The Benefits of MXDR For Your Business
In today’s digital world, every business needs a robust Cybersecurity Strategy that offers visibility into network activity, enabling quick identification and response to threats. However, maintaining a team of round-the-clock analysts to monitor a broad attack surface—such as endpoints, network devices, OT, cloud environments, and mobile devices—can be an expensive and unrealistic endeavour for most businesses.
For those that do have such teams, many still struggle with limited resources. Small teams and a lack of in-house expertise often make it difficult to effectively address threats across all potential vulnerabilities.
In addition to this, there’s the challenge of alert fatigue. With so many alerts flooding in and a small team to handle them, it’s easy for staff to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume—especially false positives, which only add to the noise. As a result, the team may become ineffective in managing threats..
MXDR (Managed Extended Detection and Response) offers a solution to these challenges. By combining advanced technology with expert human oversight, MXDR provides continuous monitoring and proactive threat detection across all layers of a business’s IT environment—without the burden of managing a large in-house security team. It streamlines alert management, reducing false positives and ensuring that teams can focus on responding to genuine threats, rather than being overwhelmed by noise. With MXDR, businesses can enhance their security posture, improve response times, and reduce operational costs – particularly with Forensics and Incident Response included in the monthly cost!
So, what types of attacks can be mitigated by MXDR?
XDR can detect a wide range of attacks and Managed XDR (MXDR) ensures containment happens quickly and response activities are fast and effective.
Some Use Cases for MXDR are as follows:
1. Detecting and Mitigating Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)
Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are highly sophisticated, long-term attacks where the attacker gains persistent access to a network to steal data or monitor activities over time.
How MXDR Helps:
- It detects abnormal patterns in network traffic, user behaviour, and endpoint activities, which are often indicators of APT behaviour - like lateral movement, privilege escalation, or command-and-control communications.
- It uses behavioural analytics to spot anomalous actions that might indicate an APT infection, even if traditional signature-based defences (like antivirus or firewalls) cannot detect it.
- Once detected, it can automatically isolate compromised systems, block suspicious traffic, and notify the security team for further investigation.
2. Insider Threat Detection
Insider threats refer to malicious or negligent actions taken by employees, contractors, or business partners who have authorised access to an organisation’s network and systems. These threats are often difficult to detect using traditional security tools.
How MXDR Helps:
- MXDR systems analyse user behaviour patterns to identify signs of insider threats, such as unauthorised data access, unusual login times, or abnormal file transfers
- It can detect lateral movement within the network, even if the malicious actor is trying to disguise their activities.
- It provides automated response capabilities, such as isolating the affected user’s account or device, revoking access, and preventing further malicious actions in real time.
3. Zero-Day Exploit Detection
Zero-day exploits are vulnerabilities that are unknown to the vendor or public and are actively exploited by attackers before a patch or fix is available. Traditional security tools may not recognise these exploits.
How MXDR Helps:
- MXDR solutions use anomaly detection and behavioural analytics to detect unusual activities and potential exploits that do not match known attack signatures.
- By monitoring network traffic and system behaviour, it can identify indicators of exploitation, such as attempts to access or manipulate unpatched software vulnerabilities.
- It provides the ability to respond in real time to contain and mitigate the impact of zero-day attacks before they spread throughout the network.
4. Ransomware Detection and Mitigation
Ransomware attacks involve malicious actors encrypting an organisation’s data and demanding a ransom in exchange for the decryption key. This type of attack often spreads quickly across the network, making it difficult to contain.
How MXDR Helps:
- It detects anomalous file access patterns, such as rapid encryption of large volumes of files or suspicious file-sharing behaviours that often occur during a ransomware attack.
- It also monitors for suspicious lateral movement as ransomware spreads to other machines in the network.
- It can automatically quarantine infected endpoints, prevent the malware from spreading further, and alert security teams to respond rapidly to the incident.
5. Phishing Attack Detection
Phishing attacks involve attackers using deceptive emails, websites, or phone calls to trick employees into revealing sensitive information (e.g., passwords, credit card numbers) or downloading malware.
How MXDR Helps:
- It can correlate email traffic with user activity to detect suspicious behaviours associated with phishing attacks, such as login attempts from unusual locations or abnormal account access after a user falls victim to a phishing email.
- It can flag malicious attachments or links in emails and detect when users click on these links or enter credentials on suspicious websites.
- The solution can automatically block access to phishing websites, reset compromised credentials, or even terminate malicious sessions to limit the damage caused by the attack.
6. Detecting Lateral Movement in the Network
After an initial compromise, attackers often engage in lateral movement, where they attempt to move from one system to another within the network to escalate privileges and deepen their control.
How MXDR Helps:
- It monitors network traffic and system interactions for signs of unusual or unauthorised communication between devices or systems.
