Who are the Top 10 Managed Network Security Providers?

What is a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)?

As the name implies, these are service providers who offer managed security services at scale which reduces the management burdens of in-house IT departments. MSSP or Managed Security Service Providers specialise in providing security services across the board for your business. They achieve business outcomes by providing services such as Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB), NextGen Firewall as a service (NextGen FWaaS), Security Event Monitoring and Event Management (SIEM). These services cover all security aspects of an organisation, from single-user devices to SD-WAN, Edge Computing, and even Cloud Security.

In this post, we will look at the leading Managed Security Service Providers (MSSP) and their service offerings for creating a secure and robust operating environment.

Here’s our list of the Top 10 Managed Security Service Providers.

Alert Logic

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Texas, United States, Alert Logic describes their company as a Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service. Alert Logic provides comprehensive coverage for on-premise, hybrid, cloud, and SaaS environments. Moreover, Alert Logic aims to provide 24/7 protection for all aspects of an organisation with its team of security experts creating a unified threat management capability.

Core features of Alert Logic include:

• Cross-environment support with comprehensive support for major public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, and GCP).
• Hybrid-cloud and on-premise security and compliance.
• 24/7 security monitoring and a global security research team, developing signatures, correlation rules, applications security policies to protect users in the ever-changing IT landscape.
• Asset Discovery & Visualisation with patch management.
• Security incident, threat Identification Internal and External vulnerability scanning.
• Log management and network-based threat detection.
• Managed Web Application Firewall.
• File Integrity Monitoring.

In addition to the above features, Alert Logic provides an advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) and advanced compliance solutions. They allow users to easily get their environments in line with the required regulatory compliance such as PCI, HIPAA, ISO, HITRUST. Additionally, inbuilt services such as indecent and change management further help organisations to manage their environments. All these features are visible through the Alert Logic interface with all the security insights and Managed Security Operations centre to cater to any customer requirements.

Cato Networks

This Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) company, founded in 2015, is a technology service provider offering multiple services such as Edge SD WAN, Secure Remote Access, Managed Threat Detection and Response (MDR). As a SASE-based organisation, Cato aims to have security baked into all its service offerings.

The Cato MDR and Advanced Security Services provide continuous threat detection and guidance on how to act to mitigate these threats. Cato MDR uses advanced AI and ML combined with an expert security team to investigate and mitigate security risks throughout an environment.

As Cato MDR is built into the wider Cato SASE platform (Cato SASE Cloud), all the services such as SD-WAN, VPN, Cloud services, including major cloud provider resources, can come under the protection of MDR. There are no additional hardware or software requirements as a cloud service, and organisations can cut down dwell time from 200+ days to 1-2 days while rolling out security services across their environments.

The key capabilities of Cato security services include:

• Automated Threat Hunting. This includes client application identification, risk assessment, access logins, threat intelligence.
• Network Level Threat Containment to verify threats and block the affected traffic.
• Custom reports and tracking to gain a complete overview of the security posture of the organisation.
• Human Verification and Assessment Checkups. The Cato SOC team inspects any suspected incidents and investigates for possible threats. Their security experts will be available for customers to assess their environments and guide them in meeting the required security standards.

With Cato security services, all the customer environments are monitored daily, and any anomalies detected will be quickly investigated, alerted, contained, and remedied.

Masergy

Masergy is now Comcast Business which is a US-based technology solutions provider. The Masergy Managed Security Services provides users with a unified enterprise security service that enables organisations to detect and respond to growing security threats on a global scale.

Masergy, with their managed security operations centres (SOC), provides around-the-clock incident response service to provide network, cloud, and endpoint security for their customers. Some of the services provided by Masergy are:

• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM).
• Vulnerability scanning with advanced IDS/IPS, anomaly detection, and network visibility.
• Threat intelligence and threat hunting.
• Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) powered by Bitglass.
• SaaS and IaaS monitoring for cloud workload protection.
• Security analytics engine for behavioural analytics and ML to provide actionable alerts.

All these services are combined within Masergy’s simple security portal to gain greater visibility over the complete environments with alerts, reporting, and risk posture tracking for a centralised management experience. Masergy provides one of the most comprehensive MSSP solutions with over 19+ years of experience in the infosec field.

Lumen

The Lumen Connected Security aims to simplify security by offering integrated solutions and managed services for all environments from core to the edge. Lumen with automated security services and solutions focuses on simplifying resource-intensive management and monitoring of security services.

The Connected Security products offers solutions not only for traditional on-premise and cloud-based environments but also for other environments, from remote and mobile workers to federal and local governments. Some notable features of Lumen are:

• Managed and Next-gen Web Application level firewalls and Bot Management.
• Integrated Intrusion Prevention (IPS).
• Log ingestion, monitoring, and event correlation.
• Adaptive threat intelligence with threat sensing defences powered by Black Lotus Labs.
• DDOS mitigation and application security.
• 24/7 support from 8 global security operation centres spread across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.

In addition to the above features, Lumen also provides professional consultancy services to engineers and optimises the security architecture of its customers.

Trustwave

Trustwave is a leading cybersecurity and managed security service provider focused on managed detection and response, especially in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. With its elite security team, SpiderLabs, Trustwave provides constantly evolving security services to protect user environments.

