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What Can Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Do for Businesses

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Businesses should make cyber security a top priority. Learn what managed detection and response (MDR) can do for your business. Read More

Although managed detection and response services haven’t been around that long, the industry has already reached a value of about $5 billion.

However, this industry is growing at an incredible growth rate of more than 18% every year and is expected to maintain that at least until 2030. At that rate, the industry will more than quadruple in size between 2021 and 2030!

That is an absolutely staggering rate of growth. What is it about MDR services that is causing such an incredible rise in demand for them? There are a lot of reasons why companies are investing more in quality cyber security than ever before.

Many businesses have been harmed by online cyber-attacks. Others are so busy keeping themselves safe that they do not have time to focus on growing. However, the right MDR services can keep you safe and help you take your business to the next level.

Read on to learn all about managed detection and response services and what they might be able to do for your company!

What Are Managed Detection and Response Services?

As the name suggests, MDR services both detect threats and respond to them. That means that they monitor all of your systems to detect cyber attacks if they ever occur. Then, they provide a customized response to provide you with maximum protection.

Because these services are also managed, that means that you can enjoy these benefits without having to participate in the monitoring and management process yourself. When a company hires MDR services, company leaders can focus on getting their jobs done and leave cyber protection to their managed detection and response services.

What Can These Services Do for Your Business Security?

But how exactly do MDR services provide these benefits? MDR services combine several basic defensive capabilities. By putting them all together, they can provide an amazing degree of protection.

One of the most important things that MDR companies do is help businesses learn to detect potential cyber threats. This provides several benefits.

When a potential alert comes in, it is as important not to respond to false threats as it is to take rapid action to respond to real threats. Many companies waste a lot of time worrying about fake threats because it is not always easy to tell what is a fluke and what might be an attack.

MDR services use their expertise in this area to help companies stop responding to false alarms. That alone can save some companies an enormous amount of time.

Of course, MDR services also help companies identify the truth that threats among the flukes. On top of that, they can help companies rank order potential security vulnerabilities so that they can prioritize security concerns in the right order.

Customized Responses

Once that is done, the process of responding to threats begins. There are a lot of automatic protection tools that you can use to respond to threats. However, many companies make the mistake of relying only on such automatic tools.

The problem with this strategy is that cybercriminals also know all about these kinds of defenses. In fact, cybercrime is a constant arms race between people who build protections against cybercrime and criminals who try to figure out how to get around those protections.

If a cybercriminal knows how to evade your automatic defenses, then you will need an extra level of threat response. That is where MDR services can come in handy.

They can start by applying automatic security defenses to see which cyber threats those tools can handle. However, they can then follow up by responding to whichever threats remain.

In some cases, quality MDR services can also figure out exactly how far a security threat progressed before being stopped. Some people think that they have managed a security threat only to find out later that they left something unresolved. The clearer perspective provided by MDR investigations provides much more thorough safety.

Resolving Threats

Once you have all of this information ready, MDR services can put together a custom plan to resolve every aspect of each cyber threat.

Many aspects of these plans will resemble the responses they have used on threats in the past. MDR companies work with a huge variety of businesses. That means that they end up seeing almost every kind of security threat.

When your company faces such a threat, your MDR services will probably have already responded to similar threats many times in the past. That also means that they have polished their responses for maximum efficacy.

When you hire MDR services, you can be the beneficiary of all of this expertise. Once your MDR services have a response plan, they will execute it. However, they will also finish up by verifying that every aspect of their execution went according to plan.

They will verify that your data is secure, any malware is erased, and there are no easy entries for future attacks.

The Rise of Online Security Threats

However, many company leaders still do not appreciate why these kinds of protections are becoming so popular so fast. After all, if you have never been the victim of a serious cyber attack before, maybe you do not need such protections, right?

Of course, the answer is that no one knows for sure. It is always possible that you will get lucky and never be the target of a cybercrime. However, the odds of that being true are getting lower with every passing year.

Unfortunately, all of the numbers show that cybercrime is growing at an incredible rate. More businesses are being targeted than ever before. On top of that, cybercriminals are even beginning to target hospitals and government institutions.

