Should Threat Intelligence Solutions Be Part of Your Overall Security Strategy?

In today’s toxic risk climate, effectively protecting your customers’ networks and data requires much more than just standard antivirus solutions. We reached out to Charlie Tomeo, VP of channel and technical sales for Webroot, to discuss the value of threat intelligence solutions when implementing a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy for clients, and how these solutions can also benefit an MSP’s business.

Why should IT solution providers employ more than just traditional Web security to protect their clients?

The rate of malware evolution means the applications we use every day become vulnerable very quickly, so they need to be updated almost constantly to prevent customers from being exposed to high levels of risk. The window of vulnerability at the application level can be very significant. That’s why businesses need to adopt a layered security approach that addresses today’s multifaceted and multivector threats.

What benefits can threat intelligence solutions provide that traditional security solutions cannot?

Threat intelligence helps reduce the window of vulnerability by being both highly accurate and timely. Good threat intelligence should correlate and contextualize disparate data points across files, IPs, URLs and mobile apps to determine their relationships and reputations, which, in turn, allows for a proactive defense. For instance, a URL that seems benign today might be closely connected to a known malicious URL, which increases its likelihood of becoming malicious in the future.

Do only specific markets need to implement these solutions, or should all businesses adopt them?

Automated threat intelligence can be consumed by organizations of all types and sizes. However, it’s important to bear in mind that some forms of threat intelligence are meant to enrich and contextualize other data, and need to be interpreted by a trained IT security professional using security incident and event management (SIM/SIEM) software.

Does that mean solutions providers need specialized training to offer these solutions?

IT security is a complex field, but the training for plug-in or automated threat intelligence is very quick and straightforward. However, using raw threat intelligence to enhance existing security data does require a higher level of training, as I noted in my response to the previous question.

How can providing threat intelligence solutions enhance an IT solutions provider’s business?

Offering automated threat intelligence is a win-win situation for both the solution provider and the customer. The solution provider has an extra line of income, since most automated services are sold as annual licenses (although monthly billing can also be an option), and the provider also gains a deeper level of trust engagement with their customer. At the same time, the customer gets more comprehensive, predictive defenses against the growing number of threat types and attack vectors, which reduces risk and gives them peace of mind.

Conclusion

As modern cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated, it is clear that conventional antivirus solutions are simply inadequate to ensure your cusotmers’ security. Employing next-generation threat intelligence solutions is key to delivering advanced protection for your customers, and it enables you to significantly strengthen your business operations.

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Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.