Managed detection and response (MDR) are a cybersecurity service that provides organizations with a team of cybersecurity experts who monitor your endpoints, networks, and cloud environments – responding to cyberthreats 24/7. The team uses a combination of processes to reduce risk, stop attacks and improve the effectiveness of your security operations center (SOC).
MDR services provide customers with remote modern security operations center (MSOC) functions, allowing for rapid detection, investigation, and response (through threat mitigation and containment tactics).
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Why is Managed Detection and Response Important?
MDR services universally provide the following value:
- Increased business IT security posture with a modern approach to threat management that is proactive, paving the way for transformation across security operations.
- Access to security experts and operational best practices, as well as recommendations on policy changes and fine-tuning
- Faster detection of and response to advanced threats, thereby reducing risk.
- Resource augmentation with continuous, year-round coverage and expertise.
- Guided response and managed remediation to restore endpoints in the event of a threat.
How Does Managed Detection and Response Work?
Advanced threat intelligence, analytics, and forensic data are passed to the cybersecurity team for analysis, who then perform triage on alerts and determine the appropriate response to reduce the total impact and risk of incidents. Finally, through a combination of human and machine capabilities, the threat is then quickly removed, and the affected endpoint is restored to its pre-infected state.
4 Functions of Managed Detection and Response
1. Prioritization
Prioritization helps your business to sift through its massive volume of alerts, determining which to address first. Prioritization applies automated rules and human inspection to distinguish non-threats from true ones.
2. Investigation
Investigation services help your business to better understand threats at a faster rate by enriching security alerts with additional context. With the investigation, your business can better understand what happened, when it happened, who was affected, and how far the attack went. With that information, we can then plan an effective response.
3. Guided Response
Guided response delivers actionable advice on the best way to contain and remediate a detected threat. As part of this service, your business will be advised on activities as fundamental as whether to isolate a system from the network or how to eliminate a hazard and recover from an attack on a step-by-step basis.
4. Remediation
The final step in any cyber incident is recovery. If this step is not performed correctly, then your business’ entire investment in its endpoint protection program is wasted. Remediation restores systems to their pre-attack state by removing malware, cleaning the registry, ejecting intruders, and removing persistence mechanisms. With remediation, you can ensure that the business network is returned to a well-known state and that further compromise is prevented.
