4 Ways MDR Can Offer MSPs Greater Possibilities, Profitability and Peace of Mind
Attackers don’t know the meaning of the phrase “9 to 5.” Fortunately, neither do we.
It was repeated nightly on television for decades: “It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?” The goal was to get parents to double-check that their kids were back home for the evening before the youth curfews set in — all of which were based on the idea that nothing good happened past a certain hour.
We’ve observed the same in cybersecurity. More than three-quarters of the attacks we observe occur during off-hours, peaking in the wee hours of the morning. For the Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who breathe a sigh of relief each morning as they walk in to find all is well, a better question might be: “It’s 4 a.m. Do you know who’s responding to your alerts?”
A select few MSPs always know the answer to this question. They can rest easy, knowing that their customers’ networks are being monitored by a dedicated team of security experts—whether because they’ve taken on the considerable expense of building an in-house SOC, or because they’ve secured the services of a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) team.
MDR: Experts At Your Service
MSPs provide critical IT and security services to their customers. Because they tend to serve organizations that don’t have their own security teams, an MSP’s clients rely on them for effective security solutions.
However, the cyber threat landscape is constantly changing: New vulnerabilities emerge and bad actors use new tactics, techniques and procedures. How can an MSP bring more advanced security to their customers? Adding a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service can help — not just by adding an additional layer of security, but also by making the job of the MSP easier.
What MDR Services Can Offer Your Business
Here are just four of the ways that offering MDR can benefit MSPs, particularly those who serve small- and medium-sized businesses:
- 24/7 SOC Monitoring Because bad actors notoriously prefer non-working hours and holidays to deploy attacks, security alerts from tools like endpoint detection often occur when no one is paying attention. Timing is also critical to responding to attacks; minutes can make the difference between a minor annoying alert and a major security incident. Most MSPs simply don’t have the resources to monitor alerts around the clock. MDR solutions, like SonicWall’s, offers 24/7 monitoring — ensuring that no alert is missed, no matter when it comes in. This allows for more immediate response and better overall security for both the MSP and their customers.
- Expert Behavioral Analysis MSPs typically cover a wide range of IT duties — everything from provisioning laptops to deploying business software and managing networking. Not every MSP has deep knowledge of the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape, and even if they do, they’re often already spread thin with other tasks. Unfortunately for MSPs hoping to grow their business, adding the experts needed to uplevel their cybersecurity offerings isn’t always as easy as increasing headcount. It’s no secret that there’s a cybersecurity talent shortage; the jobs requiring skilled cybersecurity talent far outnumber the people who are qualified. Even if an MSP has the resources to hire threat analysts and build a SOC team, they often find the hiring process frustrating, not to mention expensive. SonicWall’s 24/7 SOC, powered by Solutions Granted, is staffed by experts who apply logic and behavioral analysis to security alerts. They recognize alerts that are especially relevant, what threat actor or type of attack they may indicate, and ways to help the MSP take immediate defensive action accordingly.
- Reduce Alert Fatigue Security tools like antivirus and endpoint detection can throw an awful lot of alerts, and not all of them are truly urgent. Amid this cacophony of alerts, it can be easy to miss the ones that are actually important and need to be addressed — especially for MSPs, who may already be busy with anything from meeting with new customers to troubleshooting a printer. Trusting the SOC experts behind SonicWall’s MDR service can reduce this alert fatigue. Because the SOC does all the monitoring, notifying the MSP when an alert needs a specific action, your team no longer needs to worry about reading every single alert — only the ones that truly need your attention.
- Advanced Security for SMB Clients Many MSPs serve small- and medium-sized businesses, who also don’t have their own security teams. While it’s easy to think that some companies are simply too small to be a target of cyberattacks, any organization that uses internet-connected tools is at risk — in fact, some cybercriminals intentionally target SMBs, believing (often correctly) that they’re less well-protected. Businesses who contract with larger enterprises often make particularly attractive targets; attackers zero in on these businesses, hoping for a means of access to their larger enterprise partners as part of a supply chain attack. By offering MDR services, MSPs serving the SMB market can bring their customers the benefits of cyber threat intelligence, advanced threat analytics and threat mitigation they may not have access to otherwise. This tremendous benefit means these SMBs are able to be proactive about their cybersecurity, and the MSP is able to drive continued value for the customer.
SonicWall recently acquired Solutions Granted, an award-winning MSSP offering MDR services, and we’re excited to announce that SonicWall MDR is now available. SonicWall and Solutions Granted both have long histories of empowering MSPs to serve their clients effectively and efficiently with tailored solutions. As part of SonicWall, the Solutions Granted team will continue defending the defenders as part of a company leading the way in empowering MSPs.
Best of all, SonicWall’s MDR offering is easy for MSPs to access. There are no annual contracts or long-term commitments required, and there are no minimums. Whether you’re supporting a hundred endpoints or ten thousand, it’s easy to bring this security advantage to your customers, and you can scale up or down with your business needs. You and your customers can all rest easy with the knowledge that, whether it’s 10 p.m., 4 a.m. or any other time, you’ll always know who’s responding to your alerts.
Ready to learn more about how SonicWall can bring all the benefits of MDR to your clients? Contact us today!
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