Multiple clients. Multiple solutions. Multiple user interfaces. Multiple attack vectors. Sometimes, being an MSSP can feel like you’re one person holding back a flood at a dam – at any moment, the wall could crack and malware could come rushing in. You’re receiving threat intelligence from multiple sources, but it’s not coordinated, and it’s not shared across multiple solutions. You, as the MSSP, need to step in to coordinate that intelligence to keep all aspects of your clients’ online experience safe.
MSSPs have an entire arsenal of defensive solutions to choose from. Everything from firewalls to antivirus software, from email gateways to spam filters, you can build quite the obstacle course for an attacker to navigate in order to reach your client’s devices. But those solutions don’t necessarily talk to each other in any usable capacity. Your firewall may block one component attack, but because it’s a separate solution, the firewall doesn’t alert your other solutions about the attack leaving them vulnerable. Even the best combination of security solutions still forms a sort of patchwork protection, with areas of vulnerability.
Solutions that don’t talk to each other means human intervention is necessary – that is, skilled IT security staff need to take action based on the security intelligence from those solutions. Part of the reason MSSPs are so in demand, though, is there’s a clear and present shortage of IT security talent. TechRepublic reports that 57 percent of businesses can’t find enough IT security professionals to staff their organizations. And according to different surveys, there’s said to be around a million unfilled IT security jobs in the world.
The shortage is good for MSSP businesses, but it also brings with it a great deal of pressure to do the best work in the shortest amount of time. Having a system of solutions that talk to each other to make your life easier is priceless.
And don’t forget the lag-time involved in solutions that don’t communicate or share intelligence. If your endpoint protection captures a problem on one end user’s computer, how much damage can that problem, be it malware, ransomware, or any other cyber threat, do before you’re able to implement all the changes, across the board, to all parts of your client’s network to prevent it from spreading?
This is where the right solution can make a world of difference for a busy MSSP.
Sophos Synchronized Security
Take for example Sophos Synchronized Security. Synchronized Security allows firewall and endpoint solutions to share threat intelligence with each other – if something goes wrong at the endpoint, the firewall will be alerted, and vice versa. If the firewall is breached, the endpoints are notified, and vice versa. All of this is done through a unique Security Heartbeat ™, tracking the health of individual endpoints and communicates that back to the firewall. Or if an attack actually shuts down an endpoint’s protection, the firewall will detect the lack of a healthy Heartbeat and isolate that machine to protect the rest of the network.
The firewall can also prevent a compromised machine from reaching a command and control center and alert the admin to all of the details of this situation.
And that response is automated. Because security information is shared across the entire system, infected endpoints can be rapidly isolated before the threat can spread, usually without any need for an admin to leap to the defense of the system. This cuts incident response time by 99.9%.
Synchronized Security also provides you with a far more convenient overview of the health of your system. With an intuitive, user-friendly platform, you’re able to look at the health of the system through a single pane of glass.
Synchronized Security can help lighten a busy MSSP’s workload while also patching gaps in the overall security perimeter you’ve created for your clients. The threat landscape will continue to evolve and grow more challenging every day, and the shortage of skilled personnel isn’t changing soon. Finding the right technology to partner with can be instrumental to maintaining a successful MSSP business – and keeping your cool, too, in the face of daily IT security challenges.