Trustwave aims to provide comprehensive security solutions capable of handling complex vulnerabilities such as zero-day threats and ransomware with around-the-clock monitoring and threat investigations, human lead threat hunting, and security research. All this functionality is powered by the Trustwave Fusion Platform, which brings all the services together with top-down visibility over the entire environment and support for both mobile and desktop. Some notable features of Trustwave include:

• Trustwave Fusion extended detection and response (XDR) to provide greater environmental visibility with incident management and reporting.
• Real-time monitoring with advanced threat detection
• Detection in Depth
• Rapid Threat Response
• Cyber Architecture and Integration Services

Verizon

Verizon Managed Security Services is the MSSP branch of the larger Verizon telecommunications business. Verizon’s security services are more aligned with enterprise customers and provide an excellent toolset to protect enterprise workloads.

Verizon Managed Security Services (MSS) will allow customers to offload the security responsibility to Verizon while freeing up internal IT resources without impacting their overall security posture. This MSS can be used on many supported devices such as load balancers, UTM, Firewalls, VPN, and Proxy servers. These devices can be configured as either monitoring only or monitoring with management with additional options like remote office and executive reporting. Their security policy program can be used to extend functionality further. Following are the primary features offered by this service:

• Near real-time threat monitoring across all the infrastructure with threat identification and prioritisation.
• Around-the-clock monitoring with log and event analysis.
• Unified security portal to manage the security posture and manage indicates.
• In-depth intelligent incident reports

Palo Alto

Palo Alto Networks provides a wide range of next-gen security solutions for most security needs. Palo provides distinct service offerings targeted at specific use cases such as PRISMA CLOUD to secure cloud environments and applications, CORTEX to automate security operations, STRATA to adopt zero-trust network security, and PRISMA ACCESS to secure remote workforces.

Whether you are managing cloud-native applications or a simple small business, Palo Alto has managed security solutions to meet any need without compromising its core security. All these services allow Palo Alto to provide a wide-ranging security feature set which includes:

• Application and Infrastructure Security.
• Direct integration to delivery pipelines and workflows with interaction support for CI/CD tools.
• Cloud Security Posture Management and Workload Protection.
• Automated incident response and investigations.
• Virtual, Containerised, Physical Firewalls.
• DNS Security, 5G Security, Mobile, and IoT Security services.

Cisco

Cisco Systems, Inc is the de facto leader in enterprise networking, which offers its own managed security services. Cisco services are based on three core areas; Managed Detection and Response, Active Threat Analytics, and Incident Response Services to provide a comprehensive security solution.

CISCO offers 24/7 managed security services for any workload in any industry with its state-of-the-art global security operations centres. These industries include even highly regulated ones such as health care. CISCO offers comprehensive protection features such as:

• Policy Management.
• Proactive Device Monitoring.
• Holistic Architecture Management.
• Security Incident Monitoring and Analysis.
• Detailed Reporting.
• Threat Intelligence.

The above features aid CISCO in offering industry-leading security services. These features are coupled with the wide-ranging device and service support, emergency response, and proactive services like vulnerability identification and security consultancy to provide fully-featured solutions.

FireEye

FireEye, more specifically the FireEye XDR, is a managed security service that offers security services covering all major threat vectors such as email, endpoint, network, cloud, and web. FireEye XDR combines all these security vectors under a single platform and allows users to manage them within a single interface. This translates into managing the complete security posture from individual endpoints to cloud infrastructure through a single managed service.

Centred around its Helix Security platform, FireEye offers next-gen event management and behavioural analysis, which acts as the basis for SIEM and provides the necessary tools to accelerate incident response while providing direct integration to Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR). Some features that distinguish FireEye from other services are:

• Defence in Depth for endpoints.
• Realtime forensics investigations.
• Advanced Email protection, including impersonation and spear-phishing.
• FireEye Cloudvisory to secure any cloud-based environment, including Openstack, Kubernetes, Azure, AWS, and GCP.
• User and Entity Behaviour Analytics (UEBA).
• Compliance Reporting.
• Workflow and Case Management.

In recent months, FireEye has combined with McAfee Enterprise to bring the best of both solutions by connecting McAfee’s device-to-cloud cybersecurity solutions with FireEye’s security services. It has enabled them to form a far-reaching cyber security organisation.

Open Systems

Open Systems is a Zurich-based networking and cybersecurity company that offers wide-ranging security solutions. These solutions range from the SASE+ offering that combines networking with inbuilt security to standalone MDR services for their XDR+ (Extended Detection and Response) offering, which unifies Network Detection and Response (NDR), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR), and Managed Detection and Response (MDR+) into a single unified service.

Additionally, Open Systems is well versed in providing security solutions for Microsoft-based solutions and Azure cloud environments as a Microsoft-certified threat protection specialist. However, it does not prevent other services such as AWS or GCP from benefiting from Open Systems managed security products as they can be adapted to suit any environment.

Open Systems provides actionable insights with global threat isolation, threat management, and incident management with the help of highly skilled Open Systems security engineers in their 24×7 Security Operations Centres. The following are the core features of these security solutions:

• Secure Web Gateways, Firewalls, and Dedicated intrusion detection services
• Aggregated complete environment monitoring on a global scale.
• Machine learning-based threat analysis.
• Continuous monitoring with the real-time response from SOCs.
• Hardware and Software Lifecycle Management.
• Proactive Threat Hunting.
• SIEM (Log Ingestion and Managed Azure Sentinel).
• Network, Web, and Email Containment.

Conclusion

In the previous sections, we had a look at the top 10 Managed Security Service Providers. Each of them offers comprehensive security solutions to meet the needs of the evolving threat landscape. Furthermore, each vendor offers their own takes on threat management, monitoring, reporting, and incident response to secure various types of workloads from user endpoints to cloud architectures. Ultimately, all these services have led to an abundance of choices for consumers to select the best service provider for their requirements within their budget.