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7 Reasons to Seriously Consider Managed XDR

In today’s battle against advanced cyber threats, security professionals are often overwhelmed by the complexity of too many cybersecurity tools, related alerts, and the bandwidth necessary to sort through the noise and focus on what matters most.

Like many, you might be feeling uncertain, dealing with strained resources as you try to keep and grow your security team. In many cases, teams are chronically understaffed and may be headed toward burnout.

These are some of the key factors behind the rapid growth of managed extended detection and response (Managed XDR). It is a market which industry experts expect will grow from $22.45 billion in 2020 to $77.01 billion by 2030.

Managed XDR combines advanced security technologies with human expertise, and with the right provider, can become a natural extension of your security team. And this holistic approach has been shown to be effective for organizations of all sizes.

In creating the new, in-depth BlackBerry report: How to Choose the Best Managed XDR Solution, we uncovered many of the reasons organizations first investigate managed XDR. Let’s briefly explore the top seven we observed:

7 Top Reasons for Managed XDR

  1. Create or augment 24x7 cybersecurity coverage: cybercriminals and nation-state threat actors work nights, weekends, and holidays. Around-the-clock coverage that seems impossible to achieve at scale, becomes possible without hiring additional staff. 

  2. Manage your cybersecurity spend: Having a fully staffed security operations center (SOC) can be an effective approach to cybersecurity; however, it is also expensive. Managed XDR is a cost-effective way to achieve a similar security result. Download your cost breakdown here.

  3. Reduce analyst burnout and turnover: Too many cybersecurity teams are understaffed and getting burned out. Managed XDR provides network defenders with extra help to lower stress and gives them the bandwidth to focus on priority projects. Your analysts also sharpen their skills by working with their managed XDR team.

  4. Break the cycle of alert fatigue: An artificial-intelligence-powered and human-staffed managed XDR platform applies context to alerts and threats gathered from endpoint feeds, including email, server, cloud and other network sources. This approach creates quality alerts worthy of further investigation and greatly reduces false alerts.

  5. Battling advanced threats: The cyber threat landscape is more sophisticated and challenging than ever, as ransomware operators and other cybercriminals increasingly adopt the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of nation-state threat actors. However, this is not a hopeless situation. Managed XDR makes it possible for organizations of all sizes to fight these threats by combining the latest technology with highly skilled analysts.

  6. Automated response and containment: With managed XDR you can orchestrate the triage, filtering, and response of cybersecurity analysts to rapidly detect and remediate attacks. This accelerates response times, reducing potential damage from an attack.

  7. Reduce tool sprawl: Complexity is the enemy of security, and many organizations are drowning in a sea of point solutions and low-fidelity alerts. Managed XDR cuts down the noise and reduces complexity. It empowers cross-tool threat hunting and seamlessly correlates data integrated from a wide variety of products and third-party vendors.

Resources and Criteria to Evaluate Managed XDR

The security challenges your organization faces are unique, and the potential XDR and managed XDR use cases that are most relevant to you are likely unique, as well. The process of evaluating this approach brings up some key questions to answer before you start shopping for a managed security services provider.

  • Is managed XDR the right approach for my organization?
  • Which makes more sense for my 24x7 SOC: build or buy?
  • What are key criteria I should use to evaluate managed XDR vendors?

Our new report offers constructive ways to help you answer these questions and other crucial considerations, so you know where to start and how to pursue your evaluation of managed XDR services and providers.

Bruce Sussman

About Bruce Sussman

Bruce Sussman is Senior Managing Editor at BlackBerry.