Threat Monitoring: Proactive Security Against Cyberthreats

Too many organizations leave their network security to chance. If everything is running smoothly and you’ve never encountered a security breach, proactive security solutions may seem like a big investment for your customers to make. But have you sat down with them and looked at the list of potential expenditures associated with a data breach? Cybersecurity risk is business risk.

The Ponemon Institute estimates the breach cost of a single record to be $148. A typical breach affects 3,000 to 101,500 records, with 40% of companies being down for over eight hours after a breach occurred.

This is merely a high-level view of the consequences. The Cost of a Data Breach study by Ponemon found there are many business expenditures associated with the cost of a data breach, all of which need to be taken into consideration when analyzing the true cost. These include: investigation of the data breach, assessment of auditing services, crisis team management, communication to compromised individuals, cost of business disruption, revenue losses, loss of employee productivity, consultation fees, help desk activities, product discounts and credits, damaged business reputation, and cost of lost customers. The list goes on.

If that weren’t enough, cybercriminals are constantly evolving their methods—and to make matters worse many small and medium-sized business (SMBs) are prime targets for cybercriminals. According to Cisco’s 2018 SMB Cybersecurity Report, SMBs normally have less-sophisticated security infrastructure and in-house security experts. This presents a great opportunity for managed services providers (MSPs) to expand their footprint and reinforce brand value.

Threats typically targeting SMBs:

• Malware
• Phishing attacks
• Illegal file transfer
• Viruses
• Ransomware
• Botnets
• Web app attacks
• Intellectual property leakage
• Email spam and malware
• DDoS attacks

5 ways threat monitoring can help 

1. Fast threat detection As an MSP, you probably already offer basic security services to your clients, such as patch management, antivirus, email security, firewall, and backup. Though these technologies aim to prevent attacks, they don’t necessarily do a lot when it comes to detecting potential attacks. Implementing threat monitoring with streamlined log collection and correlation helps you quickly identify threats in your managed networks without having to sift through logs for all the devices and systems across your customer base.
2. Security monitoring Time spent on repetitive security tasks can be a challenge; it can also introduce human error, which could lead to cybersecurity breaches. Security monitoring tools help you increase threat-detection capabilities and reduce time spent on security tasks that are normally performed manually.
3. Get alerted It’s hard to find a reliable and consistent source of threat intelligence, which can make it difficult to make the right calls regarding whether to investigate an event or let it pass. Having a sophisticated alarm engine with customizable rules and alerts helps you gain greater transparency into multiple security events. It also makes sure you receive only relevant alerts, and minimizes false positives.
4. Simplified compliance efforts Having insights over incidents in managed networks via reporting can make life much simpler when it comes to regulatory and compliance audits.
5. Remediation All in all, threat monitoring, and the intelligence it provides, helps you better understand the nature of incidents and threats. It equips you with the ability to create and implement remediation plans, adding value for your end customers.

How can SolarWinds help?

SolarWinds^® Threat Monitor is a cloud-based security information and event management (SIEM) tool designed to help MSPs detect, respond to, and report on threats on their managed networks.

We realize these advanced security services may be daunting, so we offer you an easy way to add managed security services like Threat Monitoring to your service offering with the SolarWinds Threat Monitoring Service Program. When you sign up, you’ll partner with one of our approved Threat Monitoring Service Providers (TMSPs), who will offer security operations center (SOC) services on your behalf.

To learn more about the program today, click here to get in touch with our team. 

Mia Thompson is product marketing manager, Threat Monitor, at SolarWinds MSP.