As organizations transform to become more and more digitally enabled, they fundamentally change their process architecture and enterprise technology. This also exposes them to high levels of risk and creates new kind of security challenges. Considering the speed and depth with which cyber attackers now operate, companies are changing their approach to cyber security. As the number of cyberattacks rises, there is a growing demand for Managed Security Services.
Managed Security Services are a whole set of services provided by Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs). MSSPs provide a level of continuous security monitoring, vulnerability risk assessment, threat intelligence, and management of tools and devices. MSSPs provide outsourced monitoring and management of security devices and systems. Common services include firewall, intrusion detection, virtual private network (VPN) services, vulnerability scanning, and anti- viral services. Organizations can outsource their complete IT security functions to MSSPs. Though some organizations are reluctant to give up their control over the security of their systems, there can be many benefits to utilizing the services of an MSSP in not only large organizations but also small and medium sized enterprises.
Need for MSSP
- Desire for better security
These are challenging times for security professionals and organizations are being driven by the desire for better security. There is a greater urgency for businesses to address cyber security and thus a growing demand for managed security services. Managed security services provide a cost effective alternative to manage the monitoring, detecting, investigating, alerting, and responding to cyber threats.
- Proactively Prevent Cyber Attacks
Often threats go unnoticed and investigating them requires valuable time and resources. Managed Security Services proactively perform threat hunting and provide rapid response to assess suspicious activity across the enterprise premises as well as cloud environments. Consequently, attacks can be prevented or the strength of the attack reduced.
Benefits of hiring an MSSP
MSSPs have evolved over the years. Traditional MSSPs were solely focused on the cybersecurity aspect. But the ever increasing demand for internet security has prompted some MSSPs to include other services, such as cloud based security services. The market for managed security is only expected to grow in the coming years as the benefits are manifold.
- By engaging the services of an MSSP, an organization gets the services of skilled and experienced cyber security professionals. It thus saves its time, money, and resources in hiring, training, and retaining professionals for the same. In most cases, an active managed security service provider will have more current knowledge than any in-house cyber security team.
A managed security services provider gathers knowledge from working with different industries and verticals. They are more likely to be able to identify different attack strategies and security architectures.
- Another great benefit of outsourcing to a managed security services is that it frees up the internal IT team to focus on result oriented tasks. The internal IT team can better use its time and resources when cyber security is not the only issue it has to focus on.
- Due to their extensive knowledge and experience in the area of cyber security, managed security services can employ tools and resources to counter security threats that the in-house security personnel may not be familiar. This improves the ability to respond to security challenges.
- Hiring a whole team of skilled and experienced security professionals can be prohibitively expensive to any organization. By hiring the services of managed security services, companies can get access to large teams of experienced professionals at a fraction of the cost. MSSPs work by applying economies of scale and thus manage their costs.
Keys to a Profitable MSSP
Successful MSSPs have certain organizational traits in common. They have to follow some standard business practices and products which boost their profitability.
- Identify the exact problem – MSSPs must be able to identify the exact problem they are trying to solve. Any managed security service provider must be able to identify a niche area or a specialized area for itself to be able to stand apart from the rest.
- Expand their services and Opportunities – As and when an MSSP solves a customer’s problem or gains expertise into an area of cyber security, it must take the leap to expand into other areas of specialization. Every provider should look for services that can be attached over and above the existing bundle. They should focus on providing advanced security services and expand their security services to cloud and mobile adoption.
- Switch to Automation – MSSPs must make the move to not only automate their tools but also have automated processes and responses. An automated process saves time and resources and also provides quicker responses to threat alerts.
With the growing number of cyber-attacks, the demand for managed security services is expected to keep growing steadily. The desire for safe and secure outcomes and resilient organizations is what drives security providers and professionals to detect threats with more urgency.
