Top 5 reasons you should care about Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Managed Detection and Response is a suite of tools designed to detect and alert on security related events. Like an invisible mustache, things could be happening right under your nose and you wouldn’t even know it.
Below you will find a few questions that can help you decide if MDR is something you need to help keep your business, customers, and employees secure.
1. Would you know if someone else logged into YOUR computer?
You head out of town for a few days, to go somewhere fun and forget about work for a while. In the meantime your computer is sitting (safely?) at the office. Do you have anything on that machine that you wouldn’t want just anyone looking at? Would you be able to tell if someone logged into your computer when you get back?
2. Do you know where the sensitive data on your network is?
Lots of folks might answer this question with a confident, “uhh I think it’s in Sharepoint, or on a network drive.” In this case, what you don’t know CAN hurt you. Do you know which users have downloaded copies of that sensitive data? Do you have a way to check? Should you care? The answer is yes, yes you should
Did you know that when you open a document directly from your email it stores a copy locally in a directory not easily visible to you as a user? What if that document contains say… tax information, or social security numbers?
These are the kinds of things the bad guys will seek out if they gain access to your computer. If you don’t have methods for addressing these kinds of things, well… you should.
3. Is your postage meter or security camera out to get you?
Computers need patches, servers need patches, ripped jeans and scraped knees need patches.
Did you know that other network connected devices such as postage meters, security cameras, HVAC systems etc need patches as well?
When Alan Turing was cracking the German Enigma code during world war II and laying the foundation for modern computing, I doubt he foresaw a future in which someone from the other side of the world could gain remote access to your security camera and watch you file your expense reports at your desk. *Side note: Alan had a sister named Kate Turing, she provided the food and drink for social events, weddings, and other large gatherings.
*Kate Turing… Catering… Get it?
4. Are you prepared for your next audit?
Compliance audits are not to be taken lightly. If you work in any industry where you are required to maintain compliance you will, at some point, be required to answer to an auditor. The Auditor is going to want all kinds of information as it relates to your security posture. An MDR solution can help answer many of their questions and fulfill many of the audits requirements without all the hairpulling from trying to do it yourself.
5. Do you know when your people are logging into their computers?
Do you have set hours for computer access? Do you know if your staff is logging in at strange hours? Do you have a way to check? An MDR solution can alert you to out of the ordinary login times for your users. Did Hank in accounting login at 3am to secretly wire money to a Cayman Islands bank account in order to fund his secret Pigeon Racing hobby? Maybe his account was compromised, or maybe he was logging in for a legitimate purpose. In any case, it’s better to be alerted about the suspicious login time as soon as it happens rather than waiting for something terrible to happen (Pigeon racing is no laughing matter, just ask Mike Tyson).
An MDR can help make some of the unknowns, known. It can help bring some of those not so easy to detect issues to the surface so they can be resolved before becoming major issues. It’s better to know in advance and be proactive, than it is to try and respond after the fact. MDRs help you stay ahead of the curve rather than trying to react to it. You need a tool to help detect and report these kinds of vulnerabilities in your networked environment. Let a properly configured MDR make your life easier.
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