As cyber-security threats evolve, organisations try to block advances by introducing more tools to protect against specific scenarios.

It can easily feel like there’s no such thing as enough security because there’s always a new threat, a new requirement and a new solution. Once security teams have rolled out endpoint detection and response (EDR), for example, it’s straight on to identity defences. From there, cloud security is the next logical priority.

You can see how the average enterprise organisation ends up with around 45 security tools, according to ZDNET. And those tools aren’t necessarily making life easier or more secure. Indeed, some 77% of security experts believe that threat detection and response is actually becoming more difficult.

Drill into the reasons why security experts are struggling, and you’ll find that too many organisations have multiple, siloed solutions that increase their workload and stretch the security team to breaking point. There’s potentially a screen to watch for every system, and every tool needs a different set of skills to be effective.

Beyond that, there’s the very real risk of ‘alert fatigue’. This is where the security professional is overwhelmed by the number of systems generating repetitive, low-risk alerts, and potentially misses a high-risk event in the process.

This is often made worse by difficulties correlating information across products. In fact, according to the Enterprise Strategy Group, 47% of organisations believe they don’t have adequate skills for effective security operations. It’s clear that organisations are struggling to protect their core activities.

The trouble is, scaling back on security investment isn’t an option either. Take identity protection, for example.

In 2023, attackers have increasingly focused on using compromised passwords and accounts to get a foothold in an organisation. One report by Verizon found that over 80% of data breaches could be attributed to stolen, compromised or weak credentials.

Once inside, attackers are hard to detect because their actions appear like normal behaviour. So it becomes critical to maintain awareness of exposed credentials, stay alert for old accounts that suddenly reactivate and carry out other identity defence activities. And this is just as true for any cloud security the organisation may have.

Clearly, the security tools are essential – so the answer must lie in finding better ways for organisations to manage them.

Deepening our partnership with CrowdStrike, we’ve combined CrowdStrike Falcon XDR with our industry-leading managed service to help organisations detect and respond to threats more effectively. The world-leading CrowdStrike Falcon platform protects endpoints, cloud workloads, identity, and data.

A managed service makes things simple and takes the pressure off security teams. And it works like this:

1. Our team of experts sets up and tunes the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, so that false positives are minimised, and only real threats are detected.
2.  The platform collects and analyses threat data from CrowdStrike Falcon modules and third party integrations, providing better threat visibility across an estate – all in one console. 
3. Our global team of cyber-security experts monitors and analyses these alerts, responding to threats quickly, 24/7, 365 days a year. 
4. Compromised endpoints are automatically quarantined using our Eagle-i platform.
    

We then continue to manage and maintain the platform, fine-tune the security policies, pursue continuous improvements, and provide regular security reports.

The result?

Organisations can respond faster to real threats and improve their overall security posture. Effectiveness goes up, the strain on security resources goes down, and a smaller team can handle the whole organisation’s security more easily and with greater accuracy.

We knew that if CrowdStrike could support our own complex technology estate, it would be able to support our customers too.

CrowdStrike’s next-generation, cloud-native, AI-driven, EDR solution displaced our existing legacy solution, which scanned against signatures for indicators of compromise, but not against the new best practice of indicators of attack.

The CrowdStrike Falcon platform gives our security service the critical cyber-threat intelligence we need to understand the context of the threat environment and make better-informed decisions to prevent security incidents.

Thanks to the Falcon platform, our security service can take a reactive, first-responder posture. We can see into our customers’ machines and investigate breaches within the ‘golden’ first hour to act with speed against attackers. It lets us stop attackers’ progress, eject them, and remediate against any damage to maintain our customers’ integrity.

We also use threat intelligence from CrowdStrike (and other services) to detect threats. And we can identify risks by seeing what’s happening in real-time and running forensic investigations on logs.

We seek out and collaborate with world-leading, best-in-class partners to create the security solutions and services organisations need today and tomorrow. That’s why we’re delighted to be part of the Elite CrowdStrike Powered Service Provider programme, putting us in the top 1% of their partners.

For our customers, this means access to continually evolving security monitoring capabilities that can incorporate so many of the major tools they already have.

Since 2017, our close partnership with CrowdStrike has meant that our experts have been properly trained and certified to ensure we provide the best service for our customers. And, within our partnership, dedicated specialists from both organisations work together to drive excellence across products, cyber-security, go-to-market readiness, and sales.

Ready to find out more? Read about our Extended Detection and Response solutions, or contact us to talk to an expert.