Over 500 years ago the phrase ‘prevention is better than cure’ was first used by Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus to describe how it is often easier to stop something happening in the first place than to repair the damages caused after it has happened.
400 years later the study of the immune system first began with Elias Metchniikff’s discovery of cells that engulf and destroy invading pathogens.
The way that modern cyber security should operate can be heavily influenced by our understanding of how biology prevents attacks as well as identifying and responding to them when they occur.
In 2023 Gartner predicted the rise of the Digital Immune Systems (DIS). DIS protects applications and services from anomalies, such as the effects of software bugs or security issues by making applications more resilient so that they recover quickly from failures. It can reduce business continuity risks created when critical applications and services are severely compromised or stop working altogether.
A robust prevention, detection and response solution that provides integrated vulnerability management with extended detection and response capabilities provides you with the necessary blend of visibility and proactive security with detection, response and containment capabilities.
Leveraging both MXDR and AVM (evolving to continuous Threat and Exposure Management) capabilities gives the clients both proactive active analysis of their environment, allow for pre-emptive action of risk mitigation; and the swift reactive responsiveness offered by a holistically delivered MXDR platform and service, ideally delivered from a 24/7/365 SOC. This proactive and reactive capability will give the customer confidence and knowledge in their current exposure posture, and context of any current threats and their potential risks.
This service provides clients the core features of attack surface and vulnerability management alongside advanced detection, response and automated containment actions, combined and enriched by Threat Intelligence within the service provider Security Operations Centre. Optimised onboarding and mobilisation can support clients with all manner of existing deployments e.g. ‘Greenfield’; No VM or MDR solution, ‘Partial’; Technology already in place in parts from our partner vendors but requiring tuning, enhancement and visibility gaps requiring resolution through to ‘Maturing’; full VM and MDR capabilities but not optimised for client cyber maturity or return on investment. Once onboarded it is vital that your MXDR and VM solutions continuously improve, drive transformation within your business and can be tracked to demonstrate return on investment. Through reporting, service management, trend and contextual analysis we ensure your services are working hard for you. A synergistic approach to MXDR and AVM provides an opportunity to genuinely assess at a high level and interrogate at a meaningful granular level the specific security posture, vulnerability profile and mitigation prioritisation applicable to your unique business and its entire operational framework.
Advanced Vulnerability Management Service
Advanced Vulnerability Management (AVM) that is embedded within a managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) Service to comprehensively and holistically identify all assets and vulnerabilities across the entire attack surface is a vital step in developing your security maturity. This approach provides vulnerability identification and mitigation before attackers can leverage them. Sapphire’s AVM is run as a service to complement and enhance our MXDR service by providing:
- Continuous vulnerability assessment across all technologies and assets
- Continuous and real-time vulnerability management visibility
- Risk and Vulnerability posture specific risk deferral, acceptance, and tracking
- Consultative approach to prioritisation of remediation requirements based on threat and vulnerability intelligence data, business context including your specific risk landscape, threat intelligence and asset classification
- A comprehensive asset management framework that improves connectivity and understanding across your business
- Trend, statistical, and summary information is provided monthly via meaningful reports and executive review meetings
- A comprehensive overview of all vulnerabilities relevant to you by criticality, severity (in terms of the vulnerability and its specific impact in accordance with your sector, threat landscape and global presence with analysis into severity updated daily), combined with full detail centric analyst commentary.
All collected vulnerability data should be correlated with your MXDR platform for ease of digestion of the information, for use in cross domain visibility and investigation requirements, enabling a single pane of glass view of all relevant data on your security estate.As AI becomes more pervasive, you require an in depth understanding of the risks, controls, and mitigations relating to Artificial Intelligence. SOCs must utilise advanced AI, ML and automation integrations, deployed using proprietary engineering and vendor capability from vendors. This technology support aids human augmentation and enhances the ability of the SOC to detect and respond at scale.
Conclusion
The threat of Ransomware is pervasive across all industries and require a multi-faceted response. Sapphire’s integration of Vulnerability Management, Global Threat Intelligence, Detection and Response brought together under our enriched, integrated Managed SOC services provides high visibility, rapid response, containment and prevention of serious exposure to business critical and sensitive data.
This is a significant consideration to the Ransomware threat we know our clients face today. Unlike most cyber security firms Sapphire is also able to offer the other key components in this multi-faceted response. Threat Intelligence, testing, training, advisory, assessment and across both IT and Cyber Physical (Operational Technology) systems. Sapphire’s Cyber Physical capabilities, fully integrated into our IT Cyber Defence capability.
Our approach to service delivery is to provide modular services that can be consumed individually or when procured together, provide compound benefit to our clients. This approach sees an integrated service delivery model with a single TAM and unified reporting and operational communication channels. For example, we have created a singular dashboard that aggregates insight from our VM and MXDR platforms so you can realise the benefits of our modular delivery. We maximise the specialist technology of leading providers such as Microsoft and Tenable and our expert SOC team so that Sapphire is an extension of your security team.
Just like in the case of the human body’s immune system, technology, sound fundamentals and good hygiene are vital to protect your vital organs – a combined cyber security system covering vulnerability management and advanced detection and response enables you to proactively reduce your attack surface whilst rapidly detecting and responding to threats when they do occur.
To learn more about Sapphire’s services, please get in touch: 0845 58 27001.
