In today’s scenario with increasing risk of cyberattacks, organizations are trying their best to maintain the cybersecurity posture. The overwhelming need for skilled resources and the hassle of maintaining and running cybersecurity programs is making organizations move to MSSPs. MSSPs are not only able to manage the infrastructure but also define security policies. With the availability of skilled resources and subject matter expertise, MSSPs are able to solve the cybersecurity problem for the customers.
With this said, MSSPs have to keep up with the ever-changing and dynamic nature of cyberattacks and need to adapt to newer technologies.
This post covers the essential features to be looked at in a security analytics platform.
Here’s on what makes a good MSSP platform
Integration, Scalability and Flexible architecture
Bringing data into the system is sometimes the most difficult part of the process. The amount of data generated by organizations today is growing exponentially. The entry point for an attacker also spans across multiple data sources.
Thus, MSSPs should look for a platform that can swiftly integrate into an enterprise infrastructure completely. The platform shall have capabilities to ingest logs/events/data from security tools, network monitoring tools, performance monitoring tools, critical servers, endpoints, applications, and OT/IOT devices. This helps improve the operational visibility of the entire ecosystem.
MSSPs should look at a platform that provides flexible architecture and easy customization which seamlessly scales from a stand-alone device to a clustered setup.
Investing in a big data platform that will scale in features and functionality for at least the next decade makes complete sense. The platform should allow you to scale your capacity from gigabytes to terabytes just by adding incremental compute and storage to the cluster. This in turn saves the cost of additional hardware and these commercial benefits can be passed on to the end customer.
The deployment/architecture shall also align with the organization’s IT strategy. Organizations are moving towards hybrid or cloud IT strategies given the sheer benefits around flexibility and cost that these models offer. With this said, MSSPs shall be looking at platforms that are capable of providing hardware, virtual, and cloud-based deployment options.
Multi-tenancy
Multi-tenancy management is a crucial requirement for MSSPs that want to scale security services as it enables to manage multiple environments for multiple clients. This enhances the efficiency of the security processes. It offers easy upgrades and ongoing cost savings since each of the tenants/customers is using the same applications and database.
MSSPs shall be able to rapidly deploy multi-tenant architectures and provide SOC services on the platform either an on-prem or an on-cloud model that can host multiple customers on a single infrastructure.
MSSPs should look at the following features:
Each customer can have individual console access being able to search, analyze, correlate, visualize and report on only their data
- The service provider can have a single console across customers
- Each customer can have individual console access being able to search, analyze, correlate, visualize and report on only their data
- The MSSPs can have billing set-up for individual customers
- Each customer can apply custom rules, dashboards and reports
- The MSSPs can sync common rules, reports and dashboards across customers
Security Orchestration, Automation and Response Framework
With the ever-evolving and polymorphous nature of threats, MSSPs should look at a platform that helps them swiftly detect and respond to attacks. Identifying a threat is half of the job of an MSSP, responding to the threat, remediation forms another important part of the services to be delivered. Thus the platform with the ability to provide enrichment, validation, and response features suits the MSSPs best.
Enrichment and adding organization relevant context
The platform should also provide an open framework for MSSPs to integrate with a variety of commercials and custom TI feeds. This ability allows MSSPs to add organization relevant context to the events/logs ingested. This makes it easier for the analysts to connect the dots and make them well equipped to make decisions.This avoids all the manual searching and analysis that an analyst may have to do otherwise. Relevant data enrichment becomes key here.
Validation
The platform shall be able to augment its capabilities by easily integrating with third party applications and solutions. While proactively hunting for threats it’s imperative that you need to check/validate with an external database or feeds. The platform shall allow integration capabilities with such feeds or providers to validate before taking remediation actions.
Response
Traditional systems would stop short of this stage where they would raise an incident or a ticket on the handlers screen and would let the handler validate and respond to the threat manually. This was time consuming and would give the attacker a lead time within the system.
The platform shall provide the ability for the MSSPs to create and use response playbooks to automate response to known specific threats. Automated responses include blocking an IP address on a firewall, suspending user accounts or quarantining infected endpoints from a network. The MSSPs can now start looking at proactive hunting and not spend time on redundant activities.
Behavior Analytics
The attack surface for cyber attackers and threats has expanded in the last few years. Rule-based correlation which is based on known patterns or past experiences does not work in today’s highly dynamic environments.
MSSPs need to look at a platform which provides the capability of profiling based on behavior. The platform shall be able to identify anomalies based on what you know, Run profilers on any parameter, factual or functional and Update primary models as required.
Conclusion
To strive for success in the rapidly evolving cybersecurity industry, providers need to adapt to technology that is scalable, flexible, and compelling capabilities to be exceptional.
The MSSP supports the business’s availability requirements which has led to the massive upswing in the adoption of managed security service providers in recent years.
Therefore, instead of hiring a permanent team of in-house cybersecurity professionals and investing heavily in the accompanying security tools, you simply outsource everything to a reputable Managed Security Service Provider that assures an advanced and comprehensive security event monitoring technology, with a full range of customizable services to address your risk, compliance and security needs.
A platform that grows with your business.We eliminate the complexities with one unified affordable platform that delivers SIEM, orchestration, UEBA and log management.
Blog by: Sunena Kohli
