Schedule a Demo

What To Expect When Onboarding With a New XDR Provider

Picture of Pareto Cyber

Pareto Cyber

Cyber threats are real

Schedule a Demo

Subscribe newsletter

You’ve signed with an Extended Detection and Response (XDR) provider. What next?

Setting expectations during onboarding is critical. After all, with cybersecurity, your entire organization is on the line. Over 90% of security teams cannot attend to all of their security alerts on a typical day.

Mistakes in setting up a new threat detection and response provider could compromise all of your data assets. So how can you avoid them?

There are 3 key areas to set productive expectations when onboarding with a new XDR provider:

  1. XDR should help you find key security vulnerabilities
  2. Automation must be paired with human expertise
  3. Onboarding should fit to your needs

 

Expectation 1: XDR Should Illuminate Key System Vulnerabilities

Your XDR provider should help you pinpoint the most impactful areas for improving SecOps in your organization.

When learning about the many benefits of XDR methodology, it’s tempting to think that a vendor can take all security work off your plate. But intelligent alerts across your system are only the first step. To truly improve your cyber program maturity you need to uncover systemic vulnerabilities across your entire organization.

Move beyond reacting to threats one incident at a time. Good security tools should pinpoint “critical missing pieces” in your IT infrastructure, according to McKinsey.

Even the most sophisticated XDR implementation cannot guarantee you perfect security. But your organization can channel new insights into lowering the internal workload of your security team and focusing on large-scale, systemic changes to your security hygiene.

 

Expectation 2: Automation Needs Human Expertise

Behavioral analytics cannot substitute for human expertise.

As you onboard with a new cybersecurity vendor, remember that a lot of their work may become invisible. When security systems work as intended, it’s easy to forget they’re there at all. But your XDR provider has to keep improving your implementation. For visibility, most providers will update you with regular reports. Determine the frequency and content that is important to you.

 

Your organization has unique needs that are always changing. Every new development on the business side may impact your SecOps. Every new employee can become a vulnerability. To stay protected, keep working together with your XDR provider.

Automation is most powerful when combined with human expertise. Take advantage of XDR’s full benefits by developing a custom solution which fits your systems and infrastructure.

 

Expectation 3: Onboarding Should Fit Your Company

Onboarding can move at your own pace.

Considering all the complexity of setting up an XDR implementation, you may worry that onboarding a provider will take years but with expert consultants on your XDR vendor’s team, you can get up to speed quickly.

At Pareto Cyber we can get your organization ready to go in as little as two weeks. We’ve built our Managed Cyber Program (MCP) approach to fit onto your existing system. Instead of burning your current security infrastructure to the ground, we can adapt to your tools and focus on your business and security objectives.

Good security can be quick.

 

Conclusion

Onboarding with a new security provider may seem daunting.

Any cybersecurity approach should serve your goals. A good XDR provider will take the time to understand what matters most to your organization and adapt accordingly.

As you begin to onboard, remember to state your preferences to the vendor. Make XDR work for you, not the other way around.

Share

Related Articles

Cyber
Hygiene
Engineer
  • Responsible for data analysis and interpretation of required hygiene data sources; Vulnerability, Identity, Patching, Device Management, Cloud, and Networking. The role of the Cyber Hygiene Engineer is to provide prioritization of risks identified in the environment. Their overall goal is to rapidly reduce client risk related to Cyber Hygiene gaps.
Threat Hunters
& Red /
Purple Team
  • A cross-functional operations and engineering team responsible for developing threat use cases based on the technologies deployed and operations within a client. Our Threat Hunters are using the latest intel technologies to understand threat actor groups and motives targeting clients and provide use cases for SIEM implementation. Then our Red/Purple team provides our hunters and platform engineers with the latest tactics being used to help clients stay ahead of the latest threats.
Strategic
Cyber
Risk Advisor
  • Our Cyber Risk Advisors are focused on analyzing data integrated and correlated within the Cylemetry platform. This analysis allows our CRAs to provide clients with strategic and tactical recommendations on reducing overall cyber risks.
Customer
Success
  • Responsible for ensure all Pareto teams are meeting client expectations, service level agreements, and taking overall feedback for service improvement.
Platform
Engineer
  • Responsible for installation, configuration, and continuous improvement of client and Pareto support technologies used during service operations. Additionally, Platform Engineers provide content development, log source tuning, and security solution tuning support.
IR
Engineer
  • Responsible for using digital technologies available to assess total risk exposure of an incident / breach, provide in-depth Eradication, Remediation, Recovery, and Root Cause Analysis (RCA) services for clients that experience a successful attack.
Threat
Intel
Analyst
  • Collect, Process, Analyze and Report on enterprise and open-source threat intelligence to track threat actors, malware strains, or phishing campaigns that may affect our clients and their industry.
Threat
Detection
Analyst
  • Responsible for management of security alerts within security technologies, internal escalation of alerts to events or incidents, development of threat reports, threat surface analysis, and support of IR Engineering, Threat Intel, and Platform Engineering.
Threat
Detection
Lead
  • Accountable for daily operations, such as Threat Escalation Management, Remediation Approval, Service Level Agreements, Customer Communications, and Root Cause Analysis.
Penetration
Tester
  • Works alongside the Threat Hunter and Threat Intelligence Analyst to build and test SIEM alert rule content, based on the newest adversary tactics.
Threat
Hunter
  • Performs prescribed threat searches within the client’s environment, reporting any findings. This skill is also considered the SME of internal client IT operations and can determine legitimate client network traffic.