Year after year, CIOs and IT leaders name security as a top priority, both in focus within the business and financial resources allocated. Enterprises are storing more and more sensitive information, creating a pressing need for protection – these details must remain under the business's control, and unauthorized viewers must be kept out.
As the volume of security requirements continues to increase, IT and network administrators struggle to keep up. This is where security-as-a-service can become valuable.
The growing market of online security
IT research firm Gartner has predicted that security spending will likely reach approximately $75.4 billion by the end of 2015. Driving this rise is the large number of recent high-profile data breaches, as well as government initiatives and new legislation. Overall, this spending benchmark represented an increase of 4.7 percent over 2014.
" IT security spending will likely exceed $36 billion this year."
As we kick off 2016, security is still a priority for enterprises. According to findings from market research firm Ovum, IT security spending will likely exceed $37 billion this year. Ovum's report noted that many of the threats seen in 2015, including cybercriminal activity, state-supported attacks and advanced persistent threats, are here to stay. For this reason, a large portion of this spending will be devoted to managed solutions, including security-as-a-service.
Bridging the gaps
With new vulnerabilities and attack vectors being discovered nearly every day, it's increasingly difficult for enterprise IT staff to ensure total protection. This is an uphill battle that every organization faces. Security-as-a-service solutions are ideally suited to help bridge the gaps in a company's protection capabilities.
TechTarget contributor Joseph Granneman noted that security can be an incredibly labor-intensive process, often coming down to a judgment call. At the same time, labor is a scarce resource among nearly every enterprise. Having a security-as-a-service solution in place can make a huge difference when it comes to under-resourced companies.
"This is where Security as a Service can shine," Granneman wrote. "Security as a Service solutions can dedicate teams to a specific activity, such as monitoring logs, and spread the cost across many different customers, lowering the unit cost for everyone. Security programs can now afford a dedicated log monitoring team where they could not have previously without the cloud-based model. This raises the effectiveness of the security program and frees in-house staff to focus on higher level risk management activities."
Security-as-a-service is ideal for bridging any gaps in a company's existing protection strategy.
Access to top tools, expert information
In addition to labor, enterprise security increasingly requires the use of advanced tools and knowledge unavailable to many IT administrators. Particularly with the ever-changing nature of the threat environment, it can be incredibly difficult if not impossible to stay on top of emerging vulnerabilities that could impact the business. Without access to the right tools, the company could be completely missing exploitable entry points in its network.
This is another area where security-as-a-service solutions are invaluable. In addition to providing access to the latest and greatest security tools, companies can also gain contextual expertise that they may not be able to obtain elsewhere.
"Information security is a broad subject; there is no practical way for anyone to know every detail on each aspect," Granneman noted. "This knowledge gap can cause serious blind spots where risk is not easily observed nor mitigated. Security as a Service offers organizations the benefit of access to these contextual experts and resources they otherwise could not afford to maintain in-house. This allows the internal security staff to focus less on technical details and more on strategically managing the organization's information security risks."
Overall, security-as-a-service solutions can make a considerable difference for today's enterprises, particularly when it comes to bridging knowledge gaps and ensuring access to the best tools and information. To find out more about how security solutions can benefit your business, contact Hostway, an industry-leading provider of managed security solutions, today.