Boost your MSSP's competitive edge: New strategies for leveraging Threat Intelligence

Leading statistics underpin that the digital threat landscape is growing increasingly complex while the cybersecurity skill gap needed to secure businesses and their perimeters is getting wider. As cyber incidents continue to surge, businesses struggle to adapt to the evolving demands of cybersecurity and resilience.

This evident gap has led to pressing demands on Security Operations Centers (SOCs) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR)providers to offer proactive cyber support: real-time monitoring of networks, systems, and endpoints, threat detection, incident handling, response, and more.

As the Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) and MDR markets are expected to see double-digit compound annual growth rates in the next several years, adapting and improving service offerings remains essential for MSSPs worldwide to participate in this positive uptick.

A critical component of these improvements is offering precise, actionable, and continuous Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) capabilities so businesses can identify the most susceptible risks and defend themselves in the most resourceful and effective manner.

Despite its importance, many MSSPs are not utilizing their CTI capabilities to their fullest potential. In their latest report titled “Hype Cycle for Security Operations, 2023,” Gartner mentions, “Many organizations have no formal TI program or dedicated analysts to use TI solutions, like a TIP, or interpret the value from bespoke TI reports. Rather than focus on indicators like IP addresses, domains, and hash values, they allocate too few resources to human-readable or advanced TI solutions.”

To help MSSPs leverage threat monitoring for across-the-board incident detection, let’s explore three use cases where effectively integrating CTI into your MDR services can dramatically transform a client’s security posture, shifting their stance to being proactive rather than reactive.

These use cases emphasize the need for adversary-centric intelligence that provides actionable insights into potential threats, enhancing the accuracy of threat predictions and personalizing security measures to address specific organizational vulnerabilities.

Let’s dive into the advanced tactics that can elevate your MSSP and MDR efficiency, ensuring your SOCs can transcend traditional limitations and proactively defend against emerging threats.

How can MSSPs create a high impact through their CTI offering

Use case One: Analytical workbench insights that empower your SOC team

What are SOC analyst teams’ most useful Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) sources? CTI has become a staple in the cybersecurity community, empowering analyst teams with information attributed to threat actors. To track these actors easily, you can start with a customized threat landscape dashboard with a single glass pane to monitor attacks. Start gaining and combining the information broader than regular indicators sources, for example, analyzing region-based cyber criminals and nation-state actors, threat landscape, threat bulletins, analyst reports, and more.

MSSPs need upgraded tools for SOC analysts to investigate and research threats with a visual graph. This graph allows for easy exploration of the relationships between threat actors, their infrastructure, and the tools they use. This visual aid lets analysts delve into details with just a click, speeding up the incident response.

Another unique feature that gives your analysts an advantage during an incident is the ability to detonate suspicious files on the same Threat Intelligence platform and submit them to a reverse engineering team. You don’t need the reverse team in-house with the instrument but can outsource that capability. Also, the in-depth analysis of the vulnerabilities targeted by malware and threat actors aids in patching prioritization.

Using these instruments and clearly understanding the threat landscape, you can track actors targeting your clients, their industry, partners, and other entities of interest. This approach enables you to offer managed security services based on which adversaries are most likely to be interested in a specific company or industry. At the same time, you provide tailored and actionable data, regardless of a company’s cybersecurity maturity.

Use Case Two: Adding value for your client through insights: leaked and stolen credentials, round-the-clock monitoring

Proactively tracking client credential leakage can help MSSPs identify potential threats before they lead to significant damage. This approach helps mitigate immediate risks and maintains clients’ trust and confidence in your services. Identifying compromised data early, such as user accounts, top-management and VIP personal accounts, payment card information, and breach databases, ensures that security measures can be taken before attackers exploit these vulnerabilities.

Real-time monitoring for public compromised data allows MSSPs to detect threats promptly. Group-IB Threat Intelligence, for example, can create alerts whenever a compromise is detected, covering user accounts, breached databases, and bank cards.

These proactive notifications enable MSSPs to immediately secure their clients’ assets, preventing potential financial damage and maintaining operations in the first steps of potential incidents. This boosts client satisfaction and trust. Clients benefit from round-the-clock monitoring, ensuring their sensitive information is constantly protected. This approach strengthens MSSPs’ positioning as reliable and proactive cybersecurity partners.

Use Case Three: Advanced competitive advantage with monitoring of dark web and public repository

Adding 24/7 real-time monitoring of the dark web and public repositories to MSSP portfolios enhances its client security experience. With advanced Threat Intelligence solutions, MSSP can access the industry’s largest dark web database and set alerts for clients’ mentions in underground forums, instant messengers, and markets. This proactive monitoring, combined with Threat Hunting, helps identify threats early, ensuring timely intervention and prevention.

At the same time, monitoring public repositories for compromised data is equally crucial. MSSPs can detect usernames, passwords, bank card details, Trojan configuration files, and logs published on sites like Pastebin and GitHub. Group-IB Threat Intelligence alerts MSSPs to these compromises, allowing immediate response and risk mitigation.

Recommendations

These advanced Threat Intelligence use cases enable MSSPs to track relevant risks, prepare clients to counter threats in real-time, and help prepare the customer against threats “in the wild.” Offering continuously advanced insights and proactive threat management strengthens client confidence and ensures robust protection against emerging threats.

As trusted partners in helping businesses with threat exposure and risk management, MSSPs should remain steadfast in addressing and managing evolving cybersecurity challenges. For more tips on making your MSSP and MDR more efficient, look at our resource.

A non-negotiable need for businesses, and in turn, MSSP providers, is contextual, relevant, and actionable threat intelligence to deliver industry-leading services to their clients. To achieve swift TI activation and seamless integration into your security processes and services, leverage Group-IB’s proprietary Threat Intelligence. The platform provides updated critical threat intelligence, constantly enriched by unique research from Group-IB threat analysts and our global Digital Crime Resistance Centers (DCRCs), which act as first response units to effectively track and combat active local threats.

Learn more about enabling Group-IB Threat Intelligence capabilities to ensure real-time detection and response, improve mean time to action, reduce inconsistencies, and increase reliability.

If you’re looking to completely revamp your SOC capabilities, start by learning about implementing or updating your CTI program with our resourceful eGuide:The Art of SOC

Join our dedicated Telegram channel (to get an invite, email us at mssp@group-ib.com or contact our experts to learn more about Group-IB’s complete portfolio of cybersecurity products, services, and MSSP programs.