Protect Your Business Like a Pro: Advanced Cybersecurity

As a business executive, you'll find a multitude of security solutions at your fingertips to help you protect your organization. While the task of finding vendors to enhance your security posture isn't particularly challenging, the process of making specific choices can be time-consuming. The options seem endless, the assurances sound similar, and the technical details can be confusing.

We designed IT PROTECT specifically for the SMB. It's focus is on securing your environment at every level of technology, optimizing your IT to gain efficiencies throughout your organization, training employees to be more aware of security threats, reduce your overall spend on IT, and processes that follow industry best practices. This comprehensive suite of solutions will help keep your IT environment safe and running smoothly so you can focus on your business.

Understanding How Endpoint Detection and Response Works

You might be considering a solution known as Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). EDRs:

• Keep an eye on activities happening on your endpoint devices, like computers, servers, and IoT devices.
• Give you alerts about potential threats and help isolate them.
• Store information about threat behavior and the reasons behind it.

To put it more precisely, EDRs are designed to spot malware and malicious actions on your endpoints. These solutions combine an antivirus's (AV) signature-based detection with machine learning (ML) to identify behaviors that could indicate malicious intent. This is a crucial part of your security setup when dealing with malware.

However, these solutions often fall short when it comes to spotting sophisticated techniques used by cyber adversaries to outsmart your security efforts. These techniques can mimic normal administrative actions by exploiting IT tools and system features. Traditional EDRs often can't distinguish these actions from legitimate IT activity within your network.

The Advanced Features of Managed Detection and Response

Another option available to you is Managed Detection and Response (MDR). MDRs:

• Offer constant monitoring by highly skilled security analysts, available 24/7.
• Take immediate action before threats can spread.
• Reduce the fatigue from constant alerts and minimize false alarms.

The full SOC PLUS platform within IT PROTECT was built from the ground up. It focuses on detecting adversaries during the early stages of their presence within your network. With this advanced technology, our 24/7/365 Security Operations Center (SOC) teams gains insights into the techniques used by cyber adversaries. This allows us to remove these threats from your network before they have a chance to deploy malware and other threats. Our approach relies on understanding the context of activities rather than solely relying on machine learning. This approach results in faster breach detection, swift removal of threats, and fewer false alarms.

Distinguishing EDR and MDR Visibility. Defense in Layers.

What IT PROTECT especially effective in detecting these advanced techniques is that the technology is designed to understand interactions between machines. In contrast, an EDR primarily understands actions within individual devices. Our machine-to-machine understanding, along with the patented live network map, lets us see the bigger picture of network behavior. This allows our platform to track hackers' movements and communications across the entire network, leading to the quickest response and the highest effectiveness.

To sum it up, the goal is not to criticize EDRs and solely promote MDR. Antivirus and EDR solutions are important features of your security posture. However, they can't be your only line of defense. With cyber adversaries increasingly misusing trusted IT tools, as you can see here, it's crucial to have next-level protection against advanced cyber threats. That's why, instead of suggesting a complete shift in your security setup, we can work alongside your existing solutions to enhance your protection with our 24/7/365 capabilities.

Enhance Your EDR with IT PROTECT

IT PROTECT's fully managed SOC PLUS platform integrates with several leading EDR solutions through our Managed EDR offering. While EDRs excel in detecting malware using their AV engines, we enhance your EDR alerts with 24/7/365 responses from our expert-led SOC teams. Just as you shouldn't rely solely on your EDR, we also don't rely solely on it for threat detection. Instead, it serves as an additional layer of protection. Defense in layers!

In 2022, we found that in environments using integrated AV/EDR solutions, 86% of responses required no alerts from the integrated tool. These solutions lack comprehensive coverage and would likely detect threats further down the attack chain, once malware is already active. In such cases, the impact of a breach would be more severe. Obviously, we want to be proactive and prevent "right of boom" and stop threat actors before any such deployment takes place.

If you're ready to reinforce your EDR and stand strong against innovative cyber threats, consider implementing our IT PROTECT solutions with full SOC PLUS platform alongside your chosen endpoint security solution. We currently integrate with:

• Bitdefender
• CrowdStrike
• Cylance
• Malwarebytes
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
• SentinelOne
• Sophos

Managed SOC PLUS is so much more than just a team of cybersecurity experts monitoring your endpoints 24/7/365. While that in itself is an amazing solution to offer, there's so much more. SOC PLUS, which is integrated with our IT PROTECT solution, is a comprehensive managed security services offering consisting of Managed Detection & Response (MDR), Managed Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR), Cloud Response (with Microsoft 365), Vulnerability Management, Application Control, and Incident Response Management. The fully managed SOC offering has traditionally be out of reach for the SMB market. It has never been more available than right now to take advantage of fully SOC capabilities.  The value and ROI for your business is 10 fold. 

If you want to have a serious conversation about the security of your business, reach out to us and let's chat about it. IT PROTECT was designed specifically for your business.

Cloud Matrix IT™ is a managed IT and technology consulting firm who specializes in providing proactive IT solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. We designed IT PROTECT specifically for the SMB. IT PROTECT is a comprehensive suite of solutions & processes that help your business save time, reduce costs, provide your staff IT support, and help you stay protected with our fully managed 24/7/365 SOC PLUS cybersecurity platform. Yes, even weekends and holidays.