Cyber attacks on large organizations dominate the news headlines. So you might be surprised to learn that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are actually more frequent targets of cyber attacks. Many SMEs understand this risk first hand.
In a recent survey, 58% of SME CISOs said their attack risk was higher compared to enterprises. However, they do not have the same resources as enterprises – making it nearly impossible to protect their organizations from widespread and increasingly sophisticated attacks that do not discriminate based on company size.
What is their solution?
Enhanced Detection and Response (XDR).
During a recent webinar, Cynet’s Director of Product Strategy, George Tubin, and guest speaker Forrester Senior Analyst Allie Mellen discussed the most serious cybersecurity challenges for SMEs and how they can benefit from XDR platforms.
Here are four key takeaways from the conversation.
The biggest cyber security challenges for SMEs
Why do cybercriminals target SMEs?
Answer: Easy targets!
Most SMEs do not invest in effective threat detection and incident response tools. The result: a weak security infrastructure that increases the risk of attack. And they can barely afford to put some boots on the ground, much less afford a full-fledged cybersecurity operations center (SOC).
Then there’s the cybersecurity talent shortage. With only a few individuals tasked with protecting the company from a constant barrage of threats, these small teams cannot realistically protect their organization around the clock.
Plus, since security team members wear many hats, they feel overwhelmed. This leads to alerts from security tools – even legitimate ones – being ignored once again, leaving the door open for a successful attack. Day-to-day operational activities and manual processes further prevent them from keeping up with new threats and developing a robust threat detection and response strategy.
Finally, SME security professionals often struggle to learn, integrate, and maintain the various security tools in the organization, limiting their ability to address threats and keep attackers out.
The main strategic priorities for SMEs for 2023
According to Forrester, their recent survey found that improving their security operations strategy was the top priority for most SMEs (30%), not only to protect business-critical data, but also to guide the implementation of controls powerful to satisfy regulatory requirements around data privacy.
Over 25% of respondents said they want to use security capabilities built into their existing tools rather than using third-party technologies. This finding shows that SMBs want to reduce security costs and complexity as they explore ways to protect against persistent threats coming from multiple sources.
To mitigate these threats, SMEs need simpler and more integrated cybersecurity tools like XDR.
XDR offers multiple tools that would otherwise be costly to purchase and then provides these tools pre-integrated, which is also challenging for SMBs to achieve. Some XDRs have extensive automation to reduce the manual burden on smaller IT security teams.
Differences between Open XDR and Native XDR
XDR collects security data from various sources to enable automated threat detection, analysis and remediation. It can provide a comprehensive view of the attack surface and enable SME security teams to build, and sometimes automate, better incident response workflows.
Open or hybrid XDR integrates third-party security tools to collect telemetry and automatically execute response actions. Since it requires a lot of integrations, SMEs with small security teams may not be able to deploy and use it as easily.
Native XDR, on the other hand, combines tools and security capabilities from a vendor’s portfolio to provide a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and use. You can view Cynet 360 AutoXDR™ as an example of one of these tools.
Best practices for evaluating XDR solutions before purchase
In the webinar, Allie recommends that all SMBs follow some best practices when evaluating XDR offerings for their security requirements.
An important factor is determining how much support a vendor provides. Vendors focused on providing superior customer support enable SMEs with small security teams to take full advantage of their platform’s telemetry, threat investigations and automated incident response capabilities.
SMEs should also ask about the telemetry data the tool collects. many of security data does not always equate to good or useful data. Additionally, too much data can overwhelm SME security teams. That’s why it’s essential to confirm that the platform collects useful telemetry that will help strengthen their cyber defenses without overburdening analysts.
Want more knowledge? Watch “XDR is the perfect solution for SMEs” on demand here.
