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Managing Security Issues: The Need to Fill the Gap
April 29, 2022
Industry Commentary
The Internet has provided countless benefits to businesses and individuals, with a world of information at their fingertips. However, the digital frontier also creates risks along with opportunities. New technologies have created business concerns like intrusions, cybercrimes, and cyberattacks, which negatively impact business operations.
In this blog post, let’s take a look at cyber security risk management, and the significance of the MSP to MSSP transition to enhance business security.
Global cybercrime is growing at an alarming rate; Cybersecurity Ventures predicts global Cybercrime to increase from three trillion USD in 2015 to 10.5 trillion USD by 2025, i.e., a 15% annual growth rate. Almost all businesses, especially SMBs experience frequent, complex, and targeted cyberattacks. Per Accenture’s cost of Cybercrime Study, about 43% of cyber attacks target small businesses, and only 14% have defense mechanisms to face these threats.
Cyberattacks have shaken big enterprises like Microsoft Exchange, where a Chinese hacking group called Hafnium exploited vulnerabilities which gave them access to the email accounts of more than 2.5 million firms globally.
The cyberattack on businesses could be ransomware attacks, Internet fraud, phishing, email fraud, identity fraud, or theft of credit card, financial, and payment information. The costs of Cybercrime include destruction of data, productivity loss, stolen costs, theft of financial data, personal data, intellectual property, fraud, reputational harm, deletion and restoration of hacked systems and data, forensic investigation, etc.
Cybercriminals use various methods to infect the computer systems with malware that can delete sensitive business information, or install malicious code on the server, which can block website access. For instance, Target, a retail giant witnessed a hit in reputation after the 2013 data breach, which cost them an 18.5 million USD settlement.
It is important to prevent cyber attacks before they occur. Appropriate security protections can help businesses track their systems and networks for any unusual behavior or suspicious activities. After the threat detection takes place, they can build response mechanisms such as isolation of affected devices, eradication of malicious files, etc. Data Security also incorporates backup and disaster recovery.
Data backup without a disaster recovery plan creates long recovery times that can be costly and create business turmoil. But who can monitor, analyze, and take action to ensure that data security is active throughout the day?
MSPs, or Managed Service Providers, maintain the IT infrastructure of their clients. They offer services like managed communication, network management, managed mobility, and more. MSPs also offer basic cybersecurity services like OS Patch management, software management, threat detection, bug fixes, antivirus protection, etc. Though MSPs follow the security practices during IT service deployment, they don’t provide security as a managed networking services.
However, MSSPs do provide services like threat detection, remediation, and response. With the increased demand for managed security services, MSPs should fill this market gap by delivering enhanced cybersecurity services.
An MSSP, or Managed Security Service Provider, offers security services, software, and expertise to their customers. They offer outsourced solutions to organizations with top notch cybersecurity skills. MSSPs act as a replacement or complement to an in-house Security Operations Center (SOC). Companies rely on MSSPs when they don’t have adequate cybersecurity skills and can’t staff their own SOC.
The services of MSSPs include cloud managed firewall, advanced antivirus setup and management, Virtual Private Network (VPN) management, event alerts, intrusion detection, incident response, and many other features.
There are certain benefits of MSSPs that make them unique when compared to MSPs.
Here are a few:
- MSSPs provide complete internal and external scans of your IT network assets, web applications, databases, and hosts.
- MSSPs organize automated vulnerability scans that minimize the need for in-house resources.
- The structured, distributed deployment with an MSSP minimizes the costs that IT operations incur.
- MSSPs enable unparalleled protection with constant monitoring and reliable support.
- Businesses can reduce costs with the proactive MSSP security model and save them from huge business losses.
With Managed Security Service Providers, customers can respond and react to cyber threats quickly. MSSPs provide 24/7 cyber protection and speedy detection, something which most MSPs cannot guarantee due to their limited expertise and resources.
Hence, the superior commitment of MSSPs to security, backed by the availability of SOC staff, expertise, and resources, demonstrates the benefits for the transition of MSPs to MSSPs.
Uplevel Systems is a security solutions firm with a widespread reputation as a reliable provider of cloud-based IT infrastructures that guarantee near-zero downtime – more go-time. Uplevel solutions are engineered from the ground up for Small and Medium Businesses to be comprehensive, secure, flexible, and easy to deploy and manage.
