Buy-Side Technology Awards 2016: Best Buy-Side Cyber-Security Platform/Tool—eSentire

As trading houses grapple with complying with an ever-growing raft of new reporting rules, while also trying to invest in new innovative tools, they're finding themselves increasingly under assault from outside forces. eSentire has established itself as one of the leading defenders in this war. As such, its Managed Detection and Response (MDR) tool, which was launched in the last year, has been named as the best buy-side cyber-security platform in this year's Buy-Side Technology Awards.

MDR goes beyond intrusion prevention and event management by leveraging signature-based threat intelligence, behavioral and reputational-based analytics, and attack-pattern algorithms to detect both known and unknown cyber threats. Its Network Interceptor sensor provides its analysts with the visibility necessary to stop attacks that breach traditional security defenses. Signals are generated when something unusual occurs, and its forensics team is able to fully investigate and respond to new and innovative attacks. 

“This is our most powerful differentiator: We hunt down new attacks, and remediate while they’re small. We call it Micro-Incident Response,” says Mark McArdle, CTO at eSentire.

Founded in 2001, eSentire protects over $3.2 trillion in assets under management and has over 1,600 security sensors in 30 countries. Its platform has more than doubled its client base over the last two years, while maintaining a 95 percent client retention rate. In 2016, the firm partnered with Carbon Black to unify its network anomaly and forensics capabilities with Carbon Black’s endpoint capabilities, allowing eSentire to pivot from network to endpoint protection, and vice versa. “This is a game-changer for our security operations center (SOC) analysts and for the clients we protect,” says McArdle. 

The vendor has deepened integration with cloud-based service providers—which the buy side relies on—including Office 365, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, Google Apps and Dropbox, among others, offering 24x7 protection within their networks.

“Our first, and most important, core value is the protection of a customer’s network can never, ever be compromised. And this core value drives everything we do, every day.” Mark McArdle, CTO, eSentire

The vendor has also invested heavily in growing its big-data analytics capabilities. “Our investment in a new approach to big-data analytics has yielded significant gains in efficacy, performance, and efficiency,” McArdle says. “The volume of attacks and the need for a near-real-time response drove our investment into some key new SOC infrastructure projects.”