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SMBs Are Using Managed Security Services to Bolster Their Cybersecurity
It’s never been more important to safeguard your organisation’s website, applications, and data from cyber-attackers. Cybercrime isn’t going away. Almost every day, fresh news breaks, warning of a major new cyber threat.
Cyber-criminals are as dangerous as ever — dedicated to the cause of disruption, corruption and greed. As in any field, some attackers are more skilled than others. The more sophisticated criminals are increasingly creative — forever innovating with new ways to make lives more difficult for companies and individuals across the globe.
Of course, this applies to all of us. To keep up, our organisations must be ever-more alert to the threats and dangers posed by cyber-criminals. We all must be meticulous in keeping ourselves safe from attack.
The big questions we face, however, are:
Can you ‘make do’ and adequately protect ourselves in-house from security threats? Or Should you outsource to a Managed Security Service Provider?
What are Managed Security Services?
Managed Security Services are a third-party professional monitoring and management service aimed at protecting hardware and data from potential cyberattacks. These services are remote and usually offered 24/7. They use the appropriate security tools to:
- Block viruses and spam
- Manage Firewalls
- Detect intrusion attempts
- Set up and secure a virtual private network (VPN)
- Implement system changes or upgrades
Managed Security Service providers continuously monitor an organisation’s security devices and systems. They offer a wide range of services, including:
- Device management
- Log monitoring and management
- Vulnerability management
- Consultancy services
Managed Security Service Providers usually offer their services in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. This means that your organisation doesn’t have to invest in any new hardware or staff.
Why do you need Managed Security Services?
There are eight principal benefits to taking on a Managed Security Service provider:
- Lower costs in many areas
- More time to focus on your business
- Access to unique expertise and tools
- Direct cyber security
- Automatic detection and fixing of vulnerabilities
- Increased action-oriented insight and reduced alert fatigue
- Scalability
- Good guarantees and fast response times
Let’s look at these in more detail.
Reduced costs
These might include:
Reduced training costs — Your Managed Service provider teams will constantly be up-to-date with the latest IT security developments, meaning you won’t have to invest in training your own people.
Lower staffing costs — You won’t be investing staff to manage your IT security or monitor your systems 24/7.
Reduced investment costs — Your Managed Security Services Provider will spread the cost of their technology investments across their entire customer base. You won’t need to make any such investment.
More time to focus on your business
Your MSSP frees up time. Your people will be able to focus on their core business activities so as to move the business forward. Your IT teams will be able to concentrate on developing new services and processes.
You’ll have relatively low-cost access to the latest cyber security solutions and technologies. Also, your Managed Security Service provider will be able to give you independent, objective cyber-security advice, unlike suppliers of hardware and tools.
Automatic detection and fixing of vulnerabilities
All the detecting and fixing of cyber-vulnerabilities will be carried out by your Managed Security Service provider. They will
- detect and reduce vulnerabilities in critical systems
- predict threats, especially and specifically for targeted cyberattacks
- automatically detect important offensive tactics and methods in critical systems
- respond effectively and quickly
- cut down the chances of attacks succeeding and becoming damaging and expensive ‘events’
Increase action-oriented insight and reduce alert fatigue
In-house IT professionals deal with numerous security alerts from various security tools used within the company. Many of these alerts are classed as false positives, wasting your staff’s time. With Managed a Security Service provider, this doesn’t happen.
Scalability
Another benefit with Managed Security Service providers is that their services can be scaled perfectly to your needs, and the required security IT infrastructure can be easily adapted. If you temporarily need extra capacity, you simply scale up. Resources automatically grow with your capacity needs and if you need to scale back at a later time, you can.
Effective guarantees and fast response times
Managed Security Service providers offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) alongside their 24/7 support. An SLA provides guidelines for customers on incident response times, as well as guarantees in the event of security incidents.
Assess Vulnerabilities
MSSPs will begin their relationship with a business by performing a professional audit of the organization’s existing security. For all the dangers of cyberattacks that affect SMBs, an estimated 66% of decision makers don’t consider cyber threats to be a concern.
