The threat landscape is more complicated than it was before. Many organizations are thus starting to weigh their options on how to protect their data best. Amid the persistent cybersecurity skills shortage, companies are wondering if they should turn to outsourced services. Hence the rise in popularity of managed detection and response (MDR) service providers.

MDR teams are external service providers that specialize in providing IT security experts to detect, respond to, and protect their clients’ networks. Due to the growing demand for such services, however, providers are bound to face challenges up ahead.

In this article, we’ll look at the problems that MDR service providers are likely to face and learn how website categorization can help them.

Potential Challenges for MDR Teams

There is constant pressure for MDR teams to be the best in hunting down threats and providing proactive solutions. Enterprises also expect providers to produce the most actionable insights on threats.

As such, MDR teams need to gather as much threat intelligence as possible and intensify research to respond to various incidents promptly. Only with enough information can threat hunters, however, paint a clear picture of an attack.

Threat hunters need to know where ongoing and future attacks come from. They need to identify which systems have been or can be compromised. As specialists, they are expected to act on incidents as soon as possible to minimize damage. They need to anticipate the tricks up cybercriminals’ sleeves to stop them from carrying out attacks.

MDR providers also need to monitor threats worldwide. Zooming into a particular locale is not enough given the global nature of the Internet. And this ability is what fundamentally separates a reliable provider from the rest.

These expectations can, however, only be met if MDR teams have access to a wide range of data inputs. These can come in the form of detection tools, threat intelligence feeds, and other third-party resources. And this is where website categorization can contribute.

Website Categorization Uses for MDR

MDR service providers need access to the latest threat data at all times. Many tools can help in this regard, and one source of information is a website categorization database.

The database runs a machine learning (ML) engine that gathers data points regarding websites. It does this to categorize them based on a predefined set of rules. With it, users can easily search for all domains in a category of interest.

What makes this kind of database great is that it has various cybersecurity applications. It can, for instance, be employed to manage risks by blocking access to malicious websites. Combined with a Domain Name System (DNS) lookup tool, the database can continuously provide insights to experts when needed.

Additionally, specialists can use it with other domain research sources to detect and prevent potential threats. For example, WHOIS data and domain feeds can supply MDR specialists with a domain name repository that contains billions of WHOIS records. These records have been crawled for more than 10 years and are regularly updated for timeliness and accuracy. Users can get registrant contact details such as domain owners’ names, email addresses, and physical locations.

Another useful tool is a website categorization API. This software can be integrated into existing systems to improve threat identification. Results can be obtained in standardized formats as well for easy use.

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As shown, website categorization tools can provide MDR teams with much-needed threat intelligence to bolster their hunting capabilities. It is, after all, best to rely on more than one source of information when dealing with the increasingly sophisticated threat landscape. At the end of the day, companies need to mix and match tools to improve their cybersecurity posture.