The Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Security Services to a Digital MDR: A Guide for CISOs

Digital Managed Detection and Response services (Digital MDRs) are outsourced cyber security teams fundamentally built on strong technological layer. Focusing on protecting businesses from cyber threats by comprehensively and continuously monitoring risk across digital channels.

As the threats organizations face in the digital realm continue to evolve and proliferate, it seems only logical for organizations to outsource cyber security to a digital MDR. It makes even more sense considering the advanced technology and leading experience offered by Managed Detection and Response services (MDRs) when compared to most, if not all, internal cyber security teams.

Before making a decision about outsourcing, it is critical to evaluate the gaps in your current security posture. Conduct a careful internal evaluation to determine your needs and capabilities in terms of funding, knowhow and manpower. Only after a thorough review in these areas,  can you answer the question of whether outsourcing to a digital MDR provider is a sensible choice for your organization.

To help with this process, we have compiled a list of pros and cons of outsourcing cyber security to a digital MDR.

The Cons of Outsourcing to a digital MDR

Any MDR provider will have access to sensitive data both in your network and beyond, in order to properly detect cyber attacks. For publicly traded companies, this can be a crucial factor in deciding against any kind of outsourcing at all, because a leak of sensitive company information could have an adverse effect on the stock prices.

By outsourcing cyber security your organization’s weaknesses as well as sensitive customer data are exposed to a third party. You need to consider whether outsourcing cyber security could alter your customer’s perception of your organization as being unsafe.

With that being said, this is more of a mindset issue than anything else, as most of the top MDR providers will have significant controls in place to both secure the data and obfuscate sensitive/private data.

Lastly,  outsourcing may result in a lack of cyber security focus internally. Because a third party now has our backs, the thinking might go, there’s less of a need to be vigilant.

The Pros of Outsourcing

Outsourcing cyber security to a digital MDR, quite simply, ensures better detection and response. In the end, vigilance of cyber threats lurking in digital channels is digital MDRs’ core business. They invest in the latest technology and make sure it is being constantly updated. They hire highly-skilled expert staff that’s more experienced when it comes to threat detection and response than any in-house security team. Offering these services to a multitude of customers across several industries and verticals, a digital MDR can correlate and cross-reference cyber threats, while gathering and analyzing data from a wide variety of sources at the same time . As a result, a digital MDR has a better understanding of the constantly-evolving and complicated threat landscape than in-house security teams do.

Digital MDRs are laser focused on monitoring digital risks that organizations face on social, mobile and web channels. Their sophisticated digital risk monitoring tools are built from the ground up to detect and respond to cyber threats on your digital channels.

But it’s not just about the cutting-edge technology. A digital MDR has a dedicated, well-trained team of security specialists to support you and mitigate the threats before they materialize into events. These specialists have the time, know-how, resources and technology to stay ahead of the game. And an MDR has the resources and ability to scale up or down services as needed, knowing that clients sometimes need extra assistance.

Fully understanding digital risk requires analyzing data in the right context while continuously gathering information across disparate digital assets. To do this, you need to invest in a wide variety of technologies. That is expensive and labor intensive.

Digital MDRs consolidate these efforts, bundling a variety of technologies and seasoned expertise together to guard against digital risks. To learn more about digital MDRs, sign up to our blog.