- It identifies behaviours indicative of lateral movement, such as the use of privileged credentials or unusual access patterns across the network.
- Once lateral movement is detected, it can automatically contain the threat, prevent further movement, and alert the security team to investigate and mitigate the attack.
7. Cloud Security Monitoring and Threat Detection
Monitoring security in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud), is more complex due to dynamic infrastructure and potential vulnerabilities.
How MXDR Helps:
- It provides visibility into the security state of both on-premises and cloud environments, ensuring that attacks targeting cloud services are detected.
- It tracks user access and activity across cloud applications, flagging any unusual behaviour that could indicate a compromised account or malicious activity.
- It integrates with cloud security tools to monitor network traffic and detect anomalies, helping prevent breaches and unauthorised access to cloud resources.
8. Detection of Unusual Network Traffic (Data Exfiltration)
Data exfiltration involves attackers stealing sensitive data from an organization’s network and transferring it outside the perimeter.
How MXDR Helps:
- It continuously analyses network traffic to identify large-scale data transfers or data movement to untrusted destinations, which are often indicators of exfiltration attempts.
- By detecting abnormal network behaviour (e.g. large volumes of data leaving the network, encrypted traffic to unknown locations), it can identify and block data exfiltration before it completes.
- Automated responses can include blocking outbound traffic, isolating compromised systems, or alerting security teams to investigate the source of the exfiltration attempt.
9. Monitoring and Mitigating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
DDoS attacks flood an organisation's network or web services with malicious traffic, overwhelming resources and causing service outages.
How MXDR Helps:
- It can detect unusual traffic patterns associated with DDoS attacks, such as a sudden spike in requests or traffic from a large number of IP addresses.
- It integrates with network monitoring tools to identify DDoS indicators early and apply rate-limiting, traffic filtering, or geo-blocking techniques to mitigate the attack.
- It can help automatically respond to mitigate service interruptions, ensuring that normal business operations can continue.
10. Monitoring for Compliance Violations
Many industries are subject to regulatory requirements, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS, which mandate strict data protection and privacy standards.
How MXDR Helps:
- It can monitor for activities that may violate compliance requirements, such as unauthorised access to sensitive data, improper sharing of personal data, or failure to meet security best practices.
- By continuously monitoring user behaviour, network traffic, and data access, it can detect potential violations of regulations and provide reports for audit purposes.
- The option of automated response can help mitigate violations by restricting access or taking corrective actions, ensuring that the organisation stays compliant with regulatory standards.
11. Protecting Against Credential Theft and Unauthorised Access
Credential theft (e.g., via phishing, brute force attacks, or keyloggers) is a common way for attackers to gain unauthorised access to systems and networks.
How MXDR Helps:
- It continuously monitors for abnormal login attempts, such as brute force attacks or the use of compromised credentials from unusual locations or times.
- It can detect credential stuffing or attempts to escalate privileges using stolen credentials and respond by locking accounts or enforcing multi-factor authentication (MFA).
- It also identifies suspicious user behaviours, such as logging in from multiple locations simultaneously, which might indicate that credentials have been stolen and are being misused.
12. Protecting Operational Technology (OT) Environments
In industries like manufacturing, energy, transportation, and utilities, Operational Technology (OT) systems control critical physical processes such as machinery, sensors, and industrial control systems (ICS). These OT environments, which were traditionally isolated from IT networks, are now increasingly connected to the internet and enterprise networks, making them more vulnerable to cyber threats. A cyberattack targeting OT can lead to production downtime, safety hazards, and significant financial losses.
How MXDR Helps:
- Continuous Monitoring and Visibility: MXDR offers 24/7 monitoring across both IT and OT environments, allowing for real-time visibility of all devices, sensors, and control systems. This helps detect anomalies or suspicious behaviour that may indicate a cyber threat targeting critical OT assets.
- Integrated Threat Detection: MXDR uses advanced AI-driven analytics to detect threats that span both IT and OT systems. It can identify cyberattack patterns targeting OT-specific protocols, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers), and other industrial protocols. By analysing traffic across the entire network, MXDR can spot early indicators of an attack before it escalates into a full-scale breach.
- Rapid Response and Incident Management: MXDR ensures swift response to any identified threats, reducing the impact of an attack. With automated response capabilities, it can isolate compromised systems, prevent lateral movement of the attack, and initiate remediation efforts—minimising potential downtime and operational disruptions in OT environments.
Conclusion:
MXDR is a highly valuable service that can be applied to a wide range of cybersecurity challenges. Its ability to detect, respond to, and mitigate threats in real-time, across different attack vectors and environments, without the need for businesses to invest in highly skilled teams working 24x7, makes it a critical component of modern security strategies.
MXDR helps organisations improve their overall security posture and reduce the time to mitigate threats.