Navigating the Modern Cybersecurity Landscape with Ease: Why Enterprises Should Adopt Managed Detection and Response Solution
By Praveen Yeleswarapu, Head of Product Marketing & Strategy, BluSapphire Cyber Systems
In today’s ever-changing technological landscape, businesses often overlook their cybersecurity needs due to limited resources, lack of awareness, and a general sense of indifference. Additionally, business owners feel intimidated by the complexity of technological advancements and the rapid pace at which both technology and regulations evolve. For example, once implemented, India’s Draft Digital Personal Data Protection Bill (DPDP) requires businesses to align with technical compliance requirements, presenting a significant challenge for businesses to implement relevant systems that meet compliance needs. However, these challenges can be mitigated by implementing managed detection and response (MDR) solutions. MDR offers versatile, tailored, and comprehensive threat detection and incident response services, delivered by cybersecurity experts with specialised expertise.
Managed detection and response (MDR) services provide customers with a remotely delivered security operations centre (SOC) that operates 24/7. These services empower organisations to swiftly detect, analyse, and proactively respond to cyber threats. MDR services offer a seamless experience by leveraging their comprehensive technology stack, which covers the entire information technology infrastructure on a unified platform, supported by skilled cybersecurity professionals.
With MDR, in case of a cyberattack, the MDR provider validates a potential cyberattack; assesses the quantum of risk involved; and communicates with the business experts sitting on the other side of the table, that is, the organisation layer while responding to the cyber threats identified and providing guidance on how to remediate post the cyber breach. In terms of proactive monitoring, the MDR provider continually analyses the data generated to map potential behaviour anomalies across users, cloud, etc. so as to identify suspicious activity across the organisation. To pre-empt cyberattacks, the MDR provider also identifies weaknesses in defence and strengthens protective measures by executing proactive threat-hunting exercises. As a result, by ensuring round-the-clock expert coverage, MDR solution providers eliminate a substantial portion of the bottlenecks preventing enterprises from meeting their cybersecurity needs.
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the rapid adoption of digital technology has increased enterprises’ exposure to cybersecurity lapses. MSMEs, in particular, are at high risk because they do not have proper cybersecurity protocols and systems in place due to either lack of flexibility or budget constraints. They also suffer from the misapprehension that as there are bigger fish in the pond, they are relatively safe. However, in fact, over 70% of MSMEs have been impacted by ransomware in some shape or form over the last 2 years, causing disruptions to their businesses. Besides the obvious consequences, these attacks deal a body blow to the company’s reputation and finances, which is difficult to recover from. Thus, it is doubly important for MSMEs to equip themselves with on-demand cybersecurity expertise. Prevention is more effective than cure, and adopting MDR solutions ultimately leads to greater cost efficiency and productivity.
In addition, organisations should focus on core business operations and onboard a trusted MDR service partner with deep cybersecurity expertise. Cyberattacks may cause large-scale work breakdowns, and to prevent these, several organisations have attempted to get into the shoes of a cybersecurity expert and build a security programme internally. However, most of these attempts have been futile because of the complexity involved. Given that the threat landscape is constantly evolving and even more drastic changes are expected as digitalisation is increasingly adopted by businesses.
Globally, over 25% of organisations have already deployed MDR in some shape or form, and I expect this number to double or leapfrog by an even higher multiple. Indian enterprises are also waking up to the potential of MDR; with the tightening of the regulatory noose (as seen in the DPDP Bill), there will be greater demand for services, and MDR will naturally be the way ahead. The industry outlook for MDR in India is, thus, promising, with enhanced awareness around cybersecurity and stronger recognition of the gravity of cybersecurity threats.
(The author is Praveen Yeleswarapu, Head of Product Marketing & Strategy, BluSapphire Cyber Systems, and the views expressed in this article are his own)
