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In cybersecurity, Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are increasingly confronted with a landscape that is as complex as it is perilous. The evolution of sophisticated cyber threats demands a departure from conventional security protocols, ushering in an era where adaptability and innovation are not just advantageous but an essential part of your security operation. Within this context, the integration of Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) and Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) represents a significant pivot in MSSP strategy, offering a more nuanced and effective approach to cybersecurity management.
Modern SOAR and TIP Boost an MSSP's Toolkit
We’ve seen how digital transformation has accelerated the demand for adaptive security services. With further advances in machine learning, AI, and edge computing – just to name a few – MSSPs are at the forefront of a critical battle against cyber threats. This heightened demand stems from a landscape where threats are not just growing in number but also in complexity. Traditionally, MSSPs focused on security technology and device management, compliance use cases, log management, and vulnerability management. However, with the advent of managed detection and response services, this has expanded beyond alerting to include high-fidelity threat detection, threat hunting, and incident investigation and containment.
SOAR has emerged as a crucial element in this new paradigm, providing a framework for orchestrating various security information, processes, and tools. A SOAR solution’s capacity to automate responses and streamline operations is not just about efficiency; it's about enhancing the accuracy and speed of threat detection and response in an environment where milliseconds can make a difference. Complementing this, a threat intelligence platform serves as the intelligence backbone, collating and analyzing data to offer a proactive stance against potential security threats. This combination of SOAR and TIP is pivotal in transforming MSSPs from reactive entities to proactive guardians of digital assets.
The Demand for and Challenges in Offering Advanced Security Services
As security service models continue to shift towards managed detection, response, and beyond, MSSPs are incorporating threat intelligence, proactive threat hunting, incident response, and other functions into their service offerings to cater to the growing needs of enterprise clients.
MSSPs are now expected to deliver services that are not just reactive, but predictive and proactive, capable of identifying and neutralizing security threats before they materialize. MSSPs face several key challenges in making this transition, including:
- Growing Volume of Security Technologies - A modern security stack involves dozens of security tools that are often not designed to interoperate with each other. With each client often depending on different tool sets for detection, logging, and response, the lack of unified orchestration becomes a major pain point for MSSPs.
- Manual Processes and Low Efficiencies - The growing volume of alerts and incidents necessitates the use of automation to reduce the burden on analysts and optimize resource management for MSSPs. Relying on manual processes can result in slower and lower-quality services, thereby negatively impacting an MSSP’s competitive edge.
- Lack of Scale and Flexibility - Conventional security solutions designed for MSSPs often fall short of providing the scalability and adaptability required to serve a diverse and expanding client base, varying in both size and levels of security maturity.
Moreover, MSSPs must leverage threat intelligence across their workflows for effective prioritization and proactive mitigation of threats. A lack of cross-functional visibility and collaboration further hampers the outcomes of traditional MSSP operations.
Driving Business Growth for MSSPs
Over the years, Cyware has gained the trust of leading Fortune 2000 enterprises, MSSPs, MDRs, GSIs, CERTs, and all the major ISACs/ISAOs with its best-in-class and innovative threat intelligence, security automation and orchestration, and cyber fusion solutions. Through this diverse solution delivery experience, Cyware has built customized solutions that serve the specific needs of each kind of client.
Cyware offers MSSPs a unique product suite that comes together to eliminate technology silos and data silos. This means that, by using Cyware’s solutions, security teams can unify security operations through seamless cloud-to-on-premise orchestration and correlate threat data gathered from detection and monitoring tools with external intelligence to execute proactive response measures for their clients.
Cyware’s SOAR offering for MSSPs comprises:
- Respond – An advanced, multi-tenant cyber fusion-powered threat analysis and response platform
- Orchestrate – A vendor-neutral, low-code/no-code orchestration platform for “all-in-one” centralized orchestration.
Cyware Respond provides comprehensive case management capabilities to manage not only incidents, but also malware, vulnerabilities, and threat actors. It helps connect the dots between these threats, a client’s assets, and external/internal intelligence for end-to-end visibility and contextualized response. With out-of-the-box customizable SLA management and multi-tenancy capabilities to boot, it becomes the beating heart of MSSP operations. Respond is built to handle large IOC volumes and perform alert and IOC correlation at scale through its centralized fusion analysis, thereby enabling intel-driven automated actioning and response.
