News
Sophos Partners with Tenable to Launch New Sophos Managed Risk Service
April 2024 by Marc Jacob
Sophos announced a strategic partnership with Tenable®, the Exposure Management company, 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 prioritization, investigation, and proactive notification designed to prevent cyberattacks.
The modern attack surface has expanded beyond traditional on-premises IT boundaries, with organizations 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, which identifies three tasks that organizations must prioritize to minimize 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 authorization 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 organization’s external attack surface, prioritize the riskiest exposures, such as open RDP, and provide tailored remediation guidance to help eliminate blind spots and stay ahead of potentially devastating attacks.
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 organization’s internet-facing assets
• Vulnerability prioritization 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 organizations face when improving their security posture is prioritizing 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 organizations 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.
Organizations 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 prioritizing actions. Additionally, organizations 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 prioritized alerts.
Sophos Managed Risk is available with a term license through Sophos’ global network of channel partners and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). A Sophos MSP Flex version will be available in 2024.
