For MSPs and MSSPs, the rising number of cybersecurity threats can be overwhelming. Prevention is no longer enough. You have to focus on detection and response technologies to stay ahead of the game. The many tools available today are both a blessing and a curse. While you can stitch a number of them together to cover most potential threats, you’d also likely run into the “too many cooks” situation:
- Using multiple siloed software means you have to manage isolated events and overlapping alerts. You have to manually connect the dots, which is time-consuming and can result in costly blind spots.
- Your team needs to perform many repetitive manual tasks just to make things work. This is not only inefficient, but you also don't have the bandwidth to deliver strategic value to your clients.
- Data from various sources rarely play nice with each other. You may have too much data in one area and too little in another, all the while wondering if something may have fallen through the cracks.
Why MPSs Should Use Open-XDR Technologies
An XDR solution offers cross-layered detection and response to automatically correlate data across email, endpoint, server, cloud workloads, and network to improve threat detection. Here’s how Open XDR can benefit you and your clients:
Minimize Delays and Confusion Caused By Duplicate Alerts
When you have multiple threat detection software running, you’d likely get many alerts that can be traced back to the same root cause. XDR uses AI-powered technologies to analyze the alerts and correlate activities, so you’ll get fewer but higher-fidelity alerts. Your team can focus on investigating high-priority items and help your clients identify threats sooner to minimize damage.
Connect the Dots with a “Single Pane of Glass” View
XDR technologies allow engineers to evaluate an entire chain of events all in one place, which provides the context necessary for accurate decision-making. Since your clients and team can see and act on the same information in real-time, you can streamline communication and increase the level of transparency to improve efficiency and deliver a better customer experience.
Reduce Repetitive Tasks with Automation
Automated root cause analysis correlates data from multiple sources, which is a time-consuming, error-prone, and labor-intensive task when done manually. You can also automate many types of investigation, so your team can become more productive and focus on activities that will deliver strategic value to your clients.
Expand Your Service Offering and Drive Revenue
An XDR solution allows you to add a SOC as a Service offering, which is in high demand among mid-market customers. You can become more competitive by providing comprehensive security analysis services.
How To Choose an Open XDR Platform
Here are some key attributes to look for when evaluating Open XDR technologies:
- 360-degree visibility: The platform should offer a comprehensive view by collecting, transforming, and consolidating data from across a client's IT infrastructure.
- Seamless integration: Look for robust APIs that allow you to integrate all existing security applications to achieve a "single pane of glass" view of the entire system and network.
- Intelligent thread detection: The technology should provide AI-driven automatic threat detection and correlation to filter and piece together complex alerts in real-time to shorten response time.
- Machine learning analytics: The XDR software should bring together secure log analytics, network behavioral analytics, and user behavioral analytics to provide a holistic view of an incident.
- Cloud-native scalability: Your platform should support a micro-service clustering architecture that can easily scale up to support a multi- and hybrid cloud environment.
Integrating Open XDR into Your Security Stack
An XDR solution’s ability to provide a complete view of a threat hinges upon the availability of accurate information, which is funneled into a centralized data lake from all the security layers within a clients’ IT infrastructure. As such, you should implement a process to take a detailed inventory of all the components. This will allow you to develop a holistic view of the entire system and ensure seamless integration of the various threat detection software.
While XDR software can streamline workflow and improve efficiency with AI-driven automation, it does take time for the machine learning model to gather data, make refinements, and strengthen its capabilities. You should set realistic targets and expectations, such that your team can take the process one step at a time to reap the long-term benefits of an accurate machine learning model.
Ready to add XDR to your MSP offering without jumping through the hoops?
We’ve got you covered. Our complete SOCaaS solution incorporates Stellar Cyber Starlight, an intelligent security operations platform that uses Open XDR. It enables our MSP and MSSP clients to identify real security issues, improve response time, and offer a trusted AI-driven SOC service to their customers.
Book a demo today to see how we can help you expand your offering without all the legwork.
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