Sophos, Tenable team up to combat cyber attacks on businesses

Cybersecurity firm Sophos Group and network security company Tenable Inc. announced a partnership on Thursday to launch a new attack protection service known as Sophos Managed Risk. This service combines the exposure management technology of Tenable with the specialist knowledge of security operations experts from Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR). This solution offers attack surface visibility, continuous risk monitoring, vulnerability prioritisation, investigation, and proactive notification to prevent cyber-attacks.
 
An attack surface is the entire area of an organisation that is susceptible to hacking, including all points of access that an unauthorised person could use to enter the system. An attack surface can include software applications, networks, servers, devices, and user accounts.
 
The two companies said that as the modern attack surface has expanded beyond traditional on-premises IT boundaries, organisations increasingly deal with unpatched or under-protected external and internet-facing assets, making them vulnerable to cyber attackers.
 
This issue was highlighted in a new Sophos Active Adversary Report released on Thursday, which outlines three key tasks that organisations must prioritise to minimise the risk of intrusions leading to ransomware or other attacks. These tasks include closing exposed Remote Desktop Protocol access, enabling multifactor authorisation, and patching vulnerable servers, all of which were the top entry points in breaches detailed in the report.
 
The Sophos Managed Risk service can evaluate an organisation’s external attack surface, prioritise the riskiest exposures, such as open RDP, and offer tailored remediation guidance to eliminate blind spots and prevent potentially devastating attacks.
 
According to a joint statement by the companies, the key features of Managed Risk include external attack surface management to identify and classify internet-facing assets like web and email servers, web applications, and public-facing API endpoints. The service includes continuous monitoring and proactive notification of high-risk exposures, alerting users when a new critical vulnerability is identified in an organisation’s internet-facing assets.
 
Managed Risk also prioritises vulnerability and identifies new risks, including rapid detection of high-risk and zero-day vulnerabilities. Users receive real-time notifications when vulnerabilities are detected to ensure critical internet-facing assets are promptly identified, investigated, and responded to based on importance.
 
Rob Harrison, senior vice president for endpoint and security operations product management at Sophos, said, “Sophos and Tenable are two industry security leaders joining forces to address urgent, pervasive security challenges that organisations struggle to control. We can now assist organisations in identifying and prioritising the remediation of vulnerabilities in external assets, devices, and software that are often overlooked.”
 
According to a PwC report released in January, from a cyber-risk perspective and over the next 12 months, Indian organisations are most concerned around cloud-related threats (52%), attacks on connected devices (45%), hack-and-leak operations (36%) and software supply-chain compromise (35%).
 
Almost half of respondents felt that the outcome of a cyber attack could result in loss of customer data and revenue, followed by more than a third of them highlighting operations downtime to be a key outcome of a cyber attack. Meanwhile, Cyber budgets continue to rise. 99% of the respondents stated an increase in cyber budgets, out of which 50% of them envisaged an increase between 6% and 15% in the next 12 months, it said.
 
In such a scenario, Harrison emphasized the importance of managing exposure risks, stating that unattended risks can lead to costly and time-consuming issues, often being the root causes of significant breaches.