Dell beefs up security portfolio with new threat detection and recovery tools

Dell Technologies has added a slew of in-house as well as partnered capabilities to its security portfolio in a bid to beef up its capabilities in areas including threat security, management, and incident response.

“Through ongoing innovation and a powerful ecosystem of partners, we’re committed to helping organizations protect against threats, withstand and recover from attacks and provide confidence that their environments are secure,” said Matt Baker, senior vice president, corporate strategy at Dell Technologies.

The added capabilities include a tiered upgrade to Dell’s managed detection and response (MDR) platform, partnered threat management with CrowdStrike’s Falcon, component verification for Dell’s commercial PCs, and an incident recovery solution.

Dell’s MDR receives a Pro Plus upgrade

Dell is packing up a tiered MDR offering, calling it MDR Pro Plus, to offer vulnerability management, penetration testing, breach and attack simulations, and employee cybersecurity training, on top of the existing MDR offerings of detection, investigation, and patching of vulnerabilities.

“Managed Detection and Response Pro Plus is a fully managed security operations solution that helps organizations prevent, respond and recover from security threats,” said Mihir Maniar, vice president, edge and security services portfolio at Dell Technologies.

While penetration testing will be carried out to identify vulnerable pathways into customer environments, breach, and attack simulations will test the customer’s existing security controls against popular attacks.

Customers in North America will also get Incident Recovery Care, where Dell will deploy certified experts to assess a security incident and get the customer back to business if a breach occurs, Maniar said.

Overall, the offering is designed to provide comprehensive protection for customer endpoints, infrastructure, software, hardware, and cloud infrastucture. Existing Dell MDR customers will need to pay an extra cost to upgrade to MDR Pro Plus.

Threat management improved with Falcon

Apart from the managed services add-on, Dell has entered a partnership with CrowStrike to use the endpoint protection platform (EPP), Falcon, to help boost its safeguard and response portfolio.

“We are adding CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform to our Dell SafeGuard and Response portfolio to provide more choice to our customers and equip them with expansive threat management capabilities,” said JR Balaji, director of product management, endpoint security at Dell Technologies. “The SafeGuard and Response portfolio is comprised of a suite of software solutions for organizations to use to prevent, detect, and remediate attacks.”

Customers can now purchase CrowdStrike software’s Falcon license directly from Dell. The partnership is aimed at offering an extended suite of defenses that accelerate threat investigation and response to protect critical areas of enterprise risk, including endpoints and cloud workloads, identity, and data, according to Balaji.

Dell launches PSX for cyber recovery

Dell has also introduced Product Success Accelerator (PSX) for cyberattack recovery, a new service that promises to improve the isolation and security of recovery vaults for backing up customers’ critical data and maintaining business continuity during cybersecurity incidents.

“PowerProtect cyber recovery vaults are deployed on-prem at a secure location on the customer’s site,” Maniar said. “These vaults include PowerProtect DD appliances, cyber recovery software, CyberSense software, and Dell backup software.”

PowerProtect DD appliances are Dell’s proprietary isolated vaulting hardware that runs cyber recovery software to create recovery backups. CyberSense is an analytics tool that identifies the corrupted files in the recovery porocess and initiates restoring to the previous safe version.

Dell’s PSX for cyber recovery will be available in three versions — Ready, which includes installation, configuration, and planning of the recovery vault; Optimize, which adds quarterly assessments, and recommendations along with restore simulations; and Operate, which adds ongoing assistance including investigations and actions in the event of a cyberattack.

The pricing for PSX for recovery will be dependent on the customer’s environment and selected level of service, Maniar added.

While MDR Pro Plus, Dell Safeguard and Response, and PSX for cyber recovery (only in North America) are already generally available, Dell’s cloud-based SCV will be available globally for Dell commercial PCs in May 2023.

Cloud-based SCV rolled out for Dell commercial PCs

Dell’s secured component verification (SCV) is a supply chain assurance offering that enables customers to verify if the components they have received match what was manufactured in the factory. A cloud-based verification is now added for commercial PCs ordered from Dell.

Dell generates a digital certificate that documents key PC components in the factory and the certificate is stored in a secure cloud environment. When the PC is delivered, organizations’ IT teams can review the PC against its corresponding certificate to verify component integrity.

“Secured Component Verification on Cloud helps further reduce the risk of product tampering with our commercial PCs,” Balaji said. “The customer uses the Dell Trusted Device agent, which resides on the device itself, during the component verification process.”

The Dell Trusted Device agent is available for download free of cost on the current shipping commercial devices. The cloud-based SCV IT can also be used by the IT to verify components at a fleet level via the Dell Tech Direct portal.