Crowdstrike believes that with XDR being where IT security is headed, many of their MDR partners will transform their practices into MXDR ones, where they can offer a fully managed service with their own IP on top of the CrowdStrike platform.
Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike
Today, cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike is launching a new managed eXtended Detection and Response [MXDR] service, CrowdStrike Falcon Complete XDR. MXDR increases Crowdstrike’s existing MDR service widely across multiple vendors and multiple attack surfaces, to provide a broader range of protection. Crowdstrike thinks that XDR is where the cybersecurity industry is heading, and expects that many MDR partners will extend their practices to offer the new MXDR service.
“It is still early days in the XDR market, although many would say that we are the leader,” said Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike. “We see others entering the XDR space because that’s where the market is going. We are still at a stage where a lot of vendors talk about it, but relatively few do it. We can make it a reality for both customers and partners.”
MXDR builds on the core capabilities of XDR.
“XDR delivers protection and response that extends beyond the endpoint,” Bernard said. “It also adds data from other places we can ingest and telemetry from other products. It does across the enterprise what EDR did for the endpoint. The average organization has up to 30 different security products, and customers want a more effective experience managing them. XDR does this by bringing it all together on the Falcon platform. Managed XDR adds a full SOC service capability.”
The availability of the new managed XDR service is our first piece of news,” Bernard said. “From the makers of your MDR service, your MXDR service can now be managed by us from the same Falcon Platform.”
The partner angle here is the second piece of news, as Bernard said that the new service will have multiple advantages for their channel.
“Partners can now build their own service on top of our platform,” Bernard indicated.
“Most MDR providers are coming around to the fact that products and customers are both going to the XDR slant,” he said. “Many existing MDR partners will transplant to managed XDR providers. This replicates what happened in the MDR market, when channel partners who had been in EDR moved into that and created a business around delivering MDR. We will let them build around our platform again with this new service, to reduce mean time to detection and response. We expect that many of our MDR partners will take our customers on this journey.”
Bernard emphasized that the new service will make it much easier for partners to do this.
“I think the power of the Falcon platform is that we can democratize the space,” he said. “With Falcon, we have made it easier to connect the dots and bring in the APIs. We have the most integrations of any cybersecurity vendor on the market. We make it easy for partners to evolve as an MDR partner and transform their practice into a managed XDR partner.”
Bernard said that channel charters need to play a critical role in the transition to XDR because XDR is a team sport. They are already working with partners like Atos Group and eSentire who have built MXDR services on the CrowdStrike Falcon platform, allowing customers to opt between Crowdstrike or a partner to deliver the service.
“We have a broad platform that covers all these different points of the organization, and includes a product component that is curated for the customer,” he said. “Some customers want this vendor delivered. Some customers want it partner delivered. What we are doing here gives the customer choice. That’s a really exciting proposition for the channel. We want the ecosystem to come together around the platform.”
