The Role of Managed Services in Cybersecurity

Organizations have traditionally turned to managed services for assistance in making technology investments, and achieving greater operational efficiencies. Recently, managed service providers (MSPs) have been primarily focused on helping their clients navigate the IT and business transformation brought about by the potential of cloud infrastructures, SaaS solutions and mobile devices. Now organizations have another key imperative – security. This blog will take a deeper dive into the benefits of managed services in cybersecurity.

The news keeps us aware of the growing scale, sophistication and costs of security threats. The 2016 IBM Cost of the Data Breach Study reveals that the average consolidated total cost of each data breach is $3.8 million representing a 23% increase since 2013. The consistency of threat reports highlights the daily challenge that security teams of organizations large and small have in playing defense. Given the growing demand, security knowledge and competencies are in short supply, and many organizations will not be able to source or maintain the necessary skills in-house. Recognition of limitations in internal operations will encourage organizations to augment them with external support.

MSPs should be able to share their awareness of the threat landscape and achieve visibility into your current security posture. This requires a robust security intelligence solution that supports the collection of various data sources to inform the client of its threat surface area, as well as appling advanced analytics to prevent of detect malicious cyber activity.

An MSP offering a cybersecutiy solution will relate raw activity to suspicious or known malicious behaviors. This generally means that the solution has to provide a rich portfolio of security content that is continuously updated while also minimizing the in-house skills required to customize the content. The right MSP will not only provide expertise in secure operations but also deliver offerings with integrated security. Look for an MSP that can act as a hub of security expertise – a differentiator which you can build sustainable partnership with.

Additionally, the security intelligence solution must be cloud enabled. Cloud enablement includes operating the security intelligence solution from a cloud infrastructure or employing a SaaS solution as well as being able to support monitoring of cloud assets – apps, services and infrastructure. Working with the right MSP provides access to a robust community. A security intelligence solution backed by a community that enables collaboration around not just threat indicators but also best practices and applications will bolster an your ability to stay abreast of the threats.

According to IDC, enterprises often want to procure managed services as a single hybrid engagement. But at the same time they want to be able to design and build management services for their entire enterprise IT infrastructure. It’s best to look for a vendor who can enable a fully integrated and managed IT infrastructure, designed to anticipate problems and keep business running strong with application visibility while integrating and managing across heterogeneous platforms.

Utilize an MSP will greatly improve the access your organization has to cybersecurity capabilities. You will remove limitations on knowledge transfer and enhance the value you derive from secure operations.

Schedule a consultation to learn more about cybersecurity managed services from Flagship Solutions Group.

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