It is becoming more common for cybercriminals to use ransomware on their targets. Ransomware is a type of malware that finds your most essential data files. Then, it copies them and sends the copy to another server where you cannot access it.

Ransomware finishes the job by deleting the files on your own systems. If you do not have a way to resolve this problem, you can permanently lose all of your essential data.

This can be debilitating to businesses, hospitals, and individuals alike. It also means that almost anyone can be a target of cybercrime now.

So many criminals are using cyber attacks just to extract money from victims. Most ransomware attacks come with a demand for payment if the victim wants to get their files back. Many companies and people feel that they have no choice but to comply.

Of course, that only makes it more likely that cybercriminals will continue to target people and institutions for as long as it works for them.

Cybercrime Is Getting Easier

But why is there such a dramatic rise in ransomware and other kinds of cybercrime right now? The main cause is our growing familiarity with technology.

In the past, you had to be a technical expert to become a cybercriminal. At the same time, anyone who was a technical expert also had the option of making their living in a legitimate way. This dynamic kept the total number of cybercriminals down.

However, cybercriminals are now working on making their techniques more accessible to other criminals. These days, almost anyone can figure out how to run a ransomware attack regardless of their level of technical skill. That is opening the door for more cybercriminals.

This dynamic is only exacerbated by the increasing globalization of the world. People now have to worry about being the victim of a cyber attack from any criminal on the planet.

Unfortunately, this is probably not going to be the end of increasing cybercriminal activity. At some point, our society’s defenses against this kind of criminal behavior will get stronger. At that point, it will be less profitable to become a cybercriminal.

The fact that the MDR market is expected to quadruple in size over the next few years is a promising sign that we are increasing our defenses. On the other hand, criminal techniques are also getting more powerful.

We have not even begun to see how criminals will weaponize artificial intelligence to help them execute their scams. At the end of the day, businesses are facing a greater threat from cyber attacks than ever before.

Although companies with MDR services might be able to weather the storm, those without them may find themselves the target of more and more attacks as technology progresses.

Make Your Business a Poor Target for Hackers

There are multiple ways that MDR services can protect you. Many people fail to appreciate how effective it can be to add an extra layer of defense. They reason that criminals can always go to the extra effort of overcoming such defenses.

However, just because criminals could try to do that does not mean that they will. After all, it is much more efficient for criminals to target the easiest victims. Why would they bother coming up with more powerful attacks to overwhelm the defenses of a company with powerful MDR protection?

In fact, this may be one of the ways that criminals use artificial intelligence to target their attacks. People can now use artificial intelligence to quickly sort through huge quantities of data.

Criminals might use such tools to make a list of the most vulnerable victims. As a result, companies with added protections may not even end up on the target list.

Handle Data Breaches With Maximum Efficiency

Of course, if you do happen to be the target of an attack, your MDR services should be more than up to the task of protecting you. Because they are constantly monitoring threats, they can resolve your cyber attack concerns as soon as possible.

That way, the rise of cybercrime does not have to prevent you from focusing on your normal business operations.

Choosing the Right Service for Your Business

Considering how fast the MDR market is growing, there are of course many MDR companies to choose between. How can you know which service is the right choice for your own needs?

In many cases, it can help to look at reviews from other MDR clients. The more satisfied an MDR company’s other clients are, the better the chance that you will be satisfied with their protection as well.

You might also consider reaching out to anyone you know who has experience with MDR services. They might be able to tell you what they like and don’t like about their own provider. Depending on how much they know, they might be able to recommend against certain companies.

All of this can help you narrow your options to the best few MDR companies for you. Since you can hire MDR services from anywhere in the world, it is essential that you have a plan for paring down your candidate list.

Sometimes, the best strategy is to call up a company and learn about what they have to offer and then decide how you will proceed with your selection process from there.

Understand the Biggest Benefits of Hiring MDR Services

The more that you understand about MDR services, the easier it is to appreciate why the industry is exploding the way that it is. With the rise of online security threats, this may be the most important time in history for businesses to invest in robust security measures.

With managed detection and response services on your side, you can stop worrying about cyber threats and focus on making your business succeed!

To learn more about how you can find quality MDR services to help protect your business, reach out and get in touch with us here at any time!