Why the Cybersecurity Skills Gap Need Not Leave Your Data Exposed

Would you pay $4.4 million to a bad actor to release your data from a ransomware attack as Colonial Pipeline did? Even if you don’t, you will be facing significant costs from business disruption as your organization recovers from an outage and restores its data. That’s what happened at the Republic of Ireland’s national health service.

These recent ransomware attacks are reminders that bad actors are working relentlessly. At the same time, it’s getting harder and harder to find and hire the cybersecurity experts that can stop them. In 2021 globally, there are expected to be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs. With attacks on the rise and few experts available to man the ramparts, the situation may feel hopeless.

Except that it’s not. Managed detection and response (MDR), a cloud-based service that combines technology with human expertise, helps organizations protect their data. MDR enables you to stop threats – including ransomware – before they interrupt business operations. By detecting threats quickly, often in just 30 minutes, MDR cuts dwell time, greatly reducing the possibility of damage.

Deep expertise when you need it

How is it possible for an MDR service provider to hire hard-to-find experts and apply their expertise efficiently? As a service focusing exclusively on cybersecurity, OpenText MDR hires and retains cybersecurity experts who have 15 years of experience or more. By pairing their expertise with best-of-breed technologies, OpenText MDR can put them to work investigating breaches and analyzing malware at your organization. OpenText combines human “eye on glass” observation and judgment with automation to cut through the plethora of alerts and false positives, reducing the “noise” by 97%.

OpenText MDR AI algorithms examine traffic patterns in search of unusual behavior, feeding the results to security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) consoles. You also get digital forensic and incident response (DFIR), which enables you to remediate threats rapidly and return to operations in a trusted state, while performing root-cause analysis.

Although the OpenText MDR virtual security operations center (VSOC) protects the data of many companies, it does so individually, by tuning its AI algorithms to each company’s traffic patterns and data sensitivity. In this way, OpenText MDR VSOC gains economies of scale, while maintaining focus on the unique needs of each customer.

Is all this as simple as flipping a switch? Almost. All that’s needed is OpenText MDR agent software for endpoints (including IoT devices) and a lightweight VMware proxy server. Once deployed, OpenText MDR enables your internal teams to focus on operational priorities such as prevention, rather than the laborious tasks of detection and response.

Forget about trying to outbid other organizations for scarce cybersecurity talent. In the battle with the bad guys, OpenText MDR puts cybersecurity experts on your side.

For more information, visit: https://www.opentext.com/products-and-solutions/services/consulting-services/security-services