Shift to integrated threat protection

Choose an integrated, end-to-end approach to threat protection.

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While the scope of today’s security challenges may seem overwhelming, there’s cause for optimism for CISOs looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of security operations. The answer lies in an integrated, end-to-end approach to threat protection, which will help organisations.[i]

“This approach will let you consolidate point solutions and reduce SecOps overheads, use tools that increase efficiency and make even junior analysts more capable than ever, and finally, will protect your organisation in a way that lets your people be fearless as they create and innovate,” says Emil Henrico, CEO at iSSC Group.

This approach is enabled by integrating an extended detection and response (XDR) solution with a cloud-native security information and event management (SIEM) system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and automation capabilities. The integrated solution can help your SOC become more predictive, proactive and preventive against attacks across the enterprise.

Many organisations have approached security tooling with a focus on best-of-breed point solutions. Unfortunately, that approach can make it harder for security professionals to identify and respond to threats quickly. It can also end up having a negative impact on IT spending and end-user productivity.

As organisations look to do more with less, an integrated approach such as Microsoft’s SIEM and XDR can help. It can reduce complexity by consolidating individual tools – and because it’s cloud-native, an integrated solution can also improve performance and scale.

By consolidating tools with Microsoft’s integrated solution, you can also save by paying for only what you use. You can also reduce the SecOps overhead required to manage solutions by increasing automation and integration.

SecOps teams are overwhelmed by the quantity of signals they must analyse, including many low-fidelity signals that are difficult, if not impossible, to detect manually and mitigate. As threats increase, it’s hard for an overburdened SOC to keep up, especially when trying to analyse data from multiple point solutions. Allocating more resources to fill the gaps isn’t the answer, because finding enough skilled security professionals is an ongoing challenge.

That’s why it’s critical to integrate SIEM and XDR to correlate alerts, prioritise the biggest threats and co-ordinate action across the enterprise, with advanced AI and automation to proactively detect and remediate threats.

Consider, for example, that a single, low-level signal may not garner much attention from a traditional SIEM. But by using AI, a cloud-native SIEM can automatically compare that signal to signals from other sources throughout the organisation, correlating across multiple datasets to find multistage attacks.

In addition to doing more with less and increasing SecOps efficiency, an integrated SIEM and XDR solution can help your organisation improve productivity for end-users. As SecOps teams know, when you make security hard, people work around it. So, when end-user experiences hamper rather than help employees’ productivity, that can leave an organisation open to more security risks and higher costs. Weak or lost passwords, unsecured access via personal devices or unfettered sharing of sensitive data are just some of the challenges.

An integrated SIEM and XDR approach helps you deliver seamless user experiences that keep your people both productive and secure across all facets of their daily experiences. It can reduce negative impacts to productivity, such as having to turn off services or isolate and then re-image machines. Integrated SIEM and XDR can also create new opportunities for end-user productivity gains, such as with more self-service security support, better dashboards and reporting and more responsiveness and faster boot times from running fewer security agents.

Microsoft offers the first and only integrated SIEM and XDR solution, providing end-to-end visibility across all clouds and platforms. This integration of industry-leading products delivers threat prevention, detection and response in a single comprehensive solution.

Microsoft SIEM and XDR taps into the power of AI and automation, and deep, ongoing investments in threat detection and analysis – with expert insights and visibility into 43 trillion signals every day. With integration across these products, SOC teams are armed with more context than ever to hunt and resolve critical threats faster:

“We work closely with our clients to ensure that they are covered on all levels and that the solutions we supply fit their needs. We have a technical advice team that can pinpoint exactly what Microsoft defence products best suit the specific organisational structure, whether that solution is a single product or a combination of various cyber security products,” says Henrico.

Microsoft’s cyber security arsenal includes:

• Microsoft Sentinel. Get a bird’s-eye view across the enterprise with Microsoft’s cloud-native SIEM. Aggregate security data from virtually any source and apply AI to separate noise from legitimate events, correlate alerts across complex attack chains and speed up threat response with built-in orchestration and automation.
• Microsoft 365 Defender. Prevent and detect attacks across your identities, endpoints, apps, e-mail, data and cloud apps with XDR capabilities. Investigate and respond to attacks with out-of-the-box, best-in-class protection. Hunt for threats and easily co-ordinate your response from a single dashboard.
• Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Protect your multicloud and hybrid cloud workloads with built-in XDR capabilities. Secure your servers, storage, databases, containers and more. Focus on what matters most with prioritised alerts.

For more information contact iSSC Group, (+27) 010 005-5277, sales@isscgroup.com, www.isscgroup.com

[i] https://info.microsoft.com/ww-landing-three-reasons-to-shift-to-integrated-threat-protection.html