In recent years, cyber threats have grown markedly in sophistication and frequency, with each attack likely to incur significant costs, reputational damages, system downtime, and legal penalties. Faced with this danger, ensuring strong security across all devices and networks has become a core business priority.
Many professional services firms are answering this need by incorporating cybersecurity monitoring and response into their offerings. RSM US, the country’s fifth-largest accounting firm with five California offices including in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, is one such example. RSM offers around-the-clock threat detection, response, and intelligence services to its clients through its global managed security operations service, RSM Defense.
To optimize their cyber protection, RSM has just announced its partnership with another California company, San Jose-based Stellar Cyber. Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform unifies different security tools and data sources to provide SIEM, NDR, UEBA and TPA capabilities in one comprehensive platform.
The Power of XDR
Todd Willoughby, Threat Operations Leader for RSM Defense, has worked in the cybersecurity field for 17 years. Over this time, countless new security tools have been developed, but this surge hasn’t necessarily simplified threat prevention.
Today’s attacks are more complex than in the past, and so data must be correlated and normalized across all point solutions to reveal the full picture. RSM US is responsible for the cybersecurity of a global client network with thousands of endpoints, so Willoughby’s team needed a way to rapidly detect and respond to incidents right away.
XDR, or Extended Detection and Response, is a relatively new type of security incident detection system that automatically collects and correlates data from multiple sources of security signals. The data is then parsed with advanced AI and ML technology to detect threats and prioritize them by severity. Threat hunters can quickly analyze and triage new events, and automate investigation and response activities.
Currently, less than 5% of security vendors employ XDR, but experts project that this number will soar to over 40% by 2027. What’s more, over 96% of Chief Information Security Officers are intent on streamlining their security infrastructure in the forthcoming years. Among them, 63% have earmarked XDR as their primary means of achieving this goal. XDR delivers improved visibility by working across multiple layers and attack surfaces, reducing the length of time required to identify and respond to an attack.
Taking the value of XDR a step further, the “open” nature of Stellar Cyber’s XDR also means that organizations can retain all of their current defenses without compromising. The platform automatically aggregates and correlates data from a range of security tools, integrating flawlessly to provide a singular, holistic overview of a company’s entire cybersecurity attack surface.
“Stellar Cyber is taking a different approach to what’s been offered in the market,” Willoughby commented. “Instead of just putting out just one tool, they are addressing the challenge of delivering a complete view of security events across our clients’ infrastructure under one pane of glass.”
What’s more, Willoughby said, “because it’s an open platform, integrating clients’ new or existing EDR and other security tools and data sources is a non-issue.”
Beyond Legacy Technology
Another factor that led to the partnership between Stellar Cyber and RSM is the former’s offering of multi-tenant features.
As RSM US manages an international web of cybersecurity defense for its clients, these features streamline integration and execution. Customer templates, individual modifiers, and provisioning of specific services and security levels on a case-by-case level help to meet the unique needs of each client.
Willoughby further highlights the simplicity of the Stellar Cyber platform, emphasizing its ability to effectively manage, monitor, and respond to threats for its clients in an intuitive environment. The platform is driven by machine learning, so can be used effectively by newer junior analysts, simplifying their training to RSM Defense’s rigorous standards.
“Finding great senior cybersecurity analysts is tough – even if you can find one, they can cost the business $150,000 plus a year, and most companies can’t afford that,” said Willoughby. Using Stellar Cyber, in contrast, RSM US is able to reduce risk and improve response times while avoiding extra costs. Established Stellar Cyber customers report an 8x improvement in MTTD (mean time to detect) and a huge 20x improvement in MTTR (mean time to repair).
The Future of Managed Cybersecurity
Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform represents the best of cutting-edge cybersecurity. RSM US has found a partner that addresses their concerns and surpasses them.
In a commitment to continually improve and refine its offering, Stellar Cyber aims to constantly absorb feedback and make changes accordingly. Delivering these updates in regular rollouts, Stellar Cyber constantly advances the field, providing value-added service for its clients and channel partners. Willoughby stated, “Stellar Cyber listens to customers – they continually improve the platform, and when we get software updates, we see new features that benefit us and our clients directly because they’ve implemented what we asked for.”
With the partnership between Stellar Cyber and RSM US exemplifying both the power of XDR platforms and the business utility of an open approach, we’ll likely see more companies move toward this modern form of comprehensive cybersecurity defense in the future.
Copyright © 2024 California Business Journal. All Rights Reserved.
Related Posts
