Top 9 benefits of Microsoft Sentinel: defending the healthcare sector

The healthcare system remains a significant ‘easy target’ for cyber criminals. As such, the rise of cyber-attacks in the UK should be a top concern for our healthcare system. 2023 data from Indusface revealed that 52% of health and social care businesses are disproportionately targeted compared to the 49% average of UK businesses, with the sector ranked fifth most likely to be attacked.

Experts have warned the UK’s healthcare sector to take a preventative approach, following the 2022 revelation that the sector is facing an average of 785 weekly cyber-attacks. To ensure patient data is secure from future threats, the NHS needs a high-performing and robust cyber security platform in place that will spot, prevent and protect patient data from future attackers.

With remote working now part of our daily lives and the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy implemented within the NHS, allowing staff to access systems from their own devices, security protection is naturally weakened and fragmented. Although the NHS has best practice guidance, policies and training that employees need to abide by, the healthcare system must adopt mature and proactive cyber-security systems that can track down all possible threats before they become an issue.

In this blog, we’ll discuss how Microsoft Sentinel, a Security Information and Event Management solution, can help the NHS and other healthcare practices crack down on cyber security.

What is Microsoft Sentinel?

Microsoft Sentinel gives you the platform to see and stop threats across the entire organisation. The powerful Security Information and Event Management solution is built on the cloud and offers intelligent security analytics that help you stay ahead of sophisticated threats.

The top 9 benefits of Sentinel

1. Complete visibility
   Microsoft Sentinel allows you to see your entire network in one centrally managed portal. Once you have ingested all your data feeds into your Sentinel instance, true 24/7 monitoring will be at your fingertips; providing transparent visibility.
2. Best-in-class security
   With the ability to detect threats and vulnerabilities in real time, your systems will always be one step ahead of any attackers. Sentinel’s platform lets you collect, detect, investigate and respond to threats, giving you all the tools to keep your data as secure as possible.
3. Increase the maturity of your operations
   Sentinel has a range of tools and features to take your security operations up a gear. When investigating a threat, the similar incident widget will show relevant scenarios from your activity log, which you can use as reference to deal with the attack. And you’ll be able to see every step taken in detail and identify the individuals that worked on the past threat, since the activity log tracks all actions and comments against an incident for you to look back and learn from when needed.
4. Get unlimited cloud speed at scale
   Thanks to unlimited speed and storage capabilities, you can scale up your organisation’s security to meet your needs as you grow, reducing costs by 48% compared to legacy systems.
5. Gain a holistic view of data security
   Using built-in data connectors, Microsoft Sentinel can easily connect to business logs across all users, devices and apps, as well as on-premises and cloud infrastructure. This allows you to collect data at scale. From there you can use built-in workbook templates to create interactive reports that offer a holistic view of your security.
6. Detect previously undetected threats
   The healthcare sector needs to be on the ball when it comes to cyber threats. Luckily, Microsoft’s unparalleled threat intelligence proactively identifies previously undetected threats, as well as minimising false positives. So, it can spend time responding to the threats that pose the most risk.
7. Automate tasks with Playbooks
   As new technologies and threats emerge, Microsoft Sentinel offers scalable automation within your security workflow. So, in the background, the system can be handling everyday threats while you keep an eye on the wider issues at hand.
   With no code experience required, SOC engineers and analysts can set up new automations to save day-to-day repetition.
8. Proactively hunt for threats
   With Microsoft Sentinel, you don’t have to wait for a threat to land on the system’s radar. With its powerful search and query tools, you can create custom detection rules to train the platform to hunt for specific threats and deliver its findings to security incident responders – keeping your systems one step ahead of an attacker.
   From there, you’re able to bookmark certain alerts to return to later, or to share with others. Plus, you can organise the events into correlating groups and launch a deeper investigation.
9. Get to the root cause of a threat
   Thanks to Microsoft’s deep investigation tools, you can drill down into separate alerts within a report to discover what they’re connected to and the root cause of the threat.

How Microsoft Sentinel helps us protect organisations

Underpinned by Microsoft Sentinel, at Atlas Support we are proud to offer Cyberguard, a managed Security Operations Centre (SOC) that provides unparalleled protection for your organisation. Using Cyberguard, our experienced, highly qualified and accredited team of cyber security professionals detect, investigate and prevent security threats around the clock, so you don’t have to.

By using the best-in-class system that offers enhanced incident response times and increased visibility, we’re able to offer all the above benefits to our customers. So, your organisation and customer data will always be protected against oncoming threats at a reduced cost.

Want to find out more about Cyberguard? Complete the short form below, and one of our experienced and friendly team members will be in touch to share further information.

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