MDR vs. SIEM + XDR

Evaluating security solutions to find the right fit?
Here’s why you may want to choose a SIEM + XDR platform over MDR services.

SIEM + XDR expands visibility beyond just the endpoint while automating the manual, time-consuming, and error-prone work that MDRs must rely on staff to do. SIEM + XDR results in faster, more effective detection and response, while meeting compliance & cyber insurance requirements for data retention.

“A lot of MDRs are agent-only, and don’t provide a network component; using only an agent to build context around incidents. Since I can integrate Blumira directly with firewalls, I was alerted to a hacker from Moldova who was conducting password-spraying attacks on a customer’s firewall. I was able to find the IP address and block the attacks completely.”

Aaron Cervasio
CISO, Connect Cause

The Problem With MDRs

MDR (Managed Detection and Response) services offer alert investigation, triaging, threat hunting, and incident remediation. The idea of outsourcing all of your security can be appealing, especially to organizations with limited time or teams. However, MDRs promise a lot with varying degrees of fulfillment.

MDR teams are often overworked and staffed with junior analysts who are spread thin supporting many different clients, which results in poor performance issues and a heavy reliance on human expertise and prioritization across clients. MDR visibility is also often limited to endpoints, which results in missing earlier signals from other data sources that go untracked.

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Detection Delay

An MDR’s average time to detect, notify, and contain an incident can take hours to days as they manually sift through alerts and decide how to take action. This results in critical attacker dwell time gaps and increasing potential for a breach.

Lack of Control

Without access to your log data, you have no way of gaining additional context about what happened, the scope of an incident, or how to prevent a similar incident in the future. You may not even be able to verify whether an attacker has or doesn’t still have access to your environment.

Lack of Logs & Visibility

Many MDRs do not provide a complete history of your log data, dropping some to save money on storage while keeping others for compliance. Or, they may not collect logs from every source in your tech stack, focusing solely on endpoints, which can result in delayed detection of an attack in progress. Even if logs are available, requesting access to them can add latency to ticket requests as you wait for logs to be pulled from cold storage.

The Myth of Fully-Outsourced Security

The promise of fully-outsourced incident response is a myth, as MDRs still require time from your IT team to provide the local context required for remediation. They may also need your team to verify false positives. In the time it takes your team to provide context to an MDR, you could have addressed an issue yourself — and without the detection delay.

The Advantages of SIEM + XDR

A SIEM (System Information and Event Management) solution provides a holistic view of your entire environment by collecting and normalizing data from your applications, systems, servers, endpoints, and more to provide continuous security monitoring. A SIEM should retain a complete history of your logs for compliance and cyber insurance.

When paired with XDR (Extended Detection and Response) capabilities, the solution can identify threats, triage events, prioritize findings, and provide both guided and automated response. Automating the manual work of an MDR team results in faster detection and more efficient operations.

Why choose Blumira’s SIEM + XDR platform over MDR services:

Fastest Threat Detection

Get notified within a minute of initial detection, with no delay or manual triaging required. Expedite your remediation times and get early breach prevention with auto-deployed detection rules that are updated weekly and focused on signs of attacker behavior that’s correlated across data from many different sources beyond the endpoint.
Automation Reduces Work

The average user spends less than 15 minutes a day managing Blumira. Save time spent on manual tasks, and eliminate the need to hire a security team with Blumira’s platform that automates 24/7 monitoring, detection, triaging, notifying, and providing steps for response — as well as automated endpoint isolation to contain threats immediately, no human intervention required.
Total Log Visibility & Retention

Gain direct access to your logs with the ability to search, export, and send automated reports, thanks to Blumira’s SIEM which retains a year of complete log history with unlimited data ingestion at a flat fee. Fully intact logs are critical to determine the scope of an incident, helping meet compliance and cyber insurance requirements for data retention.
24/7 Security Operations

In addition to an automated platform, you also have access to Blumira’s security team 24/7 to provide guided response, troubleshoot issues, and more when you have a critical issue. With a 99.7% customer satisfaction score and an average 18-minute response time, you can rest easy knowing you’re in good hands.

Fastest Threat Detection2

Get notified within a minute of initial detection, with no delay or manual triaging required. Expedite your remediation times and get early breach prevention with auto-deployed detection rules that are updated weekly and focused on signs of attacker behavior that’s correlated across data from many different sources beyond the endpoint.

Automation Reduces Work2

The average user spends less than 15 minutes a day managing Blumira. Save time spent on manual tasks, and eliminate the need to hire a security team with Blumira’s platform that automates 24/7 monitoring, detection, triaging, notifying, and providing steps for response — as well as automated endpoint isolation to contain threats immediately, no human intervention required.

Total Log Visability2

Gain direct access to your logs with the ability to search, export, and send automated reports, thanks to Blumira’s SIEM which retains a year of complete log history with unlimited data ingestion at a flat fee. Fully intact logs are critical to determine the scope of an incident, helping meet compliance and cyber insurance requirements for data retention.

24_7 Security Options2

In addition to an automated platform, you also have access to Blumira’s security team 24/7 to provide guided response, troubleshoot issues, and more when you have a critical issue. With a 99.7% customer satisfaction score and an average 18-minute response time, you can rest easy knowing you’re in good hands.

Since transitioning to the co-managed model and implementing Blumira, IT Manager Paul Silvestri estimates a 60% reduction in support requests.

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Blumira’s Managed Detections and
Proactive Outreach

To help our customers identify indicators of compromise early and often, Blumira’s incident detection team manages the detection rules that power our platform. Tasks include:

Threat hunting & releasing new detections every week
Prioritizing detections for critical security vulnerabilities & exploits
Ensuring actionable findings are sent within minutes (or less) of initial detection
Proactive outreach to customers about malicious activity seen in their environment
Creating custom detections for customers
Assisting in incident response activities during a customer incident
Tuning detections to reduce false positives & noisy alerts

Blumira responds rapidly to emerging security threats. The IDE team helps customers and the community by:

Sending customers security advisories about threats
Creating detections that help to surface potential threats in Blumira customer environments
Sharing educational information about threats & their remediation/mitigation on our blog
Providing public commentary about threats through blog posts and/or media interviews