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MDR’s Enduring Value – Beyond Buzzwords
You might’ve heard about the usefulness of managed detection response in providing round-the-clock monitoring, detection and response for cybersecurity incidents. But why does MDR have such enduring value for infosec teams? What explains the continued growth reflected in Gartner’s prediction of MDR uptake to reach 50% of organizations by 2025? This article aims to go beyond buzzwords and pinpoint some of the reasons that MDR is becoming a cornerstone of many modern cyber strategies.
Simplified Budget Meetings
Cybersecurity is a technically challenging field, yet one of the biggest struggles for security leaders often comes in the boardroom rather than in the nuances of orchestrating security strategies. This challenge arises from a persistent disconnect that makes it hard to communicate budget needs and persuade other board members to spend money given other competing business priorities and risks.
Cybersecurity budgeting is often complex and fragmented because it involves conveying the need for multiple tools, services and personnel costs. These disparate things are challenging to justify and explain to board members, who may not have a deep understanding of technical security details.
MDR offers a more unified solution encompassing a range of security services under one umbrella, from threat detection to incident response. This consolidation simplifies the budgeting process by making it easier for security leaders to present a clear, comprehensive and justifiable cost for cybersecurity to the board.
MDR’s predictable cost structure also appeals to board members who favor straightforward, transparent budgeting. Not only does using an MDR service make these budget meetings easier, but there are also clear and compelling cost reductions and statistics to communicate to business leaders (e.g., organizations using an MDR service experience up to 62% fewer security incidents per year).
Productivity Boosts for In-House Staff
On a related note to the previous point, an overlooked benefit of MDR is just how much it reduces the grunt work of cybersecurity. These security tasks consume a disproportionate amount of time for in-house teams on minutiae like monitoring networks and managing alerts, which are important for daily operations but don’t really provide any long-term cybersecurity benefits.
By outsourcing these operational tasks, in-house teams can focus on productive problem-solving activities such as strengthening overall security posture, planning long-term security strategies and working on projects that enhance the organization’s resilience against cyber threats. This could include things like helping employees brush up on cyber hygiene or strengthening access control policies.
Helps Mitigate Insider Threats and Third-Party Risks
Another reason behind MDR’s enduring value is its better capabilities in mitigating insider threats and third-party risks. These risks are notoriously hard to detect—malicious or accidental insider incidents can appear as normal user activity. At the same time, third parties like contractors or software suppliers have legitimate access to IT resources.
The average time to contain insider threat incidents is 77 days, and their cost has jumped by 31% since 2018. Meanwhile, serious software supply chain security breaches continued to ravage companies in 2023, with both the 3CX and MOVEit incidents proving particularly damaging.
Many traditional security measures are designed to detect external attacks and may not adequately capture the nuances of internal behaviors or the intricacies of third-party interactions, which can appear as normal activities within the network. On top of that, the depth of monitoring and behavioral analysis required to identify these types of risks is not easy for in-house teams to find the time for, even if the technology is in place.
MDR services are particularly adept at addressing these challenges due to several factors:
- MDR providers use sophisticated monitoring tools and behavioral analytics to detect unusual or suspicious activities that might indicate an insider threat. This includes monitoring access to sensitive data, unusual login patterns and other activities that deviate from the norm. By analyzing user behavior, MDR can identify potential threats from within your company before they cause harm.
- MDR services offer a holistic view of your network, including the activities of third parties who have access to the systems and apps you use. This level of visibility is crucial in detecting and responding to threats that originate from third-party interactions, which might otherwise go unnoticed in more segmented or less monitored environments.
- MDR teams are comprised of cybersecurity experts trained to recognize the subtle signs of insider threats and third-party risks. These professionals have the experience and knowledge to distinguish between normal and potentially harmful activities. This skill is often beyond the scope of standard security solutions or overworked internal teams.
Industry-Specific Threat Insights
MDR providers typically employ cybersecurity experts with experience dealing with threats in various industries, such as finance, healthcare, retail and manufacturing. These experts understand the unique security challenges, threat actors and regulatory requirements specific to different industries.
This industry-specific expertise means that MDR providers can tailor their detection and response strategies to each client’s particular risk profile and threat landscape. They can offer more nuanced and effective protection because they understand the common attack vectors, data security needs and compliance obligations of varying sectors.
This level of expertise is valuable due to the challenges and complexities involved in acquiring it (primarily driven by the ongoing cybersecurity skills shortage). The gap gets even more pronounced when it comes to specialists with deep knowledge of specific industries. Recruiting cybersecurity professionals who have a nuanced understanding of a particular sector’s unique threats, regulatory environment and business processes is challenging and expensive. This expertise usually comes from years of experience and exposure to specific industry-related cybersecurity issues.
By virtue of their focus and scale, MDR providers can offer this expertise to companies of all sizes at a far more affordable price than if they were to go out and recruit security experts with years of experience in their industries.
Conclusion
Given these factors, companies are likely to continue adopting MDR services because they offer specialized, industry-specific insights, mitigate insider threats and third-party risks, and enhance overall security posture with less operational overhead. The fact these services make budget meetings so much easier is the icing on the cake.
Nuspire’s leading MDR service provides your business with 24x7x365 cyber threat monitoring and rapid incident response on your network, on your endpoints and in the cloud.
