When it comes to today’s active, dynamic cloud threat landscape filled with targets from IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), to PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service), the conventional methods of managing incident response (IR) are increasingly falling short. Mitiga’s platform was born from this realization.

We understood from hard-earned experience that responding to the velocity and stealth of today’s sophisticated cloud and SaaS breaches required a fresh approach built on new capabilities. A traditional IR retainer wasn’t going to cut it because it wasn’t designed to.

Here are 3 of the ways that Mitiga’s cloud investigation and response automation (CIRA) platform outworks traditional incident response retainers:

1. Mitiga dramatically accelerates investigation and response

Mitiga emphasizes preparation, so that response can be lightning-fast when an incident occurs. With Mitiga, detailed knowledge of the customer's environment is gained during onboarding, but it doesn’t stop there. The Mitiga platform features continuous data collection into a centralized Cloud Forensic Data Lake. By ingesting and normalizing data from across the environment, Mitiga ensures the necessary forensic data is immediately accessible for investigation.

Mitiga continuously ingests relevant data sources, so as your cloud and SaaS configurations change, your visibility of those environments can remain intact. So, when an incident strikes, Mitiga can launch an investigation almost instantly, because the forensic data is already prepared.

This is a stark contrast to traditional IR retainers. When you call for support, a team is called in to begin discovery. They may not be familiar with your environments, and even when they have learned about them previously, their knowledge is unlikely to be up to date. All that discovery takes valuable time, and today’s cloud and SaaS attackers move fast.

Mitiga leverages automation to accelerate investigation and analysis. By reducing dependence on manual procedures, Mitiga significantly speeds breach investigations. Whereas traditional incident response often takes weeks to gather data and get under way, Mitiga can complete an investigation and deliver answers in hours. That speed lessens breach impact and mitigates organizational damages.

2. Mitiga delivers continuous value through Managed Threat Hunting

Traditional time-and-materials retainers are primarily for “war time.” Service hours must be conserved in case a major incident occurs, and those investments often go unused if no incident manifests or are spent at year-end on less valued or one-off activities.

Mitiga's Managed Threat Hunting is a comprehensive cloud and SaaS threat hunting program with an array of hunting capabilities, from Strategic and Event-driven Hunts to Continuous Threat Hunting that functions daily using the latest cloud threat intelligence and indicators of attack (IOAs) curated by Mitiga’s experts in our Cloud Attack Scenario Library (CASL).

With Mitiga, customers gain constant advantage from the platform's hunting and monitoring of activities which can uncover emerging attacks even from events that may seem innocuous—like the access of a file, or the download of certain documents. By recognizing potentially dangerous patterns from digging into historical logs, Mitiga expands not only enterprise’s response capabilities, but also bolsters ongoing cloud attack detection. This is a measurable departure from what retainers can provide.

3. Mitiga is a predictable investment that increases enterprises’ capacity and resilience

The retainer model is based on time and materials. The more services you use, the more they cost. When you're breached, you don’t want to have to worry about ballooning costs due to investigation time or paying high deductibles when activating insurance and increasing your premiums upon renewal. Nor are you likely to ask your IR firm to cut corners if your data, IP, revenue, and reputation are in jeopardy. It’s not a good trade off.

None of this is an issue with Mitiga. Our more comprehensive threat detection, investigation and incident response solution is delivered in a SaaS subscription model, ensuring predictable pricing that you can budget for. There are no unpredictable costs that escalate due to major incidents. Continuous access to our technology and a variety of wrap-around Advisory services are included.

Through ongoing relationships with our customers, Mitiga helps guide and train customer security teams to bolster their own cloud capabilities. By sharing our expert guidance and ensuring transparency throughout our processes, we help our customers expand their security expertise and capacity.

Ultimately, retainers lack the context, data preparation, and integrated tooling needed for cloud environments. Mitiga’s platform and modern approach provide integrated preparation, continuous monitoring, and the specialized expertise needed for the cloud era.

Rethinking your IR approach? Dig deeper here.