An MSSP will evaluate a business through interviews and scanning tools, determining what vulnerabilities exist within internal and public-facing networks. Once identified, recommendations will be made and a plan will be drawn up to address security concerns.
After steps have been taken to ensure vulnerabilities have been fixed, follow-up checks and scans can be implemented into the cybersecurity strategy to protect the network moving forward.
Maximize Efficiency
When you use a managed service, you’re maximizing your bang for your buck. In-house teams are smaller than managed service counterparts and lack the breadth of experience that an MSSP can afford.
This can lead to an in-house team that is left putting out fires when it should be able to focus on other tasks. By delegating cybersecurity to an MSSP, you can alleviate overwhelmed internal IT staff and make use of the extensive resources (staff and advanced solutions) that your partner has.
Expand Your IT Team’s Capabilities
Using a managed service provider for your security can give you access to much large roster of experts and specialists at your disposal. It also gives you access to the MSSP as a whole. MSSPs that are properly certified and have a good reputation are an enormous asset to any SMB serious about its cybersecurity.
A quality MSSP will have a demonstrated history of providing managed services to clients. By bringing one on-board, you’re adding a wealth of knowledge and a proven track record to your organization’s IT team.
In addition, many MSSPs will have best practices which have been honed over time and applied to your business, something that is difficult to achieve by bringing together a team of individuals for an in-house team.
Proactively Counter Threats
A managed security service will offer you advanced monitoring and protection for your business’s network. The process that many SMBs will be familiar with is the break/fix model — an incident occurs, someone is called out to fix it, and the business is sent the bill. This is a reactive model of operation and is prefaced on something going wrong before it can be corrected.
With the frequency of cyberattacks on SMBs increasing, the costs of being a victim are simply too big to risk operating a break/fix program for cybersecurity — many businesses fold after suffering a cyberattack.
Hiring an MSSP means you are taking control by being proactive in protecting your network from cyberattacks. Advanced solutions catch threats before they have a chance of causing disruption and round-the-clock monitoring means your defense never rests.
Fast Response
MSSPs operate their services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This effectively means that if there’s an issue, it will be discovered instantly and responded to rapidly. Conversely, handling security in-house requires huge investment, manpower, and technologies in order to respond with the same speed.
One of the major benefits of partnering with a service provider is their ability to deal with cybersecurity issues as urgently as possible. An incident response team will take care of the problem, then it will be assessed, and actionable recommendations can be made to lessen the chances of any further complications in future.
Advanced Technology
When a business partners with an MSSP, they don’t just get access to their staff, they also get access to best-in-class technology. At Cyber Aeronautycs Ltd., for example, we vetted hundreds of tools in order to provide the best possible solutions for our clients.
This runs counter to the “security-in-a-box” approach, where a provider partners with a single vendor and only uses their tools. A quality MSSP with high standards will use the most comprehensive tools available in order to keep up with evolving threats that develop quickly in the cybersecurity space.
Focus on Business
Given the scope and complexity of cybersecurity, in-house IT teams can often spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with security issues rather than being able to focus on their traditional remits as security tasks are pushed down to them. Given the frequency and severity of cyberattacks, it is extremely difficult for organizations to keep pace.
With the cybersecurity landscape changing so much, it can be hard for IT personnel to keep up. Using an MSSP can allow your partner to take care of the complex task of mitigating cyber threats while you can focus your energy on business objectives.
Risk Management & Compliance
Data regulations are becoming increasingly common place, and with businesses processing more data than ever before, it’s imperative that SMBs understand what they have to comply with. Around half of all SMBs are unaware of what GDPR is, and with CCPA , compliance is a major consideration.
An MSSP can offer you expert advice on how to meet compliance regulations and how to ensure that sensitive data is properly stored and protected so as to mitigate regulation breaches as comprehensively as possible.
Save Your Business From Disaster
Major breaches are often catastrophic for small and mid-sized businesses. Partnering with an MSSP gives an organization the ability to implement a solid disaster recovery and business continuity plan to help the business when an attack occurs.
