Managed Detection and Response Providers Comparison: Endpoint Tools

Your company is comparing Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers for cybersecurity. But what if your company already owns some of it’s own tools, such as Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Crowdstrike, or Carbon Black?

In the video below, Mike explains how the best MDR service providers account for your company’s existing endpoint protection tools, or lack thereof.

Want Mike’s recommendations on the best MDR providers to quote for your company’s specific situation? Click below and ask him today.

About Mike

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

Your company is looking into some cybersecurity solutions. Maybe you’re looking into managed detection and response, meaning that you want to go and pay a company to help you manage and monitor your company’s cyber security. That’s a great option and becoming more and more popular as time goes on as companies start to see, hey, the cyber security thing is a lot bigger than we thought and it’s very difficult to have all the resources within our IT department to do this properly all the time. A lot of companies are going outside of their organization to get quotes from companies to manage their cyber security, and one big category of that is managed detection and response.

Well, one of the questions that may be popping up as you’re looking into this is, hey, what if we’ve already paid for some solutions in house? What if we already have CrowdStrike or Carbon Black or Defender for Endpoint? What if we have some of these things already in house and we’ve already invested a lot of money into them and we started looking into this managed detection and response? How does that work? Well, that’s a great question and I want to make a quick video on it.

Ask me about your company.

But before I get too far ahead of myself, just a quick plug. If you’d like my recommendation on the best MDR service providers for your organization to quote, don’t hesitate, reach out and contact me by email or by phone (714.593.0011). I’ve been doing this for a long time. I can quickly narrow the field. I know there’s hundreds of them out there, if not thousands. Based on some of the criteria I might ask you about your company, I can quickly pair you up with the right vendors and make some introductions. More on that at the end of the video.

What if your company already has a tool?

Your company is looking into MDR and you’ve already invested in some tools like CrowdStrike or Carbon Black or Defender for Endpoint, some of those popular ones maybe, or maybe something else. You’re wondering, “Well, how does that work if we get an MDR service provider? Is that going to, basically, become a sunk cost or can we use them with that provider?”

That’s a great question. Some service providers out there will allow you to use those same tools, and some service providers have those tools internally. Some MDR service providers also have the ability to use those tools so they can utilize your licenses that you’re already paying for, and they can simply sync it up to their SIEM tool that they’re providing you. They provide you some type of a SIEM software, some type of a logging software that’s taking in all the different logs from all the different security devices and software solutions that you have in house, and making sense out of all that information.

Get full use out of it.

If you have Carbon Black already or if you have CrowdStrike already, that’s great, or Defender for Endpoint or something else, that’s fantastic but, as you know, it’s very difficult to manage that solution. Are you really looking at all the logs coming in from those solutions regularly? Do you recognize what you’re seeing quickly to act on them? Probably not, and that’s why you’re looking for an MDR service provider. Well, that’s what the MDR service provider can provide. Even if they’re not supplying you with the endpoint security devices themselves or the software solution itself, they can provide the monitoring and management and threat detection and hunting for breaches, things like that, and that software is aiding them so they’re able to work with that software. Some do, some don’t.

Proprietary Tools

Now, there’s a flip side to this, is that there’s also an advantage to use an MDR service provider who comes in and provides their own proprietary software for these types of things and their own SIEM services and their own security solutions. The advantage is is that their software is proprietary, so it’s not available on the open market for hackers, things like that, to test and try to break on their own and then go onto the internet and try to break other people’s software because they’ve learned how to do it and tested it in house. If a company comes with a proprietary solution, their service is going to be more difficult for a third party hacker to come in and try to break because they haven’t had the ability to practice on it. There is some advantage of using an MDR service provider who provides you with their own proprietary tools as opposed to working with some of the big name solutions already out there.

These are things to think about, but I just wanted to make a video and explain a little bit on the different options that are available and the things you should think about or the questions you should ask internally about, “Hey, what solutions do we have in place? What type of an environment do we have? Do we care if it’s proprietary coming in from the MDR provider or would we like them to use our existing software that we paid a lot of money for and we still are maybe in an agreement on licensing for the next couple years?”

What’s my recommendation for your company?

I hope that was helpful. If so, don’t forget to like and subscribe to the video channel. That’ll help us out a lot. That’ll be a big favor to me. Also, if you’d like my recommendations on the best MDR service providers to quote for your company, don’t hesitate. Reach out and give me a call. There’s hundreds of them out there and chances are, if you go out on your own and just try to scour the internet, you’re probably going to end up quoting the wrong ones. It’s just odds are, there’s too many of them. Your chance of finding the right ones randomly are pretty low. But because I’ve been doing this a long time, I’ll be happy to help you. I’m a broker. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so I can really help you save some time and get you with the right service providers fast. The nice thing is, too, is that the service providers, the MDR companies, pay my company a broker fee so you don’t have to pay me a thing. There’s absolutely no excuse not to at least reach out and see what I have to say.

Hope that was helpful. I will catch you again on the next video.