The Future of Managed Security Services And What it Means for Your Business

If you feel like the IT security and threat environment has evolved at a remarkable pace in the last 5 years, you’re right. Between the introduction of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), regular updates to compliance standards such as PCI-DSS and HIPAA, threats of ransomware and data leaks, and the continued growth of cloud services, it can be hard for any organization to keep up and feel secure.

Fortunately, managed security services providers (MSSPs), who have traditionally focused on monitoring customer networks and hardware for threats and intrusions, have also evolved to deliver enhanced services to their clients. Now, in addition to monitoring services and incident remediation, MSSPs have begun to offer additional protections to their clients as their use of technology becomes more ubiquitous and their threat surface expands.

So just what changes can you expect to see from MSSPs in the years to come, and how can your organization benefit?

Harnessing Big Data and the Internet of Things

Big data can be seen as the fuel for your business operations, and all of that data can also be harnessed by an MSSP and their software to find otherwise unseen trends that could point to new threats. By introducing new software and technology that is able to leverage large amounts of data, logs, and network traffic, MSSPs can use artificial intelligence and big data techniques to throw out false positives while rooting out otherwise surreptitious attacks.

These new MSSP platforms are able to process more data sets with more automation, efficiency, and effectiveness to focus resources on true threats and help to identify a return on security investments.

Increasing Proactivity

Because criminals and hackers only need to be right once, organizations and their MSSPs need to have all the information they can about threats, vulnerabilities, and security gaps at their fingertips. MSSPs can not only assist in searching out and integrating external threat intelligence into your own organization’s threat assessments, but can also use that information to proactively recommend patches, adjust settings, and probe for potential vulnerabilities with automated penetration and scanning tools.

MSSPs can also address the human side of your security equation by offering regular IT security discussions, trainings, or other communications to help prevent the effects of accidental or solicited data breaches.

Providing Ongoing Holistic Risk Mitigation

Finally, as MSSPs have learned that they can no longer be passive or reactive, they have broadened the types of services they offer to their customers. In other words, MSSPs have begun to bring a full-court press to address an organization’s security threats—delivering experienced security professionals for incident response, recommending process and policy updates, and offering suggested hardware or configuration changes to existing infrastructure. Select MSSPs also offer data encryption services and enhanced DDoS protection as a basic service.

Their tools can also help to identify unsecured endpoints and other security solutions not fully enabled already in your environment, or provide data for and facilitate regular risk assessments. In this way, MSSPs are really in a position to help move an organization’s cybersecurity maturity to a higher level

Finding the Right MSSP

As technology introduces new opportunities for increased productivity, communication, and data-driven decisions, organizations must be prepared for the risks that they face in this evolving security environment. Fortunately, the right MSSP can help their customers understand these threats, proactively prepare, and implement the right controls to help mitigate the risk.

If you are considering an MSSP or evaluating the services you currently use, make sure you are asking the right questions so you can be confident your chosen vendor can meet this challenge. The MSSP that you partner with should have a platform and range of tools capable of monitoring threats across the breadth of your network—from IoT sensors to traditional data center firewalls—while taking advantage of internal and external threat intelligence to stay ahead of bad actors. Additionally, select a team that understands the unique needs and requirements of your industry so they are able to tailor their solutions and controls to your business.

FