IT-Security as a managed service

While some companies are still hesitant to buy external IT-security as managed services the market is growing at a rapid pace. When it comes to IT security, companies like to keep their heads under the line of fire. Although security does not increase sales, it is considered critical. Serious security vulnerabilities in operating systems or the recurrent loss of sensitive data show just how far the consequences of IT security failing can go. Just take a look at what happened to Bell Canada and a few other well known companies. 

Companies that take their defense against cyber criminals into their own hands need to build up a good deal of expertise. The number of threats is constantly increasing, and new dangers keep coming. One of the current challenges is industrial espionage: with trojans engineered specifically towards a particular victim, the perpetrators try to gain access to important information. Since the malware is unique and only goes to a recipient, antivirus manufacturers do not receive a lot of code samples and are unable to provide protective signatures in a timely manner - classic antivirus protection fails. Other dangers have become much more prevalent over the years, such as Ransomware, spam over VoIP (Voice or IP), also called Spam over Internet Telephony (Spit).

It’s a rapidly growing market

Errors during operation or configuration of a system offer many attack surfaces. IT security is a case for specialists. Therefore, it is surprising that outsourcing in this area is still rare. According to a study by Indian research group Mordor Intelligence, the Managed Security Services market was valued at 19.4 billion USD in 2017 and is expected to grow to 46 billion over the next 5 years. In a survey of almost 1,000 IT decision makers worldwide, more than half of the respondents said they wanted to significantly expand their managed IT security infrastructure in the current year.

While managed security services are often still sold in a package with other outsourcing projects. According to a study by Forrester, the share of bundled service offerings is between 70 and 85 percent. "Most providers so far only sell a small part of their customers Managed Security Services exclusively, but the share is growing “, concluded the experts.

Demand is growing, especially among SMEs

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) so far are the biggest growth segment among customers of such services, the Experton Group observes. In particular, given their limited human and organizational resources compared to big corporations, they are in even more dire need for managed it security services than the biggest players. Especially popular is the use of managed e-mail security services. "This area can be outsourced in isolation, no major intervention in the IT infrastructure is necessary," says the study. Managed firewalls, managed VPN and managed IPS (intrusion prevention systems) are also widespread and in ever-growing demand. Among the services that tend to be niche, the consultants count on vulnerability and event analyzes but as the demand for properly implemented ISMS (Information security management systems) is steadily increasing, these will perspectively also gain much more traction.

Scalable managed security services offer cost-efficiency

One of the key advantages of MSSP (managed it security service providers) is their easily scalable and predictable cost to a business. An MSSP offers you a team of experienced security experts at a fraction of the cost of building your organizations own security team in-house. Acquiring a full stack of security technologies and solutions can be a very costly endeavor, too costly, in fact, for many SMEs. Managed services for IT security offer the advantage of scaling and adapting easily to a businesses need. For example, instead of purchasing your own firewall hardware for your organizations network, maintaining it and hiring a team of experts to configure the systems to the usually constantly changing needs of the organizations infrastructure, getting this firewall as a managed service will enable you to scale the size and therefore cost of the operation efficiently along with the actual need while also just paying for expert knowledge when you really need to. 

Managed services allow for effortless security

Regularly timed vulnerability scans of your organization’s environment tend to be a key element in contemporary IT security strategies. A benefit of working with a managed service provider is the option to easily deploy readily available scanning technology across your IT network assets, applications, and databases. Automated vulnerability scans by an MSSP will reduce the effort needed for further security testing like regular penetration tests, thus reducing IT operation costs.

In addition to this, the provider of the managed services can offer configuration updates, patches, hardening and compliance assertions of your assets and applications, along with informative reports, with the deployment of these automated vulnerability scans to ensure your results are ready to be acted upon. The generated data may also be used in a SIEM (Security Information and Management System) either by your organization or the MSSP to collect security-related information for analysis and, possibly, incident response and event investigation. 

As you can see from the above, managed services offer sizeable benefits in regards to IT security for businesses of all sizes. Especially for the small and medium enterprises, the advantages in scaling and cost-efficiency speak for themselves.  

Wouldn't it be great to have a company that supports your complete IT environment from your servers and networking infrastructure right through to your phone and cloud solutions? At Cloud9 Solutions, we are a leader in Managed IT Services and are committed to outstanding service. We believe in building positive and enduring relationships with our customers.