Norton Security reports that global cybercrime costs are expected to grow by 15% a year, reaching $10.5 trillion annually by 2025.

From malware and Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks to phishing, spoofing and code injection attacks to IoT-based attacks, the onslaught is relentless. Cybersecurity Ventures says in the last decade there have been 44 attacks every second. Just this October, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) was attacked in what is suspected to be the biggest data leak in the country. Details of 815 million Indian citizens — Aadhaar and passport information along with names, phone numbers and addresses — were on ‘sale’.

The good news is that a new breed of defenders has emerged — managed security services providers (MSSPs).

What are Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs)?

MSSPs are third-party providers that offer network security services, allowing an organization’s IT team to focus on core activities. MSSPs enhance efficiency by managing firewalls with continuous monitoring, intrusion detection for comprehensive protection, scanning for vulnerabilities and so on. In short, it’s a complete outsourced security solution for an organization and is vital to the efficient functioning of cloud-based infrastructure.

Let’s explore some of the key reasons businesses are using MSSPs.

Specialized expertise

MSSPs offer an umbrella of specialised expertise beyond what an in-house IT team can handle. 

For example, managed firewalls that constantly respond to potential threats; intrusion detection to protect all devices and systems to ensure they are not used by bad actors to harm other systems inside or outside the organisation; vulnerability scanning to identify potential threats and pinpoint vulnerabilities; a portfolio of antiviral services to detect the most salient of threats; governance, risk and compliance applications to act as “security auditors”; incident response and forensic analysis to understand how an attack happened; and penetration testing to expose weaknesses and vulnerabilities. 

Imagine if your own team had to handle all this along with their core responsibilities – it’s hard to build in-depth in-house expertise across such a wide range of specializations.

Proactive monitoring

MSSPs use advanced tools and technologies to continuously monitor networks, detect threats and ensure swift responses, thereby identifying and mitigating risks before they escalate.

Besides merely detecting issues, proactive monitoring helps you make strategic rather than tactical business decisions. For example, proactive monitoring allows for you to implement application-level monitoring, which helps detect performance degradations in real time and take pre-emptive measures. Proactive monitoring tools also continuously monitor network traffic and system logs to continuously and constantly detect any suspicious activities. 

This significantly decreases the duration ransomware resides within the system, mitigating potential impact and downtime and recovery costs.

Cutting-edge tools and processes

MSSPs use cutting-edge tools and processes to prevent and identify threats. For example, threat intelligence tools allow security analysts to perform analysis at scale as well as allow them to identify threats in seemingly unrelated security events. Data security software tools enable MSSPs to encrypt data, back it up, mask it and prevent loss from breaches or exfiltration transmissions. 

Most MSSPs have tools that leverage AI for cyber analytics to identify behaviours of advanced attackers as well as provide real-time monitoring for both on-premises and hybrid cloud environments.

Business continuity

Cyberattacks don’t just affect businesses financially – they impact business continuity too. According to a Statista survey, the average recovery time after a ransomware attack is 22 days.

A few years ago, UK-based telecom provider TalkTalk lost 101,000 customers and suffered costs of £60m as a result of a cyber-attack. Potentially more expensive is the loss of reputation that results from an attack. A cyberattack tends to signal to the public that your network security may not be “secure” and their data may not be safe in your hands. Another reason to get an MSSP on board.

Financial benefits

It’s a misconception that outsourcing security services is costly. On the other hand, running Security Operations Centres (SOCs) in-house can be expensive. A survey by Ponemon Institute in 2021 found that half of 17,200 IT and security practitioners said their SOC’s ROI has become worse over the years. Companies said an in-house SOC cost an average of about $2.72 million annually on security engineering work alone. That’s because 24/7/365 staffing coverage, an organization would require three sets of staff to cover three eight-hour shifts. So, you can imagine the salary costs alone!

Deloitte and the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center found that financial services on average spend 10% of their IT budgets on cybersecurity (0.2% to 0.9% of company revenue per full-time employee). 

Partnering with an MSSP can often result in increased productivity, greater efficiency and significant cost savings as they eliminate the need for businesses to invest heavily in expensive infrastructure and personnel. If you’d like to know just how much you can save costs and boost efficiency by hiring an MSSP, give CloudNow a call.