In a move designed to help customers defend against faster and more sophisticated cyberattacks, Dell Technologies today announced an expansion of its partnership with CrowdStrike to offer managed detection and response (MDR) services with the security vendor’s Falcon extended detection and response (XDR) platform,

The partnership builds on a foundation laid last March when Dell integrated CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform into its SafeGuard and Response portfolio to enhance its threat management capabilities further.

The expansion brings the CrowdStrike Falcon XDR platform into the fold of Dell's MDR services, which leverages Dell’s certified security experts and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to provide continuous threat detection and investigation.

​​XDR commonly combines elements of security information and event management (SIEM), security orchestration, automation and response (security, orchestration, automation, response (SOAR)), endpoint detection and response (EDR), and network traffic analysis (NTA) in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to centralize security data and incident response.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon XDR service is built on its EDR platform and cloud log management and observability technology from its Humio acquisition, and it offers the rest either natively or through partnerships.

The extended partnership aims to combine Dell’s global security operations experts and proactive threat-hunting capabilities from CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform to deliver the security customers need across on-premises, multicloud, edge, operational technology (OT) and multivendor environments, the tech company claims.

The solution also offers flexibility to tailor MDR services based on their security needs, said Mihir Maniar, VP of infrastructure, edge and security services portfolio at Dell Technologies. “Customers need scalable, outcome-based security solutions to stay ahead of increasingly sophisticated threats.”

In addition, Dell expanded its MDR Pro Plus to address the needs of the mid-market and customers facing skills shortages last year. Building on that service, the new partnership targets businesses of all sizes, from large enterprises to mid-market organizations and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), said CrowdStrike chief business officer Daniel Bernard in a statement.

The Dell MDR solution is now available for global customers with the CrowdStrike Falcon XDR Platform as a direct solution and through channel partners.

MDR is a managed security service that typically uses a combination of human expertise and automation technologies to provide 24/7 monitoring and analysis of IT infrastructure for signs of malicious activity.

It can be used to “rapidly detect, investigate and respond to unauthorized and/or suspicious activity; offer assurance that adversaries have not gained access via threat hunting; and recommend actions to improve overall security posture,” according to an earlier Forrester report.

The analysis firm named CrowdStrike as one of the MDR leaders in last year’s Forrester Wave report.

CrowdStrike President Michael Sentonas told SDxCentral in an earlier interview that the company had been seeing manage security services provider (MSSP) gain traction. The vendor last April introduced a managed XDR (MXDR) service based on its existing MDR capabilities, which combines human expertise with AI-powered automation and threat intelligence to operationalize XDR.