Rackspace, founder of OpenStack, the open-source cloud operating system, has announced the launch of Managed Security and Compliance Assistance (MSCA), an offering to provide data security, protect critical business processes, and mitigate risk from potential customers. This product, which is in effect a threat intelligence product, is specifically designed for Rackspace customers to develop security solutions that cover their complex, multi-cloud environments.

The new service, MSCA, lets customers communicate with Rackspace security experts to help with strategic planning for best practice multi-cloud security, tactical day-to-day security monitoring and threat analysis to deter, detect and respond to potential threats around the clock. It is, in reality, a clouyd-based threat intelligence product. 

rackspace servers data centre
Inside a Rackspace data center

Dealing with threats that come without warning

Perry Robinson, vice president and general manager of Managed Security at Rackspace said: “Every day, businesses are at risk of being affected by a security threat or data breach. These threats often occur without warning, can be directed at any part of the business, and come from anywhere in the world. Damage from malicious parties can range from lost revenue and recovery costs to potential liability costs and compliance-related fines.”

 Rackspace will provide initial consultation and deployment to deliver customers a bespoke solution as well as monitor customers’ environment to help them detect and respond to security threats. The goal is to significantly lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) over internally developed security operations centers and comparable managed service offerings.

 “Cyberattacks are the new normal for companies and represent one of the realities of doing business today as technology becomes the lifeblood of our organisations,” said Brian Kelly, chief security officer at Rackspace. “Customers trust Rackspace for security expertise because we have 16 years of first-hand knowledge managing IT infrastructure and direct experience with today’s complex threats. Because of the scale and complexity of the technology environments that we manage, security is a top priority for Rackspace and our customers day in and day out.”

fear eats
Threat intelligence - dealing with cloud threats

Managed Security - threat intelligence for cloud

The Rackspace Managed Security offering is designed to detect and respond to advanced persistent threats (APTs) and other types of cyber attacks.

The offering is tailored to customers’ business needs and backed by a 24/7/365 Customer Security Operations Center (CSOC) at Rackspace.

The CSOC is located at Rackspace headquarters in the USA and will open in October. The following services will be a part of the Managed Security offering:

  • Host and Network Protection – Provides advanced host and network protection platforms targeted at zero-day and non-malware attacks as well as traditional compromise tactics.
  • Security Analytics – Utilises a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) platform paired with big data analytics platforms to collect and analyze security data from the customer’s environment.
  • Vulnerability Management – Will utilize scanning and agent technologies to understand the customer’s environment and uses this data to tailor their Customer Security Operations Center’s response to threats and attacks in the environment.
  • Threat Intelligence – Rackspace consumes more than 20 threat intelligence feeds, aggregating the information with their own internal data to respond to the changing threat landscape in real time. 

Compliance Assistance

Rackspace Compliance Assistance is a combination of tools and expertise to help customers achieve and maintain compliance and reporting goals for their environment. Compliance Assistance offers the following capabilities: 

  • Configuration Hardening and Monitoring – Assigns security configuration profiles to hosts based on accepted standards such as those from the Center for Internet Security (CIS), as well as community best practices. Rackspace detects and logs deviations from these profiles in real-time to allow for comprehensive documentation and reduced vulnerability windows.
  • Patch Monitoring – Rackspace patch monitoring provides an understanding of what threats are applicable to an environment including what Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) are present in the environment.
  • User Monitoring – Monitors and documents user host access, authentication level, and login times to help ensure that customers can prove compliance with access controls.
  • File Integrity Management – Detects, reports, and documents changes to files on a host based on customers’ security and compliance requirements.

Customers can benefit from this type of expertise

“Cloud vendors need to be more proactive and help their customers understand and manage security in the cloud, and with this new Managed Security offering, Rackspace is responding to that need,” said Christopher Wilder, practice head and senior analyst, cloud services at Moor Insights & Strategy. “As organisations increasingly adopt complex cloud environments and cyber attacks become more frequent, customers can benefit from the 24/7 security expertise and support from Rackspace to help them keep their information and data secure. These services are even more important to smaller and mid-sized firms who might not be able to find or afford the top security talent to run their IT organisations.”

At launch, the offering will be in limited to customers in the U.S.A.