XDR from Blumira: Improving SMB Security Outcomes

While new acronyms emerging in the security industry can cause confusion or skepticism, the focus should be primarily on how solutions help with real customer problems — the outcomes are what matter the most. IT and security teams are looking to achieve better threat detection and response, and ultimately, protect their organizations against the breach of data or destruction caused by ransomware.

Yet, a traditional standalone SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) platform or an EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) tool may not provide enough visibility across modern tech stacks or capabilities to defend against adversary attacks today. That’s why organizations are turning to a new approach to security known as XDR (Extended Detection and Response). But many expensive XDR solutions today are built for larger enterprises, requiring a steep learning curve and large security teams to deploy, use and maintain.

True to our mission to make security accessible to all, Blumira is extending our SIEM platform with new automated XDR capabilities to help small and medium-sized businesses achieve better security outcomes. Our all-in-one solution combines SIEM, endpoint visibility and automated response. Our XDR platform is also open, integrating broadly with third-parties for wider coverage, and designed to reduce complexity and leverage automation to speed up detection and response.

What is XDR?

XDR is simply one approach the industry is trending towards in order to consolidate security tools, gain better defenses against advanced attacks, and improve their time to respond to incidents to protect data breaches.

Gartner’s four pillars of XDR, as summarized below:

1. Strong security tools integrated together
2. Centralized logs in one place
3. Insightful detections from correlated data
4. Automated response across endpoints & security tools

Starting from a solid foundation of centralized logs in one place, organizations can build on top of this platform to layer in the ability to detect security events across many different sources of data, including endpoint, cloud, identity, servers, firewalls and more. An open XDR platform can integrate broadly with different tools from different vendors, while native or closed XDR platforms often favor one vendor’s toolset.

Automated response across an organization’s endpoints and security tools helps rapidly stop attacks before they cause widespread damage. Open XDR is one way organizations can reduce complexity, integrate broadly to provide insight across their entire environment, and use automation to speed up detection and response.

SMB Security Challenges

In the last twelve months, 42% of SMBs said their company has experienced a data breach and 26% have experienced a ransomware attack. 

— SMB: Directions For the Future of Work, SMB Group 2022

While large enterprise companies may have more resources to build out mature security programs and teams, investing in costly security software and infrastructure to protect against cyberattacks, organizations that fall into the smaller, mid-market size come with their own set of specific challenges.

Those include:

• Small teams stretched thin – Often lean 1-3 people IT teams are responsible for both IT and security tasks at small and medium-sized organizations
• Lack of security expertise – With limited ability to hire full-time security professionals, they may lack the knowledge of what’s critical or how to respond to security threats
• Limited visibility – A modern hybrid environment can include cloud, on-premises, remote endpoints and more, making it difficult to get visibility across everything
• Time-strapped – Most security solutions require time-consuming, manual security tasks, like parsing data, threat hunting, threat research and rule development
• Daunting compliance requirements – Compliance and cyber insurance call for many different security capabilities, including log monitoring, log review, analysis, anomaly detection, endpoint security and incident response
• Budget constraints – Small or medium-sized organizations often need to work with constrained resources, always seeking to do more with less

Benefits of XDR For Small-to-Medium Enterprises

XDR focuses on better security outcomes for organizations that are challenged with lean IT teams and limited resources, especially in a budget-conscious market. 

By limiting vendor sprawl and investing in an open XDR platform that integrates more broadly to provide greater visibility into hybrid environments, organizations can make the most of their existing IT investments. They can reduce risk and satisfy more compliance controls, with lower overhead and operations.

Built-in automation can also provide critical assistance when they need it the most, including responding faster to security incidents and containing them to prevent the spread of ransomware and other attacks. Reducing complexity with a consolidated solution allows IT teams to save time on manual security tasks and refocus their efforts on more strategic business initiatives.

Download XDR Guide For SMBs

Download our new guide, XDR: Better Security Outcomes to understand how XDR can help SMBs overcome their challenges and achieve better security outcomes.