What is Managed Detection and Response (MDR)?
What is managed detection and response (MDR)?
Managed detection and response (MDR) is an outsourced cyber security service that provides organizations with threat hunting services and responds to threats once they are discovered. It also involves a human element: Security providers provide their MDR customers access to their pool of security researchers and engineers, who are responsible for monitoring networks, analyzing incidents, and responding to security cases. Its core technologies are extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM).
MDR Components
The core components of MDR services form the foundation of an advanced and proactive cybersecurity strategy, working together to detect, respond to, and prevent cyber threats in real time.
Threat Hunting
Threat hunting is a proactive, expert-driven approach that continuously seeks out potential threats lurking within an organization’s network. Unlike automated detection systems, threat hunters actively look for subtle signs of compromise and suspicious behavior that may evade standard security tools. This hands-on process helps uncover stealthy and sophisticated threats before they can cause significant harm, strengthening the organization’s overall security posture.
Incident Response
Incident response is a structured approach for addressing and mitigating security incidents as they arise. This component involves rapidly identifying and containing threats, followed by eradication and recovery efforts to restore normal operations. An MDR incident response team works closely with stakeholders to manage the incident efficiently and implements measures to prevent future occurrences, ensuring minimal impact on business continuity and operations.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
Endpoint detection and response focuses on monitoring activity across devices like computers, servers, and mobile devices. By continuously analyzing endpoint behaviors, MDR services can detect and respond to potential threats at the device level. EDR is essential as endpoints are frequent targets for cyberattackers, and swift detection at this level helps prevent lateral movement and further compromise within the network.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
Network traffic analysis involves monitoring the flow of data within an organization’s network to detect anomalies and suspicious activities. By analyzing network traffic in real time, MDR services can identify signs of potential attacks, such as unusual data transfers or unauthorized access attempts. NTA is vital for identifying threats that may bypass endpoint security, providing a broader view of network security.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
SIEM integrates data from various sources, including logs and alerts, to provide a centralized view of security events across an organization. MDR services use SIEM to correlate data, detect patterns, and identify threats in real time. This centralized monitoring allows for rapid detection and response to incidents and enables the MDR team to prioritize threats based on their potential impact on the organization.
Continuous Monitoring
Continuous monitoring ensures that all components of the MDR system are actively surveilling the organization’s environment around the clock. This component allows the MDR team to detect, respond to, and contain threats in real time, minimizing the risk of undetected breaches.
What challenges can MDR address?
MDR addresses significant problems that plague modern businesses. The most glaring issue is a lack of security skills within organizations. While training and setting up dedicated security teams that can do full-time threat hunting may be feasible for larger organizations that can afford it, most companies will find it a difficult proposition given their resource limitations. This is especially true for medium and large organizations that often find themselves being the target of cyberattacks but lack the resources or manpower for such teams.
Even organizations that are willing to spend both time and money might find it difficult to actually acquire the right personnel.
Enterprises also face challenges when deploying complex endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, which are usually not being maximized due to a lack of time, skills, and funds to train personnel to handle the EDR tools. MDR integrates EDR tools in its security implementation, making them an integral part of the detection, analysis, and response roles.
An often overlooked issue when it comes to cybersecurity is the sheer volume of alerts security and IT teams regularly receive. Many of these alerts cannot be readily identified as malicious, and have to be checked on an individual basis. In addition, security teams need to correlate these threats, since correlation can reveal whether seemingly insignificant indicators all add up as part of a larger attack. This can overwhelm smaller security teams, and take away precious time and resources from their other tasks.
MDR aims to address this problem not only by detecting threats but also by analyzing all the factors and indicators involved in an alert. MDR also provides recommendations and changes to the organizations based on the interpretation of the security events. One of the most important skills that security professionals need is the ability to contextualize and analyze indicators of compromise in order to better position the company against future attacks. Security technologies may have the ability to block threats, but digging deeper into the hows, whys, and whats of incidents requires a human touch.
MDR is designed to solve the problem of an organization’s cybersecurity skills gap. It tackles the issue of more advanced threats that an in-house IT team cannot completely address, ideally at a cost that is less than what the company will need to spend to build its own specialized security team. MDR can also offer the organization access to tools that it may not normally have access to. The diagram below illustrates what an organization stands to gain when MDR comes into play.
MDR vs MSS
Managed security service (MSS) is often cited along with MDR. Looking at trends in the services offered by providers, MDR is often built with threat detection/response as the core of the service. MSS, on the other hand, often focuses on security product monitoring and hardware maintenance.
MDR vs MXDR
While most MDR services focus on EDR, there is another type of service called Managed NDR (MNDR), which has network detection and response (NDR) at its core. Compared to MDR, which often focuses on EDR, MNDR differs in that it detects and responds to threats based on telemetry and logs on the network.
Recently, MXDR (Managed XDR), which has XDR (Extend Detection and Response) as its core service, has also emerged. In the Detection and Response philosophy, the greater the sensor coverage, the richer the telemetry and the better the threat detection.
MDR vs MSSPs
Organizations have traditionally turned to managed security service providers (MSSPs) for their external security needs. In contrast with MDR providers, which can detect lateral movement within a network, MSSPs typically work with perimeter-based technology as well as rule-based detections to identify threats. Also, the kinds of threats that MSSPs deal with are known threats, such as vulnerability exploits, recurring malware, and high-volume attacks. MSSPs have security professionals who perform log management, monitoring, and analysis, but often not at a very in-depth level. In essence, MSSPs are able to manage an organization’s security but typically only at the perimeter level, and their analysis does not involve extensive forensics, threat research, and analytics.
In terms of service, MSSPs usually communicate via email or phone, with security professionals as a secondary access, while MDR providers carry out 24/7 continuous monitoring, which may not be offered by some MSSPs.
However, MSSPs still provide value to organizations. For example, managing firewalls and other day-to-day security needs of an organization’s network is a task that is more apt for an MSSP than an MDR provider, which offers a more specialized service. Accordingly, MSSPs and MDR providers can work in conjunction with each other — with MDR providers focusing on the proactive detection and behavioral analysis of more advanced threats and giving remediation recommendations for organizations once the threats are discovered.
Trend Micro MDR Solution
- Extend your team: Be more resilient with 24/7/365 premium support, managed XDR, and incident response services. Flexible support coupled with expert monitoring and threat analysis alleviate overstretched teams.
- Maximize effectiveness and skills: Featuring automated solution updates and upgrades, on-demand training, best practices guides, and access to cybersecurity and CISO experts, Trend Service One enables you to go further even with limited in-house resources.
- Detect and respond faster: Non-stop threat and attack monitoring across your Trend Micro solutions for email, endpoints, servers, cloud workloads, and networks, combined with our global threat intelligence and expertise, gives you proactive, early warning and remediation of threats.