Complementing this, Cyware Orchestrate helps security teams perform “any-to-any” vendor-agnostic orchestration between Security, IT Ops, and DevOps tools through hundreds of native integrations. Additionally, Orchestrate enables interoperable security workflow orchestration and automation across different cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments through a hybrid orchestration tunnel.
Put together, Respond and Orchestrate offer a unique SOA+R approach that allows MSSPs to build case-independent orchestration and automation workflows at scale. Traditional SOAR solutions route all the workflows through case management, resulting in a convoluted and inefficient implementation of automated detection, threat intelligence management, and other use cases. Cyware’s SOA+R solution presents a transformative approach to automating not just incident response, but all the other security workflows without limiting itself to case management.
A Pro-TIP for Threat Intelligence-Driven SecOps
Cyware’s TIP offerings are spearheaded by its Intel Exchange and Collaborate. Intel Exchange is an advanced TIP that automates the process of collecting, enriching, analyzing, prioritizing, implementing, and facilitating two-way sharing of threat intelligence. Collaborate is a bidirectional alert and advisory sharing platform that helps MSSPs deliver contextualized threat intelligence to large, medium, and small-sized clients. Whether it comes to automating threat intelligence operationalization and management or disseminating it across different stakeholders, Cyware’s solutions are equipped to accomplish all MSSP needs.
Along with this, Cyware offers several tailored solutions that accomplish a variety of threat intelligence use cases for different types of clients. This includes:
- Intel Exchange Lite - A lightweight TIP for resource-constrained teams
- Intel Exchange Spoke - A threat intelligence processing and collaboration platform for MSSP/ISAC members.
- CyTAXII - An open-source TAXII client that helps organizations consume intel from TAXII servers.
- Cyware Threat Intel Crawler - A browser-based extension to extract intel from web content using Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Altogether, Cyware’s TIP solutions enable MSSPs to address the varying needs of clients, whether it be providing customized threat intelligence feeds, intel advisories, intel-driven orchestration, or even a dedicated threat intelligence platform.
Building the Future of Managed Security Services
The integration of Cyware’s SOAR and TIP solutions is not merely a technological upgrade, but a strategic investment that can significantly enhance the Return on Investment (ROI). This is achieved through:
- Increased Operational Efficiency - Cyware provides a security automation edge that helps MSSPs orchestrate complex workflows across various environments with a much lower need for human intervention. The reduced time-to-respond and the ability to scale services without proportional increases in staffing levels directly contribute to cost savings and higher profit margins.
- Enhanced Threat Detection and Response - By leaning on proactive threat detection and informed decision-making through enriched intelligence, Cyware helps MSSPs deliver a more effective service offering, which can lead to higher client retention rates and the potential for premium service charges.
- Reduced False Positives - The SOAR-driven automated response capabilities, guided by high-quality intelligence from TIP, significantly reduce the number of false positives. This efficiency not only saves time but also ensures that analyst efforts are concentrated on genuine threats, thereby improving overall service quality.
- Scalability and Flexibility - As client demands grow, Cyware’s SOAR and TIP solutions can be scaled up or deployed in different ways to handle increased load without a corresponding increase in complexity or staffing requirements.
- Competitive Differentiation - Amidst a crowded market, MSSPs can stand out by offering bespoke services enabled by the adaptability of Cyware’s SOAR and TIP platforms. This differentiation can not only help in acquiring new customers but also in retaining existing ones, contributing to long-term profitability.
- Customer Satisfaction and Retention - The improved response times, accuracy, and tailored threat intelligence lead to higher customer satisfaction, thereby helping develop customer loyalty and business sustainability in the long term.
Take Your MSSP Operations to the Next Level with Cyware
As security requirements escalate with every passing day, MSSPs are helping fill the gaps by providing highly useful services that can often take years to develop in-house. When it comes to reducing operational costs, increasing productivity, and diversifying their service offerings to gain a greater ROI, MSSPs need not look far and wide. Cyware is perfectly positioned to empower MSSPs with its leading SOAR and TIP technology solutions that provide these and many other advantages to build sustainable, resilient security operations for the future.
Get a glimpse of how Cyware can enhance your MSSP operational excellence!
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Posted on: December 20, 2023
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