Sophos announced a strategic partnership with Tenable to provide Sophos Managed Risk, a worldwide vulnerability and attack surface management service. The new service features a dedicated Sophos team that leverages Tenable’s exposure management technology and collaborates with the security operations experts from Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) to provide attack surface visibility, continuous risk monitoring, vulnerability prioritisation, investigation, and proactive notification designed to prevent cyberattacks.
The modern attack surface has expanded beyond traditional on-premises IT boundaries, with organisations operating frequently unknown numbers of external and internet-facing assets that are unpatched or under protected, leaving them vulnerable to cyberattackers. This is evident in the newest Sophos Active Adversary Report, also released today, which identifies three tasks that organisations must prioritise to minimise the risk of brazen intrusions that lead to ransomware or other types of attacks. These include closing exposed Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access, enabling multi-factor authorisation and patching vulnerable servers, all of which were top entry points in breaches handled by Sophos Incident Response in 2023. The Sophos Managed Risk service can assess an organisation’s external attack surface, prioritise the riskiest exposures, such as open RDP, and provide tailored remediation guidance to help eliminate blind spots and stay ahead of potentially devastating attacks.
“Sophos and Tenable are two industry security leaders coming together to address urgent, pervasive security challenges that organisations continuously struggle to control. We can now help organisations identify and prioritise the remediation of vulnerabilities in external assets, devices and software that are often overlooked. It is critical that organisations manage these exposure risks, because unattended, they only lead to more costly and time-consuming issues and are often the root causes of significant breaches,” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president for endpoint and security operations product management at Sophos. “We know from Sophos’ worldwide survey data that 32% of ransomware attacks start with an unpatched vulnerability and that these attacks are the most expensive to remediate. The ideal security layers to prevent these issues include an active approach to improving security postures by minimising the chances of a breach with Sophos Managed Risk, Sophos Endpoint, and 24×7 Sophos MDR coverage.”
“While the latest zero day may dominate the headlines, the biggest threat to organisations, by a large margin, is still known vulnerabilities – or vulnerabilities for which patches are readily available,” said Greg Goetz, vice president of global strategic partners and MSSP, Tenable. “A winning approach includes risk-based prioritisation with context-driven analytics to proactively address exposures before they become a problem. Sophos Managed Risk, powered by the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform, delivers outsourced preventive risk management, enabling organisations to anticipate attacks and reduce cyber risk.”
Specific key benefits of Sophos Managed Risk include:
- External Attack Surface Management (EASM): Advanced identification and classification of internet-facing assets, such as web and email servers, web applications, and public-facing API endpoints
- Continuous monitoring and proactive notification of high-risk exposures: Proactive notification when a new critical vulnerability is identified in an organisation’s internet-facing assets
- Vulnerability prioritisation and identification of new risks: Swift detection of high-risk and zero-day vulnerabilities, followed by real-time notification to ensure critical internet-facing assets are promptly identified, investigated and responded to by order of importance
“One of the biggest challenges organisations face when improving their security posture is prioritising what to handle first. This type of guidance helps solve that issue and reduces the workload for security teams tasked with tackling vulnerability and exposure management,” said Craig Robinson, research vice president of Security Services, IDC. “Solutions such as Sophos Managed Risk can be a differentiator by enabling overwhelmed teams to take a more holistic approach to continuous monitoring and threat management.”
Sophos Managed Risk is available as an extended service with Sophos MDR, which already protects more than 21,000 organisations globally. The Sophos Managed Risk team is Tenable-certified and works closely with Sophos MDR to share essential information about zero-days, known vulnerabilities and exposure risks to assess and investigate possibly exploited environments.
“Sophos Managed Risk simplifies the difficult and resource consuming task of identifying vulnerabilities, really understanding the extent of risk exposure, and prioritising necessary remediations,” said Kieron Stone, cybersecurity business development manager at Phoenix Software Ltd. “As a trusted managed service provider (MSP), this is a service we’re proud to stand behind, and nearly all our customers using it have already discovered significant vulnerabilities that they were previously unaware of. For organisations that don’t already have a well-defined vulnerability patching cadence, this is a must-have service for the identification of vulnerabilities and building that schedule; and for organisations that are already managing vulnerabilities, it’s a second set of eyes for added peace of mind that they’re not missing anything.”
Organisations benefit through regular interaction, including scheduled meetings with Sophos experts to review recent discoveries, insights into the current threat landscape, and recommendations for remediation and prioritising actions. Additionally, organisations can initiate inquiries via the Sophos Central platform, allowing users to directly engage with the Sophos Managed Risk team for tailored support, reports and to review their latest prioritised alerts.
“You can’t fix what you can’t see. Sophos Managed Risk is shining a light on areas of exposure that require remediation in order to keep customers protected. Combining Sophos’ elite MDR experts with Tenable’s industry-leading exposure management technology gives us a full picture view of vulnerabilities with the guidance we need to minimise risk,” said Brooks Roy, president at Communications Consulting, Inc. “The real value add for us as a channel partner is having the ability to easily manage Sophos Managed Risk’s prioritised alerts across our customer base on the Sophos Central dashboard.”
Sophos Managed Risk is available with a term licence through Sophos’ global network of channel partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). A Sophos MSP Flex version will be available in 2024.
