Managed Detection and Response

MDR, or managed detection and response is a software utilized by security teams to provide proactive threat detection, incident analysis, and risk mitigation. Existing IT teams, security teams, or even security-less companies are provided a platform that automates and orchestrates the detection and response aspects of MDR. IT teams are already understaffed, overworked, and certainly underappreciated. If you’re like us, you miss sports. So, let’s use a sports analogy to put it into perspective. On a football team, the quarterback, the running back, and the wide receivers are the stars. Those are the big 3 in any company as well – CEO, CFO, COO. Yet, how do you expect anything to get done without an offensive line? In a healthcare system the IT team is the offensive line. They are the protectorate of internet connection, data loss, PHI and other sensitive information. They are tasked with internal projects from the C-Suite and they are what keep the system up and running. So just how important and underappreciated are IT teams? 

Andrew McAfee stated in a Harvard Business Review article that “American companies spend as much on IT each year as they do on offices, warehouses, and factories put together.” The amount of responsibility they have in their department is astronomical. So why are they so underappreciated? Well we all know that cyber-attacks can and do happen – but – if it hasn’t happened to you and your business you might not see the need for outsourcing your cybersecurity. Another reason is that many people are under the false impression that cybersecurity is “just another insurance.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Insurance is reactive, they wait until something happens, bicker about the cost, and reluctantly pay out as little as possible. Cybersecurity should be proactive. They look for threats before they become a real threat. Doctor’s use all kinds of technology to ensure the best preventative care they can give. Cybersecurity shouldn’t, and doesn’t have to be, any different. 

Another reason we have found is many people are, again, under the wrong assumption that cybersecurity will cost their business an arm and a leg. By outsourcing aspects of your cybersecurity you could not only make “boss of the year” in the eyes of your IT team but it could truly make them more efficient, productive, and inadvertently allow doctors and practitioners to provide better quality of care with peace of mind. However, god forbid a breach were to occur, those crucial bonds of trust are immediately broken. The consequences of the aftermath could be catastrophic not only to the business, but potentially to individuals as well. Furthermore, Andrew McAfee later states how hard it is for management to navigate through all the options in the marketplace. “It’s hard for executives to figure out what all those systems, applications, and acronyms do, let alone decide which ones they should purchase and how to successfully adopt them.” 

Steel Patriot Partners has brought a solution that is straightforward, intuitive, effective, and easy to use. MDR helps prevent against some of the most common reasons data breaches occur. Human error can account for anywhere between 20-90% of data breaches. Proactively looking for threats can partially overcome much of that simple human error. Such a span in range shows just how convoluted the research is into these types of attacks. With many employees avoiding the cognitive thinking it takes to be truly secure, putting time pressures onto the IT team can further perpetuate the trouble. Rushing the IT department to produce their product or service can cause them to accidently neglect quality control – leaving the programing code vulnerable to threats. Additionally, many organizations have some form of a managed security service (MSS) that provides them with the basic forms of security management. (log collection & monitoring, antivirus software, & some scanning) MDR from Steel Patriot Partners on the other hand compounds the basic security management aspect with the detection and response aspects further ensuring your network than ever before. MDR can prevent breaches that traditional managed security services’ may have missed and exponentially decrease the response time if a breach were to occur.  

At Steel Patriot Partners, our MDR platform provides deeper detection than traditional MSSPs who rely on rules and signatures to find security events. Our platform pulls data from end-users and endpoints such as laptops, servers, and network devices. MDR also leverages machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to investigate, contain threats, and begin to orchestrate response. This is unlike traditional Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) who only provide alerts from security monitoring for you to act on. We alert you only if it is a true emergency. That way we eliminate the false positives, take care of the true threats and recommend future actions to prevent the recurrence. If you would like some answers to the questions about outsourcing cyber security, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our experts. Our passion is cyber security and the empowerment that comes from education. Just give us a follow on social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), send us an email, give us a call at 703-297-4405 or contact us directly! Regardless of the method you choose, we look forward to hearing from you and – as always, we appreciate your time for reading this content! Stay secure!