There is a litany of tools and approaches for action-oriented approaches to securing your business, but the elements of an outcome-oriented approach are simple. To detect attacks early and thwart breaches before they happen, at a minimum, the following elements need to be in place:

• A recognition by your executives of the grave threat posed by cybersecurity breaches.
• The institutional will and budget to put up a defense.
• Instrumentation of your organization’s unique network segments and key hosts to capture all activity.
• Automated intelligent procedures to detect off-pattern and nefarious activity early.
• A security operations center (SOC) staffed 24/7 by trained cybersecurity analysts who can monitor unusual activity for possible breaches and employ other proactive measures such as threat-hunting.
• An incident response team and plan that can rapidly implement counter-measures for any detected nefarious activity.
• Continuous ongoing vigilance and training within the organization aimed at preventing infiltration.

Gartner defines MDR as follows: The goal of MDR services is to rapidly identify and limit the impact of security incidents to customers. These services are focused on remote 24/7 threat monitoring, detection and targeted response activities. MDR providers may use a combination of host and network-layer technologies, as well as advanced analytics, threat intelligence, forensic data, and human expertise for investigation, threat hunting and response to detected threats.

With limited budgets and a scarcity of talent, setting up all the elements needed for MDR can be challenging for many organizations. However, what if you could get all the people, processes, and technologies needed at a modest cost on an outsourced basis that could be rapidly deployed into your organization?