How MDR Helps Businesses Protect Against Top Cyber Threats
Imagine this: You’re running a growing business, come into the office one morning, and log on to your computer, only to find that all of your customers' data is locked. You’re presented with a message demanding $200,000 in Bitcoin to prevent your customer files from being deleted forever.
You’ve just been hit by ransomware — and the cost to recover could put you out of business.
This isn’t just a hypothetical, either. Cybercriminals are increasingly targeting small and midsize businesses (SMBs): 43% of all cyber attacks are aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs), and 82% of SMBs are targeted specifically by ransomware.
SMBs are attractive targets to cyber criminals because they’re often less equipped to withstand or recover from an attack, in large part due to restricted budgets and small or non-existent security teams. Yet, despite this growing risk, most modern cybersecurity solutions cater to enterprise organizations, leaving SMBs struggling to protect themselves on limited budgets.
This is where managed detection and response (MDR) can help. MDR is an affordable and valuable cybersecurity solution for SMBs, addressing top cyber threats while delivering budget-friendly access to 24/7 monitoring, rapid threat response, and enterprise-grade cybersecurity expertise and protection.
What is managed detection and response?
MDR is a security service that protects the devices and services that access your business’ network. Laptops, desktops, smartphones: These are common endpoints that are often compromised by attackers to gain access to business networks.
MDR services provide around-the-clock threat monitoring of your endpoints, preemptive threat detection, and rapid response, This accelerates your remediation time and minimizes or eliminates an attack's impact. In fact, businesses with MDR respond 50% faster on average, dramatically minimizing the impact of a cyber attack.
43% of all cyber attacks are aimed at small and midsize businesses, and 82% of these businesses are targeted specifically by ransomware.
MDR is a cost-effective way to strengthen your cybersecurity without the expense of building an in-house team. It provides expert-driven threat detection and response, giving your business enterprise-grade protection while maximizing your limited IT resources.
With MDR, your business can focus on its core priorities, knowing your cybersecurity needs are in the hands of true security experts.
How MDR protects against top cyber attacks
MDR helps protect against the leading cyber attacks in four fundamental ways:
Delivers real-time visibility into network traffic across servers, devices, cloud applications, log data, and endpoints
Provides constant monitoring for active asset and network vulnerabilities, looking for weak entry points and unpatched updates
Reveals suspicious behavior and malicious activity to identify threats before they turn into attacks
Responds to identified incidents with customer alerts and mitigates threats before disrupting business operations
Ransomware attacks
Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts a victim’s data and demands payment in exchange for a decryption key, often with data deletion or public exposure threats.
An estimated 82% of ransomware attacks are on SMBs with an average cost of $200,000 per incident. What’s worse, approximately 60% of these businesses fold within six months as a direct result of the attack.
How MDR can help: MDR continuously monitors your network activity and uses behavioral analytics to identify real-time suspicious patterns as early as possible. Efforts to execute a ransomware attack are detected and actioned upon immediately. If a ransomware indicator is detected, MDR triggers an automated response, enabling security teams to contain the threat before it spreads.
The rapid response capabilities of MDR allow security experts to isolate affected systems and segment compromised devices from your network to prevent lateral spread. By containing the threat quickly, security teams can minimize damage to your business and significantly reduce downtime.
An estimated 82% of ransomware attacks are on SMBs with an average cost of $200,000 per incident.
Phishing
Phishing is a tactic that involves attackers tricking victims into sharing sensitive account credentials and financial information through email. Some phishing attacks also prompt users to click a link or download and open an attachment that appears legitimate but is actually malicious.
Phishing is one of the most common entry points for attackers targeting SMBs. Once attackers convince one employee to open an email or share personal information, they can access larger systems and networks. Often, attackers use phishing tactics to gain access to a business’ email account, then carry out wire fraud attacks resulting in the theft of potentially millions of dollars.
How MDR can help: MDR analyzes email traffic and behavior patterns to detect phishing signs. MDR can integrate with other email security solutions to analyze inbound messages for unusual patterns, suspicious attachments, and malicious links.
Even if a phishing attempt bypasses email filters and an employee clicks on a malicious link, MDR can detect anomalous behavior on endpoints, such as unusual software or malware installation, unexpected credential access attempts, unusual file executions, and data exfiltration. MDR can also automatically isolate compromised accounts and devices, alerting security experts and prompting them to deactivate exposed accounts and devices to prevent further corruption.
Security awareness training is one of the best ways to boost your employee cyber knowledge, meet compliance requirements, and protect against phishing and credential theft attempts.
Credential theft
Attackers frequently steal usernames, passwords, and other login information to access sensitive systems, accounts, and networks. Credential theft was the primary cause of 45% of all data breaches, which can, in turn, enable identity theft, financial fraud and other events that cost organizations millions of dollars.
For SMBs, average breach costs vary depending on business size. The average data breach cost reported in IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 was $4.81M. For SMBs, that cost may be lower. However, SMBs face the same damages, which often have more devastating consequences. Enterprise organizations may survive breaches due to significant financial reserves, large security teams, strong branding, and business longevity. However, SMBs typically lack financial, legal, and operational resources, experience, and credibility to withstand a significant and costly data breach.
How MDR can help: MDR detects unusual login times and locations. For example, a 4 a.m. login attempt not normally observed or one from a new or unusual location, such as a foreign country or otherwise unexpected place, may be flagged. These suspicious or unexpected behaviors could be signs of credential theft.
MDR also detects and alerts consecutive failed account, system, or network login attempts and questionable activity from known compromised accounts, which are all common attacker behaviors. Attackers use guessed passwords and often try to access accounts many times in a short period; they may also seek access to compromised accounts and any sensitive information within them.
Educating employees to prevent attacks
Above and beyond the benefits of an MDR solution, businesses can work to address the root cause of phishing attacks and credential theft by educating employees about common social engineering tactics.
Security awareness training is one of the best ways to boost your employee cyber knowledge, meet compliance requirements, and protect against phishing and credential theft attempts.
How to choose the right MDR provider
SMBs have many choices in MDR providers and should consider one with a track record of success in threat mitigation that comes from 24/7/365 continuous monitoring and detection, proactive response, and remediation — not just alerting on potential threats.
With so many tools and services claiming to be the perfect fit, picking the right MDR provider can be a challenge. Coalition recommends asking three key questions when evaluating a security partner:
Do they have a holistic view of the threat landscape?
Do they have dedicated security experts on staff?
Are they incentivized to spot a threat before it strikes?
A strong security partnership should simplify your operations and proactively reduce risk. If you already have a security provider, it’s important to ensure they’re truly meeting your needs. Watch for these five key warning signs that could indicate that it’s time for a change.
And if you’re looking for something new, consider why a cyber insurance provider might actually be the best security partner for your business.
How secure is your business? Take a proactive approach and protect what matters most. Schedule a free security assessment today and learn how MDR can keep your business safe from cyber threats.
