Internal expertise vs. managed security

When a business scales up, its security challenges grow as well. Once, a small team responsible for both IT and cybersecurity could handle everything, but with increases in numbers of both employees and endpoints, broader use of public cloud services, and the introduction of new business processes, that same small team might not be able to cope; especially when cybercriminals are constantly refining their methods and tactics, developing new social engineering techniques, and adapting artificial intelligence for attacks. Sooner or later, every growing small or mid-sized business is faced with an urgent need to strengthen resilience against modern cyberthreats while keeping investment tempered.

Choosing the ideal strategy boils down to one of two options. The first is to develop strong internal expertise, and expand the cybersecurity team and equip it with XDR-class solution. The second is to rely on external experts through a managed solution, but they’d probably need XDR solution as well. Both approaches are viable — the difference lies in your strategy and priorities. In this blog post, we consider both options and explore which solution may best fit for your company.

Typical cybersecurity challenges of a growing business

Let’s imagine a typical fast-growing small or medium-sized company. At some point, the IT-people responsible for information security and using an EDR-class solution come to the management with the following information:

• We’re drowning in hundreds of alerts and don’t have enough time to process them all
• New employees are completely unfamiliar with information security and make mistake after mistake, which increases the number of alerts even more
• We can’t respond quickly to incidents; we lack context regarding modern cyberthreats
• We don’t have time to thoroughly investigate incidents on every host; we need more robust tools that can block suspicious accounts and buy us some time

It’s clear that all these problems have two roots: imperfect tools and insufficient resources for the security team. From a management perspective, the logical solution would be to upgrade the security solution to XDR (you can read why this is logical in another blog post of ours). However, the question remains: should we develop the expertise of the internal team, or entrust protection to external experts?

Growing internal expertise

Management may prefer to keep things internal: they consider security as part of their long-term strategy. Their goal is to build expertise and grow capabilities inside the team. In this case Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum — a simple and user-friendly tool — would be a good choice for empowering the IT or security team. It empowers through its essential investigation and response tools, allowing the team to track traces of the multi-stage attacks and boost security posture.

With Next XDR Optimum, a company can prevent widespread, evasive cyberthreats — including spyware and ransomware attacks, gain insights into modern threats, and discover how they act both within and outside the endpoint. Here are just some of the features available to Next XDR Optimum operators:

• Access to Kaspersky Cloud Sandbox allows for testing malicious files in an isolated cloud environment to get a clear result on its behavior and plan further response actions accordingly
• Integration with Active Directory gives cybersecurity personnel an option to block user accounts directly from the alert card to stop a threat from spreading
• Robust investigation tools optimized to track traces of the multi-stage attacks
• Access to the Kaspersky Automated Security Awareness platform, which, in case of an incident, can be used to assign a related security awareness course right from the alert card to minimize the chance of a recurrence of the cyber-incidents caused by human error.
• Aggregation of similar alerts allows analysis of alert groups instead of single detections — it shows a more holistic picture of the protected infrastructure, and shortens response time (MTTR)

To sum up, the solution enables cybersecurity teams to investigate incidents, respond faster, and build cybersecurity awareness across the organization. For most companies, this is the best starting point on a journey to stronger protection.

Gaining resilience with managed security

Building an effective security system in-house takes time, and requires from the cybersecurity team understanding of the techniques, tactics, and procedures used by attackers — as well as constant monitoring of changes in the constantly evolving threat landscape. Not all management is ready to invest in the education of an information security team. Also, training and professional development take up working time — leaving the company less secure, at least temporarily.

This is where Kaspersky Next MXDR Optimum steps up. This solution combines the technological power of XDR tools with the expertise of a Kaspersky team of MDR specialists — delivering protection that goes beyond what an SMB can typically achieve on its own.

In practice, this means:

• continuous monitoring and threat hunting performed by external specialists
• incident management processes handled by experts
• response recommendations or even direct incident response actions if needed

This approach results in lower operational overheads, since a company doesn’t not need to staff night shifts or maintain a large cybersecurity department. At the same time, the business still benefits from essential incident detection and response. And all that at a predictable cost, without the hidden expenses of recruitment, training, and retention.

Growing internal expertise with the help of external specialists

However, no one is saying that these two paths are mutually exclusive. If company management wants to develop internal expertise but doesn’t want to risk leaving the company without effective protection until the information security team has gained the necessary experience and know-how, they should also consider Kaspersky Next MXDR Optimum.

The solution provides not only managed protection and essential XDR tools, but also cybersecurity training that allows the security team to learn how to use these tools most effectively. Training helps develop expertise and critical cybersecurity thinking, while delegating certain routine tasks to Kaspersky SOC specialists allows internal infosec officers to acquire unique practical skills in the application of XDR capabilities for enriched incident detection and response by observing the work of experienced professionals.

How to choose the right solution: a simple checklist

To make your choice easier and to wrap up this article — we’ve compiled a short checklist that can help you decide which model aligns best with your business’s growth strategy:

• Do you have a plan to build a dedicated, strong internal cybersecurity team or to develop one further?
• Are customization and control more important for you than simplicity and speed?
• Do you want to invest in staff and infrastructure (CAPEX), or keep costs predictable with a subscription service (OPEX)?
• How critical is your need for round-the-clock monitoring? Do you need it right now, or are you ready to wait?
• Do you want to maintain expertise inside the company, or rely on a trusted partner for faster, more cost-efficient results?

If your answers lean toward control, customization, and further team development — Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum is your choice. If instead your focus is on speed, efficiency, and minimizing operational overhead — Kaspersky Next MXDR Optimum provides the balance needed for secure growth of your business.

Explore more about both solutions and how they fit into your security strategy on the Kaspersky Next Optimum page.