Sophos MDR for Microsoft Defender: Gaining momentum with Microsoft-specific service enhancements

In July 2023, we introduced Sophos MDR for Microsoft Defender, enabling organizations to strengthen their defenses and get greater ROI from their Microsoft technology investments. Fast-forward a year, and more than 12,000 organizations have now integrated their Microsoft technology stacks with the Sophos Central platform to benefit from superior cybersecurity outcomes.

Sophos Managed Detection and Response protects over 23,000 customers worldwide – more than any other MDR service provider. Many of these organizations have also invested in Microsoft security tools, leveraging Sophos MDR to respond to Microsoft security alerts and defend against sophisticated attacks that Microsoft technology alone can’t stop.

Sophos MDR for Microsoft Defender provides the people, processes, and technology to detect, investigate, and effectively respond to threats, leveraging data from a broad range of Microsoft solutions.

Sophos continually innovates and enhances the Sophos MDR service to help extend and fortify Microsoft defenses. With Sophos MDR, organizations with Microsoft solutions benefit from:

Microsoft Certified experts

The Sophos MDR team includes Microsoft Certified Security Operations Analysts specializing in detecting and responding to cyberattacks using custom Microsoft response playbooks. Sophos employs more than 500 threat detection and response experts worldwide, backed by seven global security operations centers (SOCs).

Certifications include Microsoft Security Operations Analyst (SC-200) and Microsoft Cybersecurity Architect (SC-100).

Microsoft-specific threat detections

Sophos MDR and Sophos XDR use proprietary threat detection rules and world-class intelligence to identify and stop threats that may bypass Microsoft security solutions. Detect account takeover and business email compromise (BEC) attacks, even without a Microsoft E5/A5 subscription.

The latest Sophos-proprietary detections for Office 365 – included with our Microsoft Office 365 Management Activity integration – accurately detect malicious email rules, unauthorized user access patterns, and more.

Comprehensive support for Microsoft solutions

More than 12,000 Sophos customers have already configured our turnkey Microsoft integrations. Included at no additional cost with Sophos MDR and Sophos XDR, these integrations support a broad range of Microsoft solutions beyond Defender for Endpoint. Telemetry data from Office 365, Defender for Identity, Defender for Cloud Apps, and Entra ID Protection, is collected, analyzed, correlated, and prioritized, enabling analysts to quickly investigate and respond to threats.

Earlier this month we released Version 2 of our Microsoft Graph security API integration. The new version provides additional information from Microsoft security solutions to help accelerate detection, investigation, and response.

Extensive integrations with non-Microsoft tools

Sophos MDR and Sophos XDR offer industry-leading compatibility with virtually any environment or technology stack. We are constantly expanding our partner ecosystem with additional integrations for endpoint, firewall, network, email, cloud, identity, productivity, and backup solutions, to extend visibility and stop attacks across the entire IT environment.

Recently added integrations include Acronis, Barracuda, Cisco Identity, F5, Forcepoint, Veeam, Zscaler, and more.

Cybersecurity that drives business value

Organizations constantly balance cybersecurity risks and investments against business value and outcomes. Sophos MDR for Microsoft Defender helps you build a sustainable program that balances the need to protect with the need to run your business.

• Get greater ROI from your existing cybersecurity investments
  With Sophos MDR, our analysts can leverage your existing Microsoft and non-Microsoft security solutions to detect and respond to threats on your behalf.
• Reduce risk and costs associated with incidents and breaches
  Adversaries use sophisticated techniques to avoid triggering preventative security solutions. Sophos MDR detects and stops threats that may bypass security tools.
• Free up your teams to focus on business enablement
  The Sophos MDR team monitors your IT environment around the clock, enabling your in-house teams to focus on growing your business.
• Improve cyber insurance coverage eligibility and premiums
  Sophos MDR mitigates risk and helps you meet critical cyber insurance requirements, such as 24/7 monitoring and endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities.

Fortify your Microsoft defenses

Sophos MDR is the world’s most popular and most reviewed Managed Detection and Response service, with a 4.8/5 rating on Gartner Peer Insights as of July 19, 2024.

To learn more about Sophos MDR for Microsoft Defender and how it can support you, visit our website or speak with a security expert today.