In our recent blog, “See the COMPLETE Picture: New Study Reveals the Benefits of Fully Managed Detection and Response,” we reviewed Forrester’s analysis that explains how CrowdStrike Falcon® Complete™ delivers 403% return on investment (ROI), the highest documented ROI of any endpoint protection solution on the market today, including SentinelOne, Microsoft, VMWare/Carbon Black and Cylance/Blackberry. But there’s a lot more to the benefits than just the financial ROI. To get the full story, we should also consider the real-world outcomes seen by security teams.

ROI doesn’t show how Falcon Complete transforms the way a cybersecurity team operates on a day-to-day basis. It doesn’t show how Falcon Complete solves the problems that keep CISOs awake at night. And ROI numbers alone don’t communicate the immeasurable value of stopping a breach.

Let’s explore some of the common challenges for security teams, and unpack how Forrester’s study highlights the difference that the right people, process and technology can have in improving your security posture.

Challenge 1: The Volume of Threats Makes It Difficult for Security Teams to Prioritize 

The organizations interviewed by Forrester reported ever-increasing challenges in managing the growing volume of threats targeting their organizations month after month. Their teams were frequently stretched paper-thin, under severe alert fatigue. Security leaders reported being in an “uncomfortable and tenuous position,” in constant fear that important alerts would one day fall through the cracks, leading to a significant breach. 

The key to reducing alert fatigue is assembling the right balance of technology, people and process to reduce the workload to a sustainable level. Forrester’s study found that Falcon Complete effectively eliminated the workload of managing endpoint alerts for the organizations they interviewed, adding the equivalent of five security analysts for an organization that matched the composite profile.* This capacity provided the game changer the security leaders needed in order to get off the alert management hamster wheel and start focusing on their own strategic initiatives.

Challenge 2: Stealthy Attacks Move Fast, Often Outpacing Defenders

Today’s attacks are not only coming in with increased volume, but also increased velocity. “Breakout time” is defined as the interval from when an adversary gains initial access to an organization to the time they achieve lateral movement, representing a critical stage in an ongoing intrusion. Breakout time is measured in hours, but it often takes today’s defenders days or weeks to detect these intrusions. The CrowdStrike Services 2020 Cyber Front Lines Report found that defenders need an average of 79 days to identify and respond to a successful intrusion. This imbalance in speed leaves defenders at a significant disadvantage, leading to serious breaches.

The Cyber Front Lines Report showed that Falcon Complete sets the bar for fast and effective response, by routinely detecting threats within 1 minute, investigating and understanding the threats within an average of 6 minutes, and remediating threats in an average of 29 minutes. One key to this lightning-fast response is continuous human-powered threat hunting, delivered by CrowdStrike’s Falcon OverWatch™. Forrester found that OverWatch’s expert team of 24/7 threat hunters delivered the equivalent of five full-time threat hunters, and in combination with the Falcon Complete team, dramatically reduced the time to detect and respond to threats.

Challenge 3: Security Incidents Are a Productivity Killer for IT Staff and End Users

Security incidents place a massive burden on IT staff as well as end users in many organizations. Forrester’s study showed that responders are often forced to reimage or replace infected systems, resulting in hours of downtime for affected users and a great deal of manual labor for IT staff. 

Falcon Complete’s fast and effective response lifted this burden from the interviewed organizations. The security leaders Forrester interviewed reported an average of 18 fewer security incidents per month, giving their end users more than 1,700 hours of productivity back in their days, and returning more than 1,000 hours to overworked IT staffers.

Challenge 4: Protecting Endpoints Involves Hidden Costs

Often, vendors provide ROI studies to prospects designed to showcase the value their solutions will bring. While the ROI numbers are always impressive, they often conveniently ignore the full costs of managing endpoint protection today. Examples of hidden costs include:

• Costs of resolving endpoint security issues. It’s not enough to simply identify threats — at some point, the threat needs to be remediated. This often requires special skills, tools and time, which are out of reach for many organizations. Falcon Complete’s ability to not just detect but also investigate and respond, on behalf of the target organization, eliminates this hidden cost, leading one security leader to say, “The biggest positive with Falcon Complete is not only keeping the business safe but allowing the business to carry on without actually noticing actions being taken to stop a threat.”
• Costs of deploying and maintaining the endpoint security platform. No technology is “set and forget.” It requires careful deployment monitoring, configuration, tuning and occasional upgrades. Vendors may argue that their solution requires less than competing solutions, but only Falcon Complete eliminates the daily hassle entirely. By handling all of the day-to-day “care and feeding” of endpoint security, Falcon Complete “… allows me to focus on other things … they’ve got my back,” said another security leader.

Forrester’s study highlights that Falcon Complete delivers a truly comprehensive solution, combining the proven effectiveness of the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform with the speed and experience of our teams of experts, providing a true turnkey solution to endpoint protection — and one that can be operational practically overnight.

Rise to the Challenge and Stop Breaches With Falcon Complete

“I’m totally confident.”

“Lets me sleep far better at night.”

“… with Falcon Complete, the problems we had before seemed to just disappear.”

— Security leaders on their experience with Falcon Complete

Forrester’s TEI study of Falcon Complete gives a rare glimpse into the benefits and costs of protecting endpoints in today’s threat landscape, and surfaces the outcomes you can unlock if you do it right. Falcon Complete’s winning combination — lightning-fast detection, and 24/7/365 threat hunting and surgical response, powered by CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform — provided a wide range of benefits that added up to one compelling outcome for security leaders: complete confidence in Falcon Complete’s ability to stop breaches. That’s a benefit you can’t put a number on.

*Forrester’s composite organization profile included the following key assumptions: 7,000 employees and 7,500 protected endpoints; has been a Falcon Complete customer for 18 months; and manages security operations worldwide.

Additional Resources

• Read the Forrester study, “The Total Economic Impact™ of CrowdStrike Falcon® Complete.”
• Read about a recent example of Falcon Complete in action: “Falcon Complete Stops Microsoft Exchange Server Zero-Day Exploits.”
• Learn more: Read the Falcon Complete white paper.