Trend Micro, e-Cop and M.Tech ally to offer Custom Defense-as-a-Service

Source: Trend Micro. From left: James Wong, Regional Director, M.Tech, Mdm Han Juat Hoon, Executive Director, M.Tech, Yow Tau Keon, CEO, e-Cop Group, and David Siah, Country Manager, Singapore, Trend Micro.

In August 2013, Trend Micro introduced Trend Micro Custom Defence Services to improve the detection of targeted attacks. Trend Micro announced a partnership with e-Cop to offer the services across Asia Pacific, and also established TrendLabs Singapore to bring a well-established forensic and analysis capability against malware to Singapore.

Last Thursday, the company announced Custom Defence-as-a-Service to help enterprises fight against the expected increase in targeted attacks in the years to come. Trend Micro’s Security Predictions for 2015 anticipate that the velocity and intensity of attacks will increase following the many large-scale breaches in 2014.

As advanced persistent threats (APTs) become stealthier and more sophisticated than ever, Trend Micro’s Custom Defence-as-a-Service combines hardware, software, and monitoring services to help enterprises detect, analyse and respond to targeted attacks. 

The service will be delivered with cyberthreat monitoring service provider e-Cop and value-added distributor M.Tech. Trend Micro’s Deep Discovery platform already integrates seamlessly with e-Cop’s monitoring service through its existing Custom Defence Services. New to the alliance is M.Tech, a security distributor to the channel and enterprise ecosystem, which will manage the service delivery and go-to-market strategy for the service.

Custom Defence-as-a-Service will allow organisations to enjoy:

· Reduced investment for solution deployment, shifting the cost of protection from capex to opex.

· Comprehensive protection at all levels, with access to cyber threat experts, global threat intelligence services and real-time notifications when threats occur.

· Improved visibility and understanding of the nature of attacks, allowing organisations to strategise a response effectively

“In the future, organisations need to accept that data breaches will become commonplace and that it will get increasingly harder to keep hackers out,” said Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Trend Micro. “IT security will see a paradigm shift where visibility and understanding the nature of the threats become more important as it allows organisations to respond effectively. This is the value that our Custom Defence-as-a-Service can provide.”

“Performed out of e-Cop’s Global Command Centres across the globe, the enhanced offering provides greater security insights while yet maintaining the assurance of e-Cop’s round-the-clock monitoring for cyber threats," said Yow Tau Keon, CEO, e-Cop. “Through this partnership with Trend Micro, we continue to help organisations respond faster to targeted attacks, to quickly mitigate and minimise the impact; reaffirming e-Cop's commitment to deliver trusted information security and risk management services to enterprises and governments across the region.”

Yow explained that monitoring services gives organisations situational awareness about what is happening to the enterprise. He said the average mean time taken to discover an APT is 200 days and that is if the APT is well publicised, and the organisation has not installed "the necessary tools". "Once have put in the tools and made sure the design is correct and all updates have been put in, we monitor the service 24x7 and are able to detect unusual behaviour immediately," he said.  

A regional team at e-Cop ensures that the customer is alerted if something suspicious is occurring through a combination of system analysis, access to local and regional information, as well as international trends. "We work closely with governments across the world," Yow said. "We have to be able to to see signs and symptoms that there are breaches."

M.Tech plans to reach out to as many partners as possible to make threat prevention solution much more affordable, said James Wong, Regional Director, M.Tech, and will also engage financial, public sector and enterprise customers as well.

“M.Tech brings the certified technical resources and expertise to ensure the timely delivery of Custom Defence-as-a-Service at multiple customer sites across the region,” said Wong. “This collaboration with Trend Micro and e-Cop places us in a position to offer a customised yet affordable cyber treat prevention solution that addresses businesses’ varying security needs against targeted attacks.”

Trend Micro’s Custom Defence-as-a-Service is based on its Deep Discovery technology and gives network-wide visibility and intelligence to detect and respond to targeted attacks and APTs in real-time. Coupled with round-the-clock monitoring and access to cyber threat experts, critical information assets can be safeguarded.

Purchasing and deploying a cyber threat prevention solution comes with a very high initial outlay. David Siah, Country Manager, Singapore, Trend Micro, shared that one appliance with a '360 view' would cost upwards of US$90,000. While this may be enough for a small business, larger ones could require eight or nine of them to cover different parts of the network, and the cost of supporting services have not yet been factored in.

As it is subscription-based, Custom Defence-as-a-Service allows organisations to enjoy the benefits of comprehensive protection at a fraction of the cost. The service is further boosted by the presence of TrendLabs Singapore, which provides organisations with support on breach investigation and incident response. 

The full suite of Custom Defence Services includes health checks of critical systems and network traffic, advisory services to keep security plans updated, remote monitoring and alert services to augment security operations, on-site breach investigations, as well as the cleaning up of compromised systems. Customised signatures based on malicious files are also created, ensuring - like a vaccination - that the system can easily detect and defend itself against the same kind of threat if it is encountered again. 

Read the blog post on Trend Micro's 2015 predictions here and about misconceptions about cybersecurity in APAC here.