IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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Vectra AI debuts global MXDR for hybrid attack defense
Fri, 16th Feb 2024

Vectra AI has announced the launch of the first worldwide, always-on, open MXDR service designed to defend against hybrid attacks. This launch comes at a time when data breaches and cyber-attacks have been widely reported in the new year, putting extra strain on overworked security teams and pushing governments and businesses to reassess their cyber strategies. As estimated by IDC, 90% of local and regional governments will be affected by cyberattacks and crimes formatted through weaponized GenAI by 2027. This is predicted to drive the adoption of new, human-centred cybersecurity and public safety approaches.

Chris Fisher, Vectra AI's Regional Director for Australia and New Zealand, said, "The evolving threat landscape has made threat detection and response increasingly siloed and complex. Organisations need effective solutions for advanced hybrid attackers. Vectra MXDR solves challenges associated with traditional threat detection and response models by combining human intelligence and Vectra Attack Signal Intelligence to enable a robust and round-the-clock threat detection and response. This places security expertise at the fingertips of SOC teams who can now zero in on critical activities that stops attacks before they become a threat."

In terms of the shift to hybrid and multi-cloud environments, every enterprise is now a hybrid enterprise and all modern attacks are hybrid attacks. Legacy threat detection and response solutions are no longer adequate for defending against new threats, escalating the need for threat detection across a broader hybrid attack surface.

However, the introduction of various detection systems has led to the development of siloed tools and a sprawl of controls, creating an unmanageable volume of alerts for SOC leaders. Recent findings indicate SOC teams are allocating nearly four hours daily on manual alert triage, leading to an overwhelming workload, increased burnout, and more turnover among SOC analysts. As teams struggle with this, perpetrators continue to exploit system complexity, latency, and noise to move laterally, advance attacks, and extract data unnoticed. To prevent modern hybrid attacks from becoming breaches, SOC teams require accurate signals at a swift and scalable pace.

Vectra MXDR allows enterprises to consolidate every facet of threat detection and response into one integrated service. By maintaining integrations with the industry's leading EDR platforms, including Crowdstrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft Defender, the MXDR analysts at Vectra can monitor the health of an entire security system and take direct action, regardless of where the signal originates.

Benefits of Vectra MXDR include AI-Driven Attack Signal Intelligence, 24x7x365 hybrid attack defence expertise, full end-to-end coverage, remote response and remediation, adaptability according to customer needs, and managed security policy configurations. These wide-ranging benefits make Vectra MXDR a comprehensive tool for SOC teams, providing complete coverage, clarity, and control across the entire hybrid attack surface.

According to Gary Ruiz, VP of World Wide Professional Services at Vectra AI, "The reality is enterprises need a combination of endpoint protection solution and network security tools to safeguard against hybrid attacks. Our approach to XDR is unique because not only are we integrating these technologies into one offering but we're using our AI-driven signal to gather insights across the entire hybrid attack surface to find the real attacks. Our experts are monitoring around the clock and helping customers deal with incidents by responding and remediating them on their behalf, which significantly reduces workloads for SOC teams. It really allows us to be a lot more effective for our customers."

Vectra MXDR is available to current customers, offering a unique combination of cutting-edge AI technology and expert human analysis to fight against the modern threat of hybrid cyber-attacks.