RSM US is the country’s fifth largest accounting firm, employing more than 17,000 people in 93 locales across the US and Canada. Beyond providing extensive financial and consulting services to a wide range of clients, their managed security operations service, RSM Defense, offers 24/7 coverage for detecting and remediating cybersecurity threats.

Professional services offerings tend to start with financial reporting and tax advisory services, but in recent years, the big players in this space have extended into cybersecurity, reflecting the growing importance of robust cyber protection as a business priority. Providing ironclad security to its client base is, therefore, a strategic priority for RSM to maintain its competitive edge in the industry.

This is why Todd Willoughby, Director and Threat Operations Leader for RSM US, has brought Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform into the fold, as announced this week.

With clients working across disparate network environments, RSM needed better visibility, correlation of threat signals, and speedier response times. Incorporating Stellar’s XDR into RSM’s tech stack empowers them to deliver just that, shedding light on those multifaceted client systems and allowing RSM to act quickly against cyberattacks.

 The Complexity of Guarding Global Networks

RSM Defense provides continuous monitoring, threat hunting, and incident response capabilities for RSM’s multifaceted customer environments across the globe.

However, with each client using its own set of security tools – think firewalls, endpoints, and detection systems – connecting the dots across these disjointed streams of telemetry data can be a challenge. Without an aerial view of the maze, even common intrusion blind spots might inflict serious damage before anyone notices.

With thousands of client endpoints dispersed across the globe, those visibility gaps pose a tremendous risk. RSM’s analysts needed assistance making sense of all that network sprawl, and to spot the sophisticated threats that might slip past individual tool detections.

Integration With Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR Platform

As Willoughby pointed out, Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform takes a different approach from other tools in the space. Rather than just piling on additional granular, endpoint-focused solutions, Open XDR delivers integrated visibility and control.

“Stellar Cyber is taking a different approach to what’s been offered in the market over the last 15 years,” Willoughby stated. “Instead of just putting out just one tool, they are addressing the challenge of delivering a complete view of security events across our clients’ infrastructure under one pane of glass.”

In other words, Open XDR gives RSM Defense a bird’s-eye view of potential threats across clients’ disconnected security technologies and digital presences. In addition, the open architecture means that they can unite these signals without demanding rip-and-replace implementations from clients.

This is significant for resource-constrained teams like those at RSM’s middle-market clients. Instead of forcing full tool replacement, Open XDR automatically consolidates data streams from existing environments, flagging potentially suspicious activity across network presences. So RSM Defense gains immediate organization-wide visibility without disrupting client workflows or budgets.

As Willoughby highlighted, “Because it’s an open platform, integrating clients’ new or existing EDR and other security tools and data sources is a non-issue.” This plug-and-play flexibility allows security teams to highlight blind spots, enhance detection, and expand response capacity – all without draining resources.

ML Capabilities and Templated Detection Rulesets

According to Willoughby, two other major perks of the Stellar Cyber platform are its robust machine learning capabilities, and detection rulesets ready for out-of-the-box threat hunting.

These features help to improve productivity across security teams, regardless of experience level. The platform’s machine learning workflows provide a force multiplier, making all analysts more effective by handling a lot of threat detection and response automatically.

As Willoughby explained, “Great senior cybersecurity analysts are tough to find – even if you can find one, they can cost the business upwards of $150,000 a year, and most clients can’t afford that.” Machine learning helps bridge that expertise gap, allowing RSM Defense to get more mileage from their full team.

Instead of solely relying on scarce senior resources, the automated assistance from machine learning elevates the entire team’s capacity to surface and mitigate threats. And those optimized detection rulesets mean faster, more agile threat hunting right off the bat.

Closing the Security Gap

According to Willoughby, one of the key reasons his team chose Stellar Cyber as an XDR partner is the company’s commitment to execution. As he put it, “There’s a real gap between what vendors say they’ll deliver and what they do deliver. Stellar Cyber listens to customers – they continually improve the platform, and when we get software updates, we see new features that benefit us and our clients directly because they’ve implemented what we asked for.”

Stellar Cyber takes real action to address RSM US’ needs and enhance the Open XDR platform based on user feedback. When updates roll out, RSM sees those customer-driven improvements firsthand. This dedication to adapting the product based on real-world demands allows RSM Defense to keep pace with threats even as the landscape changes.

Backed by the flexible, visibility-centric Open XDR platform, RSM US can meet today’s security challenges while preparing for tomorrow’s. So while many vendors pay lip service to customer-centric innovation, Stellar Cyber walks the walk. And that continual evolution to match user needs makes all the difference in RSM’s mission to lock down security despite modern complexity.