Trustwave Blog

Trustwave MDR: The Pivot Point That Enhances Multiple Security Tools

Written by | Nov 16, 2023

Several years ago, Trustwave, already a leader in Managed Security Services (MSS), recognized the shift in market needs and fully pivoted to its future as a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) leader. Trustwave's leadership chose this course because it understood that a leading cybersecurity solution provider could no longer be effective without all the weapons MDR brings to the fight.

Between then and now, Trustwave has innovated and evolved its offerings to help clients maximize their cybersecurity ROI, while helping to future proof them against a backdrop of proliferating technology and tooling.

As a result, industry analyst firms and the media have taken note of Trustwave's transformation into an MDR leader, bestowing the company a bevy of awards and accolades for its MDR solution. 

 

MSS and MDR 

 

Why is this so? Managed Security Services, as a stand-alone offering, is fine for handling alerts and offers complete security solutions as a service to help protect systems, networks, and people. MSSPs help mitigate risk, manage complexity, and provide security, network, and compliance expertise.

Due to its primary mission, an MSSP is predominantly focused on handling known threats. Essentially, MSS is a reactive service, albeit a necessary one, but lacks MDR's proactive capabilities. 

MDR perfectly fills this gap when combined with MSS by adding a human-led element, additional processes, and technology such as advanced threat hunting, incident response, and mitigation. These combine to allow MDR to identify previously unknown patterns, behaviors, and new threats in their environment. With MDR, organizations also gain the ability to push to obtain the best results possible from their Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions. 

"The key value proposition of MDR is the human interpretation of security incidents, providing guidance, as well as performing the initial mitigation steps, that would otherwise be complex to understand and enact," Gartner noted in its 2023 Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response, "By providing context-led investigation, analysis, and threat validation (and taking action to disrupt or contain an attack), the MDR provider can buy time for the customer to perform further investigation and ultimately remediate discovered issues utilizing their internal standardized response processes."

 

MDR and Co-Managed SIEM

 

An organization that excels at delivering MDR is also well-positioned to provide high-quality Managed/Co-Managed SIEM. The reason is endpoint tools such as a SIEM can create an avalanche of alerts. This places a company that is either not equipped with its own security operations center or a partner's MDR solution at a disadvantage as it will find itself unable to sift the dangerous alerts from the background noise.

By aligning with a security company to either fully manage or co-manage its SIEM, an organization will acquire the seasoned security staff necessary to configure, monitor, and optimize the tools and to examine the alerts they produce to determine which are benign vs. worrisome. 

Gartner noted in its 2022 Market Guide for Managed SIEM Services, which recognized Trustwave as a representative vendor in this category, that organizations investigating potential SIEM solution providers should evaluate any such a managed SIEM partner that uses the technology as part of other service deliverables the vendor might have, including MDR and MSS.

As a managed/co-managed SIEM partner, the human-led Trustwave team investigates threats. It follows up with highly effective and targeted response recommendations delivered by threat experts, enabling client to quickly take steps to mitigate the problem. Essentially, Trustwave enhances teams and helps avoid the cost of building in-house talent with global coverage.

Moreover, clients will have the option to allow Trustwave to take effective response actions on their behalf with Trustwave's MDR service.

Trustwave MDR security analysts can investigate and respond to threats directly on endpoints and in multiple security controls, conduct advanced threat hunting, and investigate the impact and blast radius of a threat more completely, allowing for faster responses with higher confidence.

 

MDR and Firewall & Technology Management

 

Trustwave's MDR capability gives it a unique ability to pivot between disparate security tools, including Firewall & Technology Management, a solution where security tools are continuously monitored, tuned, and updated to maintain their health and effectiveness.

Trustwave Firewall & Technology Management integrates into its industry-leading MDR platform to add enterprise threat detection capabilities and enhance response and remediation. 

Trustwave MDR provides a 24x7 global managed threat detection platform to identify known and emerging threats that could impact or breach your data. Trustwave MDR is powered by the proven Trustwave Fusion platform, which features out-of-the-box integration with Trustwave Firewall & Technology Management and is backed by the best-in-class Trustwave SpiderLabs threat intelligence and expertise.

In a rapidly evolving cybersecurity landscape, Trustwave's MDR has emerged as the industry’s ideal of innovation and excellence.

With a string of accolades and awards, Trustwave's MDR has transformed the security paradigm. Its ability to bridge the gap between MSS and emerging threats, co-manage SIEM, and seamlessly integrate with various security tools demonstrates its pivotal role in enhancing the security arsenal.

Trustwave's MDR is not just a solution; it's a dynamic force that empowers organizations to proactively protect their systems and data. Trustwave's commitment to security remains unwavering, making it a trusted partner in the fight against cyber threats.