infected state thanks to human and machine capabilities combined.

The most important capabilities of an MDR:

1. Threat hunting

   There is a human being behind every threat who is trying to think of a way to infiltrate the network without behind caught. Even though machines have become very smart nowadays, a human mind is still needed to penetrate a system’s defenses. Human threat hunters who have advanced skills and experiences will identify and deal even with the stealthiest and most harmful threats in order to catch what the automated system didn’t.

1. Prioritization

   Managed prioritization of alerts will definitely help out organizations who struggle daily with sifting through all the alerts they get. This type of security can also be called “managed EDR,” and it automatically applies rules and human inspection in order to identify which threats are real and which ones are false. All these results will come with additional context, which will help with the neutralization of the said threats.

2. Guided response

   This type of response will advise organizations on the best way of dealing with specific threats. Organizations will know whether they should isolate the system from the network or should they just eliminate the threat by following a simple step-by-step guide.

3. Investigation

   The investigation will help organizations learn as much as possible about threats faster, thanks to advanced security alerts and additional context. Thanks to this, organizations will be able to understand the problem, who has tried to infiltrate their system, and how deep inside the network they got. With all this information combined, they can make a plan of action quickly.

4. Recovery

   The last and final step is recovering after any incident. The organization’s complete investment in endpoint protection could be wasted if recovery is not performed properly. Managed remediation will restore the system to its pre-attack state by eliminating malware, cleaning the registry, removing intruders from the system, and deleting any harmful mechanisms. This will ensure that the network returns to a known good state and prevent any future attacks.

Benefits of implementing an MDR

All organizations that decide to implement an MDR will immediately reduce their time to detect a threat. Previous security systems could take up to 280 days to detect an intruder, but MDR will reduce that time to only a few minutes.

Reducing the time to detect an intruder is not the only benefit MDR has to offer. Other benefits are:

• Improving security posture and becoming more resilient to other possible attacks by optimizing configuration and removing rogue systems.
• Identifying and stopping hidden and sophisticated threats thanks to the constantly managed threat hunting.
• Responding to threats more effectively and restoring endpoints to a pre-attack state through managed remediation and guided response.
• Redirecting staff to more strategic projects from the reactive and repetitive incident response.

Why are MDR services better than other protection solutions?

EDR vs. MDR

EDR (endpoint detection and response) is just a part of the tool being used by MDR providers. EDR will record and store behavior and events on endpoints and later feed them into analysis systems and automated responses. EDR will give security teams the ability to use more than IoCs in order to understand better what is going on with the network.

EDR has become more complicated over time because it started using technologies like behavioral analysis and machine learning. A lot of security teams don’t have enough resources and time to fully utilize EDR systems, meaning it will leave an organization less secure before the EDR solution was implemented.

MDR comes in handy because it solves that problem by including human expertise, threat intelligence, and mature processes. MDR is designed to help all organizations to get the best protection without running into additional costs because their security wasn’t on point.

MSSP vs. MDR

MSSPs (Managed Security Services Providers) are the predecessors of MDRs. They usually provide constant monitoring of a network and send alerts to security teams or other tools. Generally, these services don’t actively respond to threats. It is the customer who has to respond to the threats, which usually requires advanced expertise. Also, MSSP customers need to get in touch with additional vendors or consultants to perform the recovery successfully.

MDR services focus on finding and responding to hazardous threats as soon as possible. MDR also has mitigation and recovery capabilities and can improve your organization with minimal investment.

Managed SIEM vs. MDR

SIEM (security information and event management) uses data from multiple network sources and other devices before analyzing it to find anomalies that could be malicious. After this step, SIEM capabilities vary widely. Some are managed event alerting and processing services, while others are technology-only solutions.

Many customers report that they’ve encountered challenges while resolving problems exposed by their SIEM data. The reason for these challenges is that the security teams had trouble understanding the results. Most users have reported that they lack the expertise to utilize their solutions fully. On the other hand, MDRs have a quick solution for all problems customers may encounter.

How to select an MDR service?

MDR solutions offer various services, so you should know your organization’s current capabilities before searching for an upgrade. You need to know what kind of solution will be the most suitable for your organization. Our support team at TechProComp is here to help you with any questions you’ve got and help you choose the best improvement for your current security system.

If you are looking for a way to minimize the risk of system breaches, MDR is the way to go because it reduces the time needed to find the threat, analyze it, and, if necessary, proceed with further steps of neutralizing it.