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Home » Blogs » How to Build a Better Cyber Security System Today
2020 changed how most businesses operate, and it’s important that cyber security keeps pace. Approximately 60% of UK adults found themselves working from home, and 71% of business decision-makers believe remote working has increased the likelihood of a cyber breach.
Unfortunately, these concerns are well-founded. Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a 400% increase in cyber-attacks. It’s critical to prioritise effective cyber security, accommodate remote working and BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policies, and build agile systems.
When considering your security options, it’s essential to see the bigger picture and realise that the current threat landscape is paving the way for longer-term trends. For example, it’s unclear how changes will impact GDPR and other compliance frameworks, and remote working is likely to remain popular for years to come. Solving cyber challenges now will help you match current demands and deliver better long-term outcomes — ensuring business continuity, protecting your users and data to help grow consumer trust.
At Six Degrees, we help businesses focus on strategy and provide 20+ years of cyber experience to alleviate the stress of managing users and data beyond the corporate firewall. It’s important to remember that effective security solutions can create opportunities for growth and competitive differentiation. After all, cyber security not only secures your bottom line, it can improve how you work and the types of products and services you can deliver.
This article will make the case that managed detection and response (MDR) coupled with endpoint security is central to meeting the demands of remote working and flexible business. Together, this solution makes it possible to do more with less and deliver an effective security system that enables your business, rather than getting in your way. Let’s get started.
We believe that an effective cyber security system starts with people. The technology you chose is important — and we are going to address why endpoint security is particularly valuable within the current context — but technology can’t do everything on its own. The best security tools can only quarantine an issue and alert you to a problem. It’s then your responsibility to act upon the intelligence you’ve received to eliminate and remediate that treat.
On a fundamental level, in order to maintain an effective security system you need an incident response plan, and the security expertise on-hand to execute that response. That means securing response resources that can act quickly to threats in real-time and leverage technology to keep your system safe.
When it comes to building a threat response team, you can either tackle this challenge in-house or partner with cyber security experts who can deliver that outcome as-a-service.
Although it may be important to have some internal response capabilities, managed detection and response (MDR) services play an important role in most modern operations, and can help you access more sophisticated resources at less cost than an in-house operation. That means:
Managed security providers can deliver these outcomes because cyber security is their core business. This creates economies of scale that improve general efficiency. However, more critically, an MDR provider can allocate resources flexibly in response to an incident, sharing resources between customers. In order to have the same specialised skills on-hand, you would need to employ experts at all times that you would only rarely need. When figuring out how to allocate resources within your operation, there are three things you need to keep in mind:
The bottom line: Response teams prevent incidents from becoming breaches. MDR is the most effective way to deliver this outcome and provides more efficient access to resources while enabling you to focus on your own bottom line.
To learn more, read What is MDR?
In your search for the right cutting-edge managed detection and response team, you should look for:
Your response team (whether in-house or MDR) needs technology to inform, guide and facilitate their actions. Legacy solutions might focus on static perimeter defence, or network monitoring. But these options are ill-equipped for modern, remote workflows.
Remember, when users are working outside of the physical office or on BYOD equipment, many of your standard protections disappear. Even if users log in to the company network before accessing cloud-based data, they may be doing so from an insecure internet connection or personal device with outdated security software.
Endpoint security is an approach to cyber defence that focuses on end-user devices — or endpoints. However, the goal isn’t to protect each individual endpoint — desktop, laptop, virtual environment etc. — but the system as a whole. This is done by managing the flow of information between the network and device, centralising security and control while decentralising risk.
Endpoint security utilises cloud-based security tools that bring the additional benefit of unburdening end-users’ devices of the bloat associated with initial deployment and ongoing management locally. Endpoint security delivers:
End users need to access all the data required to conduct business, and every endpoint represents a useful target for cybercriminals, even if no sensitive data is present. The fundamental goal of endpoint security is to reduce and control this risk within a distributed work environment.
We can get even more specific and suggest that you not only adopt an endpoint security system, but that you specifically use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. It’s the tool that we use to deliver MDR, and there are a few important reasons for this.
