The Future of Cybersecurity is Built to Position MSSP Value

by Cylance • Sep 14, 2022

It can be overwhelming to identify the right cybersecurity tools for mid-market organizations. As a result, many organizations are likely to rely on an MSSP to provide their cybersecurity solution. We’ve cycled through best-of-breed to consolidated solutions and now back to best-of-breed, and both approaches are hard to manage and expensive. 

The stakes continue to rise as cyber criminals are increasingly sophisticated and adapt their technology with remarkable speed. Cybersecurity solutions must meet different criteria to get organizations through the rest of this decade and beyond.

Customers are facing enormous challenges.

Organizations are in a state of flux. External forces, changing work habits, and ever-improving tools that increase efficiency and employee satisfaction have created a cybersecurity headache. 

The pandemic shifted where work gets done. Personal devices, access to the network from anywhere, and home networks with little or no protection have disrupted cybersecurity strategies. Add a plethora of SaaS apps that make everything self-serve–from human resources to online investing–and the disruption becomes even more overwhelming. 

All this change has hit companies hard. Remote workers expanded the threat surface. Staff shortages slowed the ability to respond. Organizations caught unprepared immediately cobbled together interim solutions to quickly protect their IP and customer data.

And sadly, most solutions rely on the old model of identifying known threats as the go-to for attempting to stay ahead of the bad guys in a haze of change.

Decentralized Computing Demands a Customer-Centric Cyber Approach

The pandemic demonstrated that the need for a faster, more customer-centric approach to fighting criminals is essential. Agility became paramount: organizations need to change directions or add new capabilities without significantly impacting already stretched business processes.

Everyone in cybersecurity knows to expect the unexpected. But it was a surprise for lean organizations–especially mid-market companies who rely on trusted partners to protect their business–to simultaneously find everyone knocking on their door.

While maybe no one predicted a pandemic, cybersecurity experts have listened to what the market needs and are working to innovate in a rapidly changing environment with predictability and consistency. To that end, a customer-centric cybersecurity strategy embraces some truths about what your customers need: 

• Resources. Humans are essential for cybersecurity success. That leads to resource constraints that include hiring, training, and managing. MSSP support in this area is invaluable.
• Adaptive security. Cloud computing, individual devices, and distributed work locations drag down organizational resilience and increase cyber risk. 
• Greater protection. Attack surface complexity is raising the stakes and putting organizations at increased risk. These include aggressive cyber exploits like ransomware, cloud attacks, and operational technology (OT) weaponization.
• Simplified compliance. Regulations, data privacy, and cyber insurance add constraints and parameters that make managing compliance one more chore.

Extended Detection and Response is a Game Changer for MSSPs

Extended detection and response (XDR) is a unified cybersecurity solution that collects and analyzes data from multiple sources to prevent, discover, and respond to cyberattacks. 

XDR expands on endpoint detection and response (EDR), which is limited to endpoints. XDR identifies and addresses cyberthreats across the entire digital environment, including networks, cloud storage, applications, and endpoints.

XDR is a managed service. MSSPs can deliver a cohesive, holistic view of an organization’s technology landscape for cybersecurity. You can prevent cyberthreats with a complete understanding of all potential network and endpoint vulnerabilities. If a cyberattack occurs, XDR enables faster discovery, response, and remediation, increasing your efficiency and customer satisfaction.

The primary value of an XDR solution is simplicity.

It is a combined, cohesive cybersecurity platform. XDR collects activity data across multiple security layers, including email, endpoint, server, cloud, and network. Automated data analysis can detect threats as they happen, allowing you to investigate and respond more quickly. XDR as a service will: 

1. Reduce and eliminate risk, providing attack surface visibility and Zero Trust access.
2. Expand detect and protect, targeting ransomware, malicious insider attacks, and reconnaissance.
3. Streamline incident management, removing false flags, consolidating reporting, and accelerating triage and remediation.
4. Provide business continuity with critical event management and automation.
5. Lower total cost of ownership, creating more value for your relationship with your customers

Delivering Managed XDR Services Can Boost Your Business

At BlackBerry, we’re proud to have achieved a five-star rating in CRN’s Partner Program Guide for the fifth consecutive year. The Partner Program Guide identifies the channel’s most successful partner programs today.

By becoming a BlackBerry Partner, you will have everything at your fingertips to grow your business, including access to a host of resources and tools to build competencies. BlackBerry software and services address every aspect of securing and enabling the Internet of Things (IoT), so you can support changing customer needs in an increasingly fragmented world of endpoints.

Guest blog courtesy of BlackBerry Cylance. Read more BlackBerry Cylance blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of MSSP Alert’s sponsorship program.

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