Identifying the gaps in your security posture and assessing whether SECaaS fits within your network..
Understanding Security as a Service.
SECaaS allows companies to outsource cyber security solutions, so inhouse employees have time to focus their time on other business priorities. This can save considerable time and money for the business, as long-winded evaluations, and procedures, such as the acquisition of specific software and hardware are sidestepped. Instead, the chosen service provider will have already chosen the best of breed technology.
Other reasons Security as a Service has been adopted by organisations include their provision of expertise, and scalability. In a 2021 Sophos survey, 54% of IT managers claimed cyberattacks are now too advanced for their teams to deal with. Therefore, by outsourcing to specialists, they have a team full of experts at their fingertips, pre-trained and ready to use.
Currently, the UK is facing a cyber skills shortage with a 2023 government report claiming that 50% of all UK businesses have a basic cyber security skills gap
The main functions of SECaaS.
SECaaS offers a wide range of cyber security practises. These are mostly focussed on monitoring your IT infrastructure and responding to security vulnerabilities as and when they occur.
The main functions include:
- 24/7 monitoring
- Expert support
- Compliance reporting
- Incident response
- Threat monitoring
Factors to consider when outsourcing.
The first consideration when looking into SECaaS providers is the current size of your business. Do you have enough employees to warrant an in-house security team? Many smaller and medium sized businesses’ IT demands are not sufficient to justify an IT team, however there is still the cyber security threat which needs to be covered. This is where integrating a SECaaS provider into your set up can yield the biggest benefits.
You should also know your budget. Do you have enough budget for all costs associated with an in-house security team? You need to factor in more than just salaries given the tools that this team will need and the staffing levels needed for 24/7 coverage. The use of a subscription-based offering through SECaaS allows for simple and predictable budgeting. Businesses can predict month-on-month costs easily as these are usually based on the number of endpoints or data ingest. Such services are often extremely cost effective; according to Norm, adopting SECaaS should save around 60-70% in comparison to in-house operations.
If you currently lack in-house expertise, SECaaS may be a valid alternative for your business. These experts have in depth knowledge of new and emerging threats as they enter the cyber security landscape and learn from threats that emerge across their entire customer base.
They also offer 24/7/365 support, monitoring, and threat remediation. All of these functions are vital to maintaining a robust cyber security posture.
The Security as a Service model provides flexibility, which may benefit your business as it grows. As different sized businesses have different demands, SECaaS allows you to scale up services according to your needs. You may grow to a point where you need additional resource, but not yet a full-time employee. This makes Security as a Service ideal for smaller or medium sized businesses.
The regulations regarding cyber security are tightening across industries. Security as a Service will help you to comply with specific industry regulation and requirements. Particular industries, such as healthcare and finance have regulatory frameworks which are constantly being updated and mandating cyber security tools and practices you might not be able to resource in house. By adopting Security as a Service, this will automatically be accounted for, taking away the stress from your employees needing to research and update this inhouse.
For example, to comply with PCI SSC you will soon be required to implement anti-phishing mechanism. During a PCI DSS assessment, DMARC must be at the minimum of reporting from March 2025. Even sooner than that, by February 2024, Google will require a set of authentication measures to be met in order to ensure secure email delivery to its inboxes for senders that send more than 5,000 emails a day to Gmail addresses. These requirements need to be taken into consideration when expanding your cyber security practice.
Who is Security as a Service suitable for?
From this, we can see what types of businesses would benefit the most from SECaaS. Large organisations tend to have the resources and manpower to hire a specific cyber security team providing in-house support. However, smaller/medium sized organisations do not have the capital, nor the need to spend so much on a team when there is the alternative of outsourcing. Security as a Service is perfect for medium and smaller sized businesses because it is flexible and can be scaled according to the individual organisations’ changing priorities and growth.
Rather than spending time and resources on training up a team, this can be refocused into increasing the growth of the business. It also ensures that businesses have access to the latest technologies and industry practises, ensuring they are constantly evolving alongside new cyber threats.
As new cyber regulations are being enforced, cyber insurance premiums are increasing, and supply chain security is tightening, SECaaS means that your organisation maintains compliance.
Lastly, if your company stores personal customer data, or financial information which cannot risk being exposed, it is vital you have a strong security system in place. Your Security as a Service provider would look after this for you, no matter the size of your company, ensuring that your reputation remains intact, and you suffer no financial losses at the hands of a data breach or ransomware attack.
Get in touch with us today to discuss whether these may be useful to your company and how we at Red Helix can help you explore how SECaaS can be implemented with your security infrastructure.
