Small Team Cybersecurity: Buy, Build, or Hire?

A question that all small, security-conscious organisations face is: “What's next?”

They know that their antivirus (AV) is not enough. 

AVs detect malware through a combination of signatures, heuristics, and integrity checking. 

However, an AV cannot detect malware that is encrypted or that mimics trusted applications or insider threats, such as an employee exfiltrating client data to a third party.

More than half of all detected malware now evades AV solutions. 

Whether they have 10 endpoints or 1,000, smaller organisations today need to be able to detect and respond to increasingly advanced threats. They also need to protect their IT teams from the deployment, implementation and ongoing management headaches that some of the “next step” security solutions create.

Small teams need a threat detection and response solution that doesn’t make everyone’s lives worse but that:

• Protects endpoints—on-prem and in the cloud—by monitoring and mitigating abnormal activity. 

• Identifies insider threats, data leaks, and malicious networks by inspecting data flows to, from and across their networks. 

• Collects real-time and historical event logs in a centralised management console (for incident analysis and reporting). 

An enterprise will find the best-of-breed solutions that do each of these tasks. Their CISO would then make a case for an ongoing budget to source and hire skilled people to engineer and run these solutions. That’s why, in a typical enterprise SOC, you might find an entire team dedicated to what can seem like niche security tasks (for example, engineering SIEM rulesets). 

Smaller organisations don’t have enough headcount (or financial resources) to do any of this. At least, not sustainably.

Even if the leadership team sincerely wants to do more to stop cyber threats, security is often just another thing that IT does or the responsibility of one or two FTEs. An enterprise SOC with dedicated security engineering and analyst teams is not on the cards. 

Yet small security teams can be sustainable. After all, most cybersecurity teams in the UK are, by definition, small, and many businesses are able to withstand highly targeted threats. Research by gov.uk shows that even in medium-large companies (up to 10,000 employees), security teams are usually 2-5 FTEs at most. 

In our experience of working with dozens of UK businesses, successful small teams are possible, but they have something in common.  

They exist in companies where leadership recognises that there is no such thing as small business cybersecurity. There is only a business's unique risk profile and the budget it has to reduce it. A business with 20 users and one location could be just as much of a target as a company with 2,000 users and a global footprint.

Small security operations also know that security investment compounds. 

A business may never get quite enough budget to run a dedicated SOC. But whatever tools or solutions are brought in to improve cybersecurity must remove and not add to the IT or security workload. From responding and training requests to designing playbooks, the personnel responsible for security have a considerable amount to do. 

Small teams do not have time to manage threat detection and response without sustainable support that can cost-efficiently scale with them.

That’s why successful small business security teams tend to choose one of three core options for developing their cybersecurity: MDR, XDR, and, lately, MXDR. 

Here is a quick explanation of what these acronyms mean:

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) involves an external vendor taking charge of threat detection, response, and Security Operations Center (SOC) duties for a monthly fee. MDR is a good option for IT teams without dedicated security staff.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) is a cybersecurity platform that integrates endpoint and network protection, streamlining management. It suits organisations with small internal SOCs looking for unified visibility and automated threat response.

Managed Extended Detection and Response (MXDR) is a vendor-managed XDR service that provides companies with XDR protection without the need for an internal security team.

We think that MXDR technology has become the best solution for small IT teams with less than two dedicated security staff.

Get Support from a Solution Provider Designed for Small Teams

SenseOn is an MXDR service, designed for small security and IT teams.

We have developed an XDR solution that uses a universal sensor to secure endpoints, cloud workloads, and network traffic. It is the perfect solution for organisations that are becoming more complex but want to keep security simple.

You can self-manage SenseOn as an XDR equipped with award-winning automation technology or you can combine SenseOn with our 24/7 SOC services.

• We are proud of being able to deliver an average incident response time of just 10m 59s. 

• Our customers can expect swift assistance—even at 4 AM.

We offer a range of managed and standalone XDR services designed to give small teams enterprise-level protection at a fraction of typical traditional human and capital costs.

To find out how SenseOn can manage your security so you can grow your business, download our datasheet today.