Microsoft is the only vendor in the market that can provide built-in endpoint capabilities integrated with the operating system (OS). Although this only applies to the Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also works well with iOS, Android, Linux, Mac and servers. This is a key differentiating factor, and the combination of Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint creates a sophisticated and advanced system that sets the current standard for endpoint security.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an endpoint security system that is able to automatically isolate active threats, minimise risk exposure, and provide advanced attack detection and response capabilities. When configured and managed correctly, this delivers a preventative security system and real-time defence that enables security analysts to prioritise threat alerts, view the full scope of any breaches and act immediately to rectify identified threats.
When a threat is detected, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s system generates an alert. To enable more straightforward investigation and response, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint aggregates into a single ‘incident’ all alerts that feature the same attack techniques or can be attributed to the same attacker.
To detect threats more efficiently, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint continuously collects behavioural cyber telemetry, including:
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint stores behavioural data for six months. Archiving this information enables analysts to review the beginning of an attack, pivot in various views and approach the investigation through multiple attack vectors or pathways. This enables you to review known IOCs (indicators of compromise), go back in time and understand if there were previous breaches — a fundamental for zero-day exploits and reducing dwell time.
Ultimately, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint’s response capabilities are designed to enable quick action to identify, understand and remedy cyber-threats, and proactively minimise the risks posed to your system.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint uses technology built into Windows 10 and Microsoft’s cloud services, including:
Although Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a powerful piece of technology, the importance of partnering it with effective cyber security skills cannot be overstated. In fact, several of the best features of the platform are either geared towards enabling human intelligence, or require expert configuration to work effectively.
Organisations can integrate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint into their existing workflows and Microsoft solutions, including Intune, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Defender for Identity and Teams. And all of this is delivered within a platform that delivers automation to accelerate the detection and remediation of threats, and can be used effectively in conjunction with an active response unit to shut down any threats that might occur.
Six Degrees’ Managed Detection and Response is a fully-managed service delivered in collaboration with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, with whom we are an accredited partner.
To help you maintain your operational resiliency, Six Degrees delivers cyber incident management, prevention and analysis — right down to the endpoint. We believe that human analysis and interaction makes it easier to adapt your organisation’s security posture to the ever-evolving threat landscape. This is why we provide proactive forensics delivered by highly trained cyber security professionals operating from our 24×7 UK onshore Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC). In addition, we offer:
Through taking these actions, Six Degrees is dedicated to helping you:
In 2020, the phrase ‘the new normal’ might have become a cliche, but the underlying importance of the term should not be overlooked. At present, we are building the foundation of how the economy will work for years to come. Updating cyber security is a critical part of that successful transition.
By focusing on cyber security as an opportunity, rather than a cost, you can realign your organisation around cyber and gain the support you need to make the right investments. Think about the benefits that an effective and agile security system will bring to marketing, HR, legal, finance and more, and you will find advocates for cyber spend that sit outside of traditional IT.
Remember, cyber security is a journey, not a destination. You need iterative and flexible systems able to accommodate change and enable the types of investments your business needs to make in order to succeed. Endpoint security is a critical component of creating this kind of flexible infrastructure, particularly when it comes to engaging in remote work and BYOD. Ultimately, the new normal is digital transformation, and endpoint security is a fundamental component of a resilient and secure digital ecosystem.
But endpoint is just a single tool. It’s important to think about processes and training. Skilled people are just as critical as the technology you deploy. This is why managed response units are so valuable. We can help you build that capability, or deliver it as-a-service.
You should make your decisions with both the present and the future in mind. After all, this is not just about protecting your business in 2021. It’s about building a long-lasting and agile cyber security strategy that can provide enduring protection against an ever-evolving threat landscape. By leveraging the power of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Six Degrees offers the flexible, forward-looking security capabilities you need to future-proof your business. Schedule a call if you want to learn more.
With 2020 behind us and 2021 in full…
There has been a significant amount of change…
The Board is never going to care more…
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