Aside from the loss of data, downtime is extremely costly, and to add insult to injury, a breach does significant reputational harm to a business. A good MSSP will pull out all the stops in ensuring that your business is well-placed to avoid a breach.
Should the worst happen and there is a breach, the MSSP will have a plan of action to counter and get the business up-and-running as quickly as possible with minimal data loss recovered from frequently cloud servers which frequently back up company data.
Benefit from cybersecurity experts
As cyber attacks increase in frequency and sophistication, IT teams are struggling to keep up. The types of attacks teams need to be aware of is expanding, and the attack surface is growing as organisations use more online services, undergo digital transformations, migrate to the cloud, and more. Over the last year alone, we have seen a significant increase in large scale supply chain and ransomware attacks — sometimes both attack types at once, with the Kaseya ransomware attack in July, and the latest Microsoft attacks discovered in October.
In order to protect against attacks, IT teams need to be experts in a whole range of areas — which is a tall ask for a one or two-person information security team, or an IT team who have security tacked onto their responsibilities.
One the other hand, a dedicated managed security services team who work with a range of customers across a variety of industries will have wider experience. They will gain skills and experience from each client, which they can share with other team members, and can get greater oversight of trends, building up a greater skills bank, with the skills that your organisation needs.
In addition, access to new skills is immediate. The cybersecurity services provider will have a team of experts with access to the latest tools and knowledge of the latest techniques in use to protect your organisation.
The more effective a cybersecurity tool is, the more it will cost. As a result, some organisations may compromise efficacy in order to fit their budget. In addition, new tools come on the market all the time in response to new threats, creating further strain on fragile budgets.
Managed security services providers have deeper pockets. Because they work for a variety of clients and have a range of skills at their convenience, they have access to the newest and most effective security tools on the market. They may also be aware of tools and resources that in-house teams may not be aware of. As a customer of a cybersecurity services provider, your organisation benefits from their buying power.
Pay as you use
Cybersecurity needs fluctuate daily, monthly, annually, following your business’s rhythm. However, an in-house team is not flexible. If you need additional services they can become overstretched, and if for any reason demand for IT security services reduces in your organisation, members of the team can become surplus to requirements.
Cybersecurity as a service is inherently scalable. Organisations pay for the services they need, enabling them to procure more services quickly when needed, or reduce the services they receive if they no longer need them. This enables an organisation to invest the right amount of money without overspending.
Scaling up with a cybersecurity service provider is also a much quicker and easier process than the traditional route of recruiting a new person to the in-house team.
In addition, managed security services providers will provide tailored services based on the specific threats, vulnerabilities, risk profiles, and compliance requirements of the organisation.
Round the clock coverage
Most organisations rely on one or two IT security specialists in their organisation. However cyber attackers never sleep, and statistics show that the majority of cyber attacks take place outside normal working hours, at night, during the weekend, or before or over major holidays.
Round the clock monitoring of the network is vital for early identification of an active attack, which in turn will initiate the incident response quicker, ultimately reducing the impact of an incident on the organisation.
In an in-house model, the one or two people in the team are not able to watch the network and be on alert at all times, leaving the organisation vulnerable at the most dangerous times.
The benefits of managed security services for organisations include the ability to monitor the network 24/7. The cybersecurity services provider has a larger team designed to work in shifts to monitor their customers’ networks. It is also ultimately cheaper — one employee can monitor several organisations out of hours, reducing the financial burden.
A responsive partner, before, during, and after an incident
Another of the benefits of managed security services is the holistic service they provide for integrating security protections, managing an incident, and applying the lessons learned from an incident.
In the event of an incident, the cybersecurity services provider is immediately in place to support the organisation through it. They have knowledge of the systems and plans in place, and the expertise to manage the event — skills that an in-house team may not have. This will ultimately save the organisation precious time in finding an organisation to help them.
In addition, if they are involved in the incident response they will also know the lessons learned from the incident, and will be available to offer advice, and remediation support.
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