Outsourcing security monitoring and management has become a practical option for organizations that lack the budget to take care of their own threat detection and incident response needs. As such, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to external security providers.

Managed security service providers (MSSPs) fill in the gap by bringing in a stack of technological solutions and processes to handle a company’s day-to-day security requirements. The only question that remains is, are they doing enough to protect their clients’ networks and data? This post discusses how an MSSP can boost its services by adding domain data to its threat intelligence sources.

Domain Data Enhances an MSSP’s Security Analytics Capability

To be effective, MSSPs must detect attacks before these can even cause damage. Threat detection involves identifying the characters behind an intrusion attempt with their email addresses, domains, and other information; data that is available in WHOIS records.

MSSPs can thus spot inconsistencies between the guises perpetrators take and what their domain records reveal. In some instances, records of past misdeeds tied to a suspect email address can be connected to an ongoing intrusion attempt. Blocking access from the domain that address belongs to after assessing its reputation can thus thwart an attack even before it pushes through.

Those are, however, not the only MSSP functions where domain data can help with. Others include:

• Monitoring network traffic: Domain data can help identify other attack vectors connected to an already-identified threat source. Users can, for instance, look for domains connected to a given email address and proactively block access from or to connected websites to enhance their defenses.
• Firewall monitoring: Domain data can be integrated into firewall systems to ensure that only authorized users get access to an organization’s network. Regularly updated domain data can help companies monitor their network round the clock.
• Creating threat profiles: Domain data can help organizations create more detailed guidelines for employee awareness. By digging more deeply into threat actors and attack patterns, they can devise ways to counter similar threats better. These profiles can be handed down to all employees in the form of best practices against even unknown threats.
• Providing context: Identifying who is responsible for an intrusion attempt and what his possible motives are aids in data contextualization. Making sense of the variables of an attack can be useful in devising strategies for preventing similar attempts.
• Generating actionable information: Domain data provides actionable information that allows an organization to anticipate potential attacks and respond to emerging threats. Malicious domains, email addresses, organizations, and other information from WHOIS records can be included in a company’s blacklist to prevent future threats coming from these from entering its network.
• Adding an extra layer of protection: Some domain research and monitoring tools have incident alert functions that can complement an MSSP’s security portfolio. Using such a product can allow an MSSP to stay on top of the threat landscape and respond to threats immediately. Users, for instance, can block access from domains with ties to a blacklisted email address as soon as it is created.

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Businesses need all the help they can get as threat actors continue to devise new ways to crash through network defenses for illicit gain. They need to keep up with new approaches to threat detection and security monitoring. And that can only be addressed with a reliable source of accurate threat intelligence.

To combat the ever-increasing volume and sophistication of digital threats, all organizations need to gather as much information as possible. Reactive threat response is no longer enough. Companies are in dire need of proactive protection. They need to block threats from the source, something that is only possible if you know where to look—including a variety of domain data feeds.