SECURITY NEWS
Sophos channel partners to sell 24x7 incident response retainer cutting red tape
Sophos , a global vendor in innovating and delivering cybersecurity as a service , announced its new Sophos Incident Response Retainer , which provides organisations with speedy access to Sophos ’ industry-first fixed-cost incident response service that includes 45 days of 24x7 Managed Detection and Response , MDR . The retainer cuts red tape , allowing Sophos incident responders to quickly jump into active cyberattacks to investigate and remediate them . External vulnerability scanning and critical preparedness guidance are also included in the retainer , enabling organisations to proactively improve their existing security resilience by pinpointing and resolving issues that reduce the likelihood of a breach in the first place .
The Sophos Incident Response Retainer is available in three tiers through Sophos partners worldwide . With Sophos ’ unique ability to threat hunt , respond to and remediate attacks within multi-vendor environments , the retainer is available to non-Sophos customers , in addition to customers already using Sophos ’ robust portfolio of innovative endpoint , network , email , and other security products , or Sophos MDR Essentials .
Endpoint configuration health checks and device audits are also included in the retainer for existing Sophos customers . Organisations that prefer broader services in one package can purchase Sophos MDR Complete , which automatically includes fullscale incident response .
The Sophos incident response retainer is the perfect tool for partners to help customers take an initiative-taking approach to improving their cyber defences , and it will enable partners to respond and take necessary immediate action in a worst-case attack scenario when every minute counts more quickly .
Sophos Incident Response ’ s fixed-cost pricing is genius , especially considering how every attack scenario is different and how quickly costs can rack up . The sheer breadth of resources included with the retainer – from scanning for vulnerabilities to patch and prevent breaches , to having a team of experts on standby 24x7 ready to battle head-to-head with adversaries – make it an absolute must have .
At a time when attacker dwell time is steadily shortening , as revealed in a new 2023 Active Adversary Report for Tech
Vendors that Sophos published , time to locate and evict adversaries is critical in limiting damage and completely stopping nefarious endgames , such as data breaches and ransomware .
The report indicates that median adversary dwell time continued to plummet , from 10 days in 2022 to eight days in the first half of 2023 ; for ransomware alone , the time between initial access and impact dropped from nine days to just five . Adversaries also preferentially conducted attacks during targets ’ night and weekend hours , with only 9.6 % of ransomware incidents taking place during the targets ’ daytime business hours . The single most common attack times were Fridays between 11 p . m . and midnight in the targets ’ local time zones .
65 % of organisations suffered a significant breach event in the last 12
months despite considerable investments in cybersecurity tools . Dealing with unexpected cyberattacks is time sensitive , stressful and a large financial commitment . The only way to save time , reduce costs and mitigate the impact of a breach is to have an experienced incident response team in place and lined-up ready to go – before attackers ’ strike .
“ Incident response retainers help organisations prepare in advance for the fastest response time possible to defend against active cyberattacks . Due to today ’ s complex and mixed-vendor computing environments , skills shortages , evolving attacker behaviours , and cyber insurance requirements , it is critical that all organisations have pre-determined incident response plans in place . Tangible readiness is now a key component for cyber resilience ,” said Rob Harrison , Vice President , Product Management at Sophos .
“ Adversaries will often abuse the same weakness in a single system , and it is not unusual for multiple , different attackers to go after the same target if there is potential exposure . Sophos ’ goal is to immediately stop active attacks and make sure complete remediation is achieved , regardless of how many hours it takes . We are the only security vendor that offers this calibre of retainer services for urgent security incidents .”
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