Why Threat Detection Shouldn’t Be Your Next DIY Project 

We’ve all had that big home improvement project that didn’t turn out the way we planned and left us with more of a mess than we started with. Or if you’re more of the culinary type, maybe that three-layered cake with delicate icing flowers turned out less than ideal. While attempting to tackle these lofty projects, one thing is usually clear: “Experts exist for a reason.” 

When it comes to cybersecurity, no organization is completely impenetrable. In fact, nearly 75% of security professionals state their organization has been breached in the last 12 months.ⁱ Further, on average, it takes 21 days (about 3 weeks) for security teams to even identify that a breach has occurred. It is unsurprising, then, that a top strategic priority for security decision-makers is improving SecOps.ⁱⁱ  

For many security teams, however, this is an ineffective effort if they are attempting to create their own security operations center (SOC) in-house. For starters, the average security team is often staffed with too few people who likely don’t have the proper training and skills, and who are also struggling with overly manual analysis that takes away focus from more strategic work.  

Turning to Managed Detection and Response for your SOC 

Despite how challenging it is to implement a home-grown version, cybersecurity isn’t optional. To keep up, organizations are expected to improve their detection and response, automate their processes, and proactively hunt for undetected threats. Without a dedicated expert team and cutting-edge technology at your disposal, that’s a lot to deal with. For organizations that don’t have the ability or capacity to uplevel their security, a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution could be the answer you’re looking for. MDR can provide organizations with the right security skill sets and tools, without all of the hiring and manual labor that goes into creating your own SOC from scratch. 
 
Furthermore, with 24x7x365 coverage and expert human-led risk mitigation, MDR will detect more suspicious behavior, accelerate response times, and allow organizations to shift from reactivity to a proactive approach to security. In addition to creating a more secure organization, implementing an MDR also enables teams to shift focus from constantly dealing with alerts to more strategic work, such as aligning cybersecurity goals to positive business outcomes.  

False Positives, Alerts After-Hours, and other Challenges 

For any organization struggling to do security all on their own, Critical Start can help. Critical Start’s MDR enables your analysts to focus on higher-value tasks as it weeds out over 99% of false positives. And even if a real alert occurs after-hours, which happens often, our expert team is prepared 24x7x365 to help respond (a standard that many organizations are unable to maintain on their own) and can act on your behalf. We also move quickly, providing a mean time to resolution (MTTR) SLA of one-hour or less for all alerts regardless of severity (and in practice, average MTTR is actually half of the allotted time).  

Aside from the threat detection services expected, our platform lets users: 

• Access data and information specific to your team. With Critical Start, you can measure your individual team members’ MTTR and use this information to better customize who gets what alert, likely creating even faster response times.  
• Enable faster response times with the industry-first MobileSOC®, which allows users to respond directly from their phone. 
• Work easily and integrate with all types of security tools, including tools you already have implemented. 

For more information, watch our latest webinar featuring Chris Carlson, our Chief Product Officer, and guest speaker Joseph Blankenship, Vice President, Research Director, Security & Risk at Forrester Research, as we discuss how using an MDR provider can help take your security to the next level. 

1. Source: Forrester’s Security Survey, 2022. 

2. Ibid.