Managed Detection and Response

Managed detection and response (MDR) is a cyber security service that helps companies process and respond to alert data coming from various security tools in their environment. MDR helps companies identify benign alerts, or “false positives” and quickly home in on those that represent credible threats. Most MDR providers will then alert the client’s security team to the threat, leaving it to them to respond. Others will aid clients in responding to the incident.

An MDR service provider can deliver numerous benefits, including:

• Improve your threat visibility across your environment, including hybrid cloud infrastructure
• Eliminate active threats on a 24x7 basis
• Extract more value from your existing security solutions by making them more effective
• Detect and respond to threats more quickly, and with more precision
• Improve your security posture by finding sophisticated threats, including persistent threats and intruders who are embedded in your environment
• Augment your internal security team with additional security professionals

The benefits obtained from using MDR service  providers are so significant that Gartner estimates 50 percent of organizations will be using MDR services by 2025 and that the market is growing at a rate nearly five times that of other managed security service (MSS) offerings.

Investing in security solutions such as endpoint detection and response (EDR), security information and event management (SIEM), and security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) platforms is a wise choice. Each of them plays a crucial role in an overall cyber security strategy by generating alerts when they detect suspicious activity in your environment and helping you with threat management.

Often, however, the number of alerts they generate is too large for companies to effectively deal with, especially since most of them are false positives. That makes it difficult for organizations to filter through the alerts and find those that represent credible threats.

A good MDR provider will ingest high value telemetry from your existing security tools, correlate alerts coming from across the environment, eliminate false positives, and zero in on alerts that are indicative of an actual threat. So, an MDR service complements the security tools you already have, helping you parse the alerts they generate so you get more value from them.

Yes. Trustwave MDR can span hybrid cloud environments that include multiple cloud providers as well as on-premises infrastructure. It’s all configured to appear as a single logical environment to Trustwave, so alerts are correlated for investigation context across all of the infrastructure. 

MDR helps you maximize investments in your various security tools and platforms by ensuring you get the value they are intended to provide. While it’s great to have EDR, SIEM, SOAR and other tools, they don’t really deliver value unless you can act on the alerts and other information they give you. That’s where many organizations fall short, because they simply don’t have enough security expertise in-house to monitor alerts 24x7. A good MDR provider acts as an extension of your security team, helping you monitor your security tools around the clock. The best providers also apply proprietary threat intelligence and help you remediate the threats your security tools identify. Ultimately, remediating threats is the way any security tool delivers value. MDR, then, helps ensure you derive the most value out of the tools you already paid for.

A number of attributes should be considered table stakes in an MDR provider. They include a good level of experience, including the number of years in the business and retention rates of security staff. Having the resources – in terms of both staff and security operations centers (SOCs) – to provide 24x7x365 coverage is likewise a must. An MDR company must have a global presence, even if you’re not a global company, because it gives the MDR provider visibility into emerging threats no matter where they originate. A provider with an active threat hunting team is likewise a plus for much the same reason: to provide proactive hunts for adversaries that evade detection by modern tools. (Ideally, those threat hunters should be able to identify both indicators of compromise and indicators of behavior.)

To help identify which providers have that kind of experience, consider asking the following questions:

• For how long has the vendor provided MDR security services?
• How does the vendor attract, retain, and train its people? What certifications have its security professionals earned?
• Is the provider able to respond to threats quickly and consistently or are there variances in the skillsets from one SOC – or analyst – to the next?
• Does it have processes in place that deepen its expertise beyond individual talent?
• What is the provider’s geographic and industry footprint? Does it have insights into the global threat landscape or is it more regionally or vertically focused?
• What threat intelligence sources are used in its MDR security service(s)? Does it have its own security research lab?
• Does the vendor take response actions? Is it included in the service offer or an extra expense? How does the vendor ensure it will not take any actions against your security policies?
• How well is the vendor recognized within the industry?
• Do its supported technologies/platforms align with your environment?
• How are you able to interact with the service? (Email? Ticketing? Phone? Mobile app?)
• What types of industry certifications and standards does the vendor use to assist with your compliance audit and maturity goals?
• Does the vendor offer adjacent managed services like threat hunting, digital forensics and incident response (DFIR), as well as consulting capabilities?

This could vary dramatically by provider. The best ones have well-defined on-boarding processes and procedures, helping clients quickly derive value from the service. Each Trustwave client, for example, has a dedicated Cyber Success Team that onboards clients in 10 days or less, then continually fine-tunes the environment for optimal performance and results. We think our onboarding process is such a differentiator that we produced an e-book to explain it in full.

To learn more, download the 2023 Gartner^® Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services. You can also check out the 2024 Frost Radar: Global Managed Detection and Response report for which Frost investigated more than 150 providers and named Trustwave a top leader in innovation. IDC also recognized Trustwave as a leader in its 2024 IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Emerging Managed Detection and Response Vendor Assessment.