Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions provide organizations or IT service providers with automated threat detection and response to help them better defend against cyberattacks. This normally comprises both technical features such as threat monitoring, automated remediation, analytics, and threat intelligence; but also, human expertise, with a team of security experts and engineers available to help analyze incidents and lead the response to security breaches.
MDR solutions are designed to automatically detect threats that enter your network, such as ransomware, and remediate against it automatically where possible. They also provide visibility and analytics into the attack to help you better protect against similar breaches in the future. This is aided by the human expertise a strong solution will provide; technical experts can look into the causes of data breaches and give recommendations to your own security team to improve processes in the future.
As rates of sophisticated cyberattacks continue to skyrocket, these solutions are becoming increasingly important, especially for enterprises and IT service providers responsible for ensuring the security of a large amount of sensitive data. The solutions help to offload the burden of cybersecurity from your internal to experienced experts with leading tools designed to protect networks and systems. They act as a Security Operations Centre (SOC) for companies without the capability to operate one in house, or work to compliment your existing team.
They key features of MDR solutions can be broken into three areas: detection, including 24/7, continuous monitoring of your network and endpoints to look for possible signs of data breach; response, which includes automated responses to breaches and mitigation recommendation from human experts; and, finally, analytics comprising of information on your network and data on breaches if they do occur.
Here is our list of the top 10 MDR solutions, based on our research into technical features, including threat hunting, analytics and response, customer feedback, and market presence.
ESET is one of the world’s best known cybersecurity providers for both consumers and enterprise users. They support over a billion users worldwide, across more than 200 countries.
ESET PROTECT MDR is ESET’s fully managed cybersecurity solution for small to mid-sized enterprises, combining endpoint security, file server security, extended endpoint detection and response (XDR), and more, with premium support from ESET’s expert global support team.
ESET Protect MDR is designed to provide holistic cybersecurity protection, backed by ESET’s technical support team. The solution includes ESET’s market-leading endpoint protection solution, which leverages machine learning technologies and cloud-based behavioral analysis to provide effective protection against malware and ransomware attacks, ESET’s endpoint detection and response solution, which includes extended endpoint controls and visibility, and threat-hunting services designed to investigate, identify, and resolve zero-day threats.
Other key features of the service include file server security and full disk encryption. Users can also leverage ESET’s premium support service, which operates worldwide and is available 24/7/365. ESET’s technical support team can help to troubleshoot issues, manage security risks, and resolve any management or deployment issues.
ESET PROTECT MDR is a multi-layered MDR solution, providing rounded security to protect against advanced threats. It’s available for all major PC, Mac, and smartphone operating systems and can be deployed in the cloud or on premises. Users highly rate this service, highlighting the powerful continuous protection and high-quality support available.
We recommend this solution for small to mid-sized enterprises looking for an all-in-one endpoint protection, detection, and response solution, backed by a comprehensive premium support offering.
Arctic Wolf is a cybersecurity provider specializing in managed security solutions, including MDR, risk monitoring, cloud monitoring and security awareness training. Available as part of their holistic Security Operations Platform, the Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution provides 24/7 threat monitoring of networks, endpoints and cloud environments to help detect and mitigate sophisticated cyberattacks, as well as prevent future attacks with detailed threat analysis and workflow customization.
Arctic Wolf MDR provides a holistic view of assets, integrating with your existing technology stack to collate threat data from multiple sources. The platform scans your environment 24/7 for anomalous activity, and Arctic Wolf’s Concierge Security Team investigates any suspicious behaviors, reducing false positives and alert fatigue. The platform offers analyses of the cause of any incidents and helps your security team to create custom rules and workflows to optimize your security posture and prevent recurring threats.
As well as investigating incidents, Arctic Wolf’s Concierge Security Team take care of deployment and offer tailored strategic guidance on how to continuously improve your organization’s security posture, filling skill and expertise gaps that may exist within your internal team. This distinguishes Arctic Wolf from some of their competitors, and customers praise Arctic Wolf for the “white glove” service and in-depth knowledge provided by their Concierge Security Team. We recommend Arctic Wolf MDR for mid to large enterprises looking for effective threat detection and strategic security guidance provided as an extension of their own security team.
Cisco is a global market-leading provider of security solutions designed to protect networks and digital assets against modern cyberthreats. Cisco Managed Detection and Response (MDR) combines 24/7 artificial and human threat intelligence to detect, prioritize and contain threats within hours. The solution also offers detailed threat analysis and suggested response actions supported by Cisco’s own research, helping to prevent repeat attacks and reduce vulnerabilities across your environment.
Cisco MDR utilizes Cisco Talos threat intelligence to detect and analyze each incident, providing information such as attacker attributes, tactics and context to help triage each incident according to the urgency and severity of the threat. Once investigated, Cisco MDR uses security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) processes and pre-defined response playbooks to help you remediate the threat, with detailed recommendations on how to improve your security architecture to avoid further attacks.
Although Cisco MDR is a fully managed service, security teams can access a dashboard that gives them an operational and executive overview of incident tickets and reports, as well as a case management interface. This ensures that security teams are always aware of any vulnerabilities and potential risks within their environment, allowing for more efficient remediation and threat prevention. We recommend Cisco Managed Detection and Response (MDR) for any sized organization looking for advanced threat detection and automated response, and particularly those that may wish to integrate Cisco MDR with other Cisco products in their security stack
CrowdStrike is a market-leading endpoint protection provider, founded on the principle of combining endpoint security with expert intelligence to provide a holistic solution. Falcon Complete is their advanced MDR solution, and includes antivirus protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), continuous managed threat hunting, and real-time network visibility.
Falcon Complete provides 24/7/365 protection against all known and unknown network and endpoint threats, continuously monitoring to detect suspicious behaviors and indicators of attack. Alongside automatic threat detection via artificial intelligence and machine learning, the solution also includes the OverWatch team—these are a pool of skilled analysts dedicated to threat hunting and remediation. Investigating threats in real-time is simple via the easy-to-use dashboard, which provides a contextual overview of an entire organization’s endpoint estate. This centralized dashboard also automatically triages and prioritizes threats, enabling fast and easy remediation.
Falcon Complete is praised by users as an intuitive, lightweight, and hassle-free solution, that provides excellent support, advanced threat hunting capabilities, and easy deployment. In fact, this cloud-native solution deploys in minutes and integrates seamlessly with other platforms and tools via APIs. It also automatically scales as you grow, meaning it’s well-suited for organizations of all sizes. We’d recommend Falcon Complete for organizations across all industries that are looking for advanced endpoint security combined with expert intelligence.
Huntress is a leading MDR provider, offering a comprehensive managed threat detection and response solution with 24/7 threat hunting. The platform is designed for IT service providers, and protects businesses against persistent foothold attacks, ransomware and more. The solution provides automated threat detection, backed by human intelligence and threat hunting. Unlike other solutions in the MDR market, Huntress is focused on protecting small-and-midsized business, protecting clients with under 1,000 users and small, or no, existing security team.
The Huntress ThreatOps team provides 24/7 monitoring for suspicious activity, with automated threat detection installed via agents on endpoint devices. Admins can remediate against threats with just one click, with automated actions to remove malicious software, or can take advantage of human security expertise to help remove malicious activities. The platform provides comprehensive analytics, with an intuitive dashboard with clear metrics, incident reporting, and human analysis and expertise. Huntress also provides endpoint and antivirus management capabilities.
Huntress is a leading MDR solution for SMBs, with a comprehensive feature set. Customers praise the easy set up and deployment, supported by a robust set of integrations. Customers also praise the effectiveness of the threat hunting, with little user integration required to remediate against threats and secure organizations. Huntress is particularly well suited to organizations struggling with ransomware, with a “ransomware canary” feature that enables faster and earlier detection of ransomware threats.
Rapid7 Managed Detection and Response (MDR) takes a multi-layered approach to protecting your team against cyber-attacks, working to detect advanced threats cut off attackers before they can strike, and accelerate your security program.
This solution comes with a comprehensive set of features, including user behavior analytics, which establish a baseline of healthy user activity to be compared against any anomalies; and attacker behavior analytics, which helps identify threats earlier in the attack chain using knowledge of past attacks. Rapid7 MRD also provides advanced environment visibility and endpoint detection, network traffic analysis, file integrity monitoring, and centralized log management designed to deliver a smooth search across your logs and automate compliance. This solution saves time usually spent investigating alerts by uniting all relevant data into a single timeline, providing better visibility and facilitating quicker investigations. They make use of deception technology to help entice and quickly identify malicious behavior and offer a number of automation features designed to increase efficiency.
The Rapid7 Security Operations Center (SOC) works as an extension of your team, defending your environment so year team can focus on important security initiatives. Their managed detection and response solution is built to support security teams of all sizes and experiences, helping them to strengthen their security posture, find and stop potential attackers, and keep ahead of emerging threats.
GreyMatter is a comprehensive XDR solution that provides holistic threat detection and response, designed for enterprise organizations. ReliaQuest is a market leading threat intelligence platform, collecting massive amounts of threat data from customer intelligence, government, and commercial feeds. GreyMatter contextualizes this data in an intuitive platform that provides a comprehensive overview of threats, fine-tuned to your organization. It also provides automated, machine learning powered threat detection, investigation, and response, with integrations across your business applications.
GreyMatter enables much faster threat remediation, with a set of automated threat detection and response rules that are fully customized to your organization’s existing network environment. SOC teams have an overview of your business risk in real time, with automated protection against hacks and sophisticated cyber-threats such as ransomware. Alerting is highly specific, with incident response designed to tune out the noise and focus on high priority alerts your team should be aware of.
GreyMatter also offers integrated attack simulations. These are based on-real world attacks and can be run from the perspective of both an attacker, and a defender. This enables SOC teams to measure the effectiveness of their security technologies. GreyMatter customers praise this solution for their powerful monitoring and reporting, and integrations to existing services, as well as their level of expertise. This is a powerful service designed to protect enterprise organizations from sophisticated cyber-attacks, complimenting your existing SOC team.
SentinelOne is a leading security solution for endpoints, cloud environments and data centers, delivering a single unified platform for threat detection, protection, response, remediation and forensics. SentinelOne’s Singularity XDR endpoint protection platform is widely recognized by industry analysts as a powerful platform for rapid remediation of endpoint threats. SentinelOne was founded in 2013, and headquartered in Mountain Bay, California.
Vigilance Respond MDR and Vigilance Respond MDR Pro are SentineOne’s MDR service offerings – the Pro option includes digital forensics and incident response (DFIR). Both services help improve your security response times and improve alerting and analysis thanks to 24/7 threat monitoring and threat documentation by SentinelOne’s in-house team of experts. SentinelOne claim to have the industries fastest MTTR (mean-time-to-respond) at just 18-minutes.
Other features of this service include active threat hunting, alerting and remediation guidance, incident-based triage and hunting, ongoing reporting, and security assessments. The Pro option also offers digital forensics and malware investigation tools. The MDR service sits on top of SentinelOne’s powerful AI based endpoint detection and XDR engines.
SentinelOne is a popular service with users, who praise the quality of the in-house team’s technical knowledge and straightforward deployment process. We recommend this as a leading MDR solution for teams of all sizes, looking for autonomous protection, backed by a leading technical team.
FAQs
What Is Managed Detection And Response (MDR)?
Managed detection and response (MDR) are outsourced, specialized cybersecurity services, which use combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence, edge computing, and human intelligence to discover and remediate against cyber-threats. MDR services connect organizations to highly trained IT staff who can help to monitor, analyze, and respond to incidents and anomalies in their network.
How Does MDR Work?
The best MDR providers implement a wide range of advanced tools as well as offer highly skilled and trained staff to be able to monitor, detect, prioritize, investigate, and remediate threats appropriately and effectively. They utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to automate network scanning and threat detection, and to reduce the overall number of alerts. The human side of MDR consists of threat hunters, data analysts, security analysts, and more to provide specialized insight and problem–solving expertise, to help analyze threats and implement the most efficient, effective incident response workflows.
What Features Should You Look For In An MDR Solution?
A Managed Detection And Response (MDR) solution gives you comprehensive threat detection and remediation capabilities, managed for your organization by a team of security experts. When choosing an MDR solution to partner with, there are some key features to consider:
- Threat hunting and alert prioritization
- Information analysis, triage, and reporting
- Automatic, facilitated, and managed remediation options
- 24/7 Support team on-hand
- Vulnerability insights
The main reason for deploying an MDR solution is to quickly identify and remove network threats. Because of this, threat hunting, alerting, information triage, and managed threat remediation is extremely important. Choosing an MDR is also about finding the right partner for your business, so it’s also important to consider the credibility of the managed service, your organizations specific requirements and scale, and of course the cost of the MDR solution.
