“Do you have any form of protection against cyber threats, such as antivirus?”
That may be the first step in your cyber posture, but it’s only one part of the program.
Stephen Dye, a chief information security officer and author of the newly released book, Managed Detection and Response Services: A Cyber Stakeholders Guide, wants districts to understand that anyone’s data can be stolen unless you defend it. To have a more complete cyber posture, districts need three types of protection: MDR, EDR, and XDR.
But only MDR offers a complete solution.
MDR (Managed Detection & Response) is a cybersecurity service that combines technology and human expertise to perform threat hunting, monitoring, and response. Organizations like ActZero that handle MDR have teams of people that work 24/7/365 and take the burden off your team. They are up to date on the latest threats, can limit the false positive alerts, and have protections in place against internet outages.
Best of all, MDR from ActZero includes EDR and XDR.
EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) detects and mitigates cyber threats on endpoint devices like laptops, desktops, and servers. EDR looks for and takes care of illicit activity. Even if your district has policies in place and trains your staff to avoid phishing and other attempts, that’s not enough. An EDR solution will help with policy enforcement. However, EDR is limited to the end point. A clever hacker can circumvent this type of monitoring.
XDR (Extended Detection and Response) is an extension of EDR that covers firewalls, load balances, email solutions, switches, and other appliances or components that aren’t necessarily endpoints. XDR goes across all of your infrastructure to protect blind spots and what EDR misses.
EDR and XDR solutions track millions of activities and generate report logs, but—as mentioned above—only MDR filters suspicious behavior and pulls it out of the massive stack of alerts and takes care of it on your behalf.
You may be asking, “Why aren’t advanced firewalls enough?” While next-generation firewalls can do a lot to protect your data, the truth is that hackers know how to break through them. Hackers and bots can find your blind spots, but MDR will see when people are knocking at the firewall door.
You may also be wondering about where artificial intelligence (AI) comes in. As districts add more and more technology into their environments, tech directors are tasked with protecting sensitive data and making sure the infrastructure is secure. Now that cyber attackers use sophisticated AI tools to improve their tactics, district leaders must adopt equally advanced measures to defend against these threats. Traditional methods like firewalls and user training are no longer enough, as cybercriminals rapidly adapt AI technologies, often outpacing organizational defenses.
Districts need proactive detection from AI-driven tools that can quickly identify anomalies and automatically respond to threats, ensuring that even inadvertent clicks on malicious links by teachers or students are neutralized. The CoSN 2024 annual conference highlighted the critical role of AI in cybersecurity, with many sessions emphasizing its importance in combating sophisticated phishing and other cyber risks.
AI-driven cybersecurity excels in behavioral analysis, anomaly detection, pattern recognition, and predictive analysis, allowing for the rapid identification and mitigation of potential threats. ActZero builds AI into its offering by integrating AI with human expertise to find issues faster and protect data by preventing breaches and minimizing risks.
In short, a cybersecurity solution without AI is no longer effective.
As a district leader, you need MDR that offers comprehensive coverage, superior threat protection, minimized alerts, quick response times, and comprehensive incident response. ActZero’s top-tier IT security offers this and more.