Combatting Industry Myths with MDR Intel

Caution and apprehension when shopping for your cybersecurity solution is understandable. There is an array of options, many of which promise silver bullet results. Because of these claims, it can be difficult to understand which bases are covered by which vendors. In all our conversations with business owners in the Managed Service Provider (MSP) community, four main myths lead to hesitation surrounding managed security:

1. Adding Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services to my security stack is too expensive.
2. My company is too small to need an outsourced Security Operations Center (SOC).
3. I don’t need managed security services because I’m protected by my backup.
4. My tools, such as antivirus (AV) and firewalls, automatically stop cyberthreats for me.

Together, we’re going to break through the noise to understand the reality of the situation. An around-the-clock cybersecurity solution is no longer a luxury, but a cost of doing business. Read on to learn why.

Threat actors’ tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are getting more creative and advanced, even as their means become simplified. They are saving both time and money by using whitelisted tools already within businesses’ environments. Therefore, a higher minimal level of security is necessary. Our carefully crafted solutions are based on:

• our team’s real-world experience,
• the Adversary Pursuit Group’s (APG) threat intel,
• the needs of our clients, and
• the guidance of industry leaders.

While other vendors may protect against TTPs of the past, a 24/7 MDR prepares you for the current reality of cybersecurity and guards you against future attacks.

Business owners are often apprehensive about investing in managed security. Whether it’s due to budget constraints or confusion around the function of an MDR, the fact remains: experiencing a cyberattack will always be more expensive than investing in an MDR solution.

Consider this—would you rather make an investment now, or pay the price later, after an attack? Saving pennies now may make you vulnerable to ever-advancing cyberthreats in the future. The average cost of a cyberattack for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is $54,560. Not only that, according to Sophos’ State of Ransomware 2021, only 8% of businesses that pay a ransom get all their data back. Additionally, companies often experience secondary blackmail attempts after the initial breach, whether they’ve paid the ransom or not. Put your money towards proactive protection instead of malicious actors’ bank accounts today!

When you read the headlines a year or two ago, you saw malicious actors attacking large companies, such as SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline Company. The trend appeared to be going after the biggest company with the most revenue, sensitive data, and/or critical operations. Fitting these superlatives guaranteed, for a time, that threat actors would get paid the ransom.

Other techniques are gaining security experts’ attention though. Attacks are now widespread, exploiting whatever vertical, tool, or industry that they can infiltrate most easily. When threat actors target specific tools that you use, you get hit even though you aren’t the intended victim. It no longer has to do with qualifiers such as your annual revenue or number of endpoints.

This truth also remains—threat actors turn more of a profit, and have an easier time, attacking a litany of smaller targets, compared to one bigger business. Whether you consider you or your clients’ businesses ‘big enough’ to gain a malicious actor’s attention, the question comes down to this: Which of your clients deserve to be in an attack’s blast radius? None of them.

If you have a good backup system in place and/or tool installed, you may be able to restore operations after an attack. Placing your dependency here, though, doesn’t account for:

• The data a malicious actor has gotten ahold of,
• Their attempts at disrupting or corrupting your backups, deeming them unusable, or
• Stopping an attack from happening in the first place.

Triple extortion—stealing data, making it public, and implementing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack—puts a wrench in that plan immediately. First, even if you have a backup of your data, it doesn’t eliminate the reality of another copy having been stolen and quite possibly sold on the Dark Web. Second, your installed backup won’t be of much help if it’s been corrupted, or if your systems are also under a DDoS attack. Lastly, backups don’t protect your businesses’ reputation. If the threat actor publicly releases that you’ve been breached, you may loose customers or potential clients. Your safest bet is to implement a managed security solution that will prevent cyberattacks in the first place.

Machine learning and automated tools such as AV, firewalls, and endpoint detection and response (EDR) are good at making binary decisions. Is this user or activity good or bad? When passed through that filter they are able to stop rudimentary attacks. Threat actors can easily trick these tools, though, especially when using trusted tools, approved workflows, or live-off-the-land (LotL) techniques.

On the contrary, MDR security utilizes people, technology, and processes. When security analysts are guarding your business around-the-clock, they can make intelligent decisions on your behalf based on threat context and behaviors that automated tools cannot identify. These solutions aren’t bad, they just shouldn’t be solely relied upon. After all, if AV and firewalls had the ability to control the issue, hacking wouldn’t be a multi-billion-dollar industry.

When it comes to building out your security stack, 24/7 protection for hybrid workflows with fully managed response capabilities is vital. An innovative technology company first and foremost, our team of experts is here to add context to the myths you hear, combat cyberthreats on your behalf, provide additional defense to your other security vendors, and protect clients of all sizes. Partner with Blackpoint Cyber for a proactive stack that will keep you ahead of cyberthreats and competition alike.

Blackpoint Cyber is a provider of leading-edge cybersecurity threat hunting, detection, and response technology. Founded by former United States Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence security experts, we fuse real security with real response to protect what’s most important to you. Our true, 24/7 Managed Detection & Response (MDR) service works in tandem with our Security Operations Center (SOC) team to take in real-time threat alerts, respond immediately, and eradicate malicious actors’ access to your networks. Before lateral movement can happen, trust Blackpoint to eliminate any chance of further compromise. If you’re interested in decades of extensive knowledge in real-world defensive and offensive tactics protecting your and your clients’ businesses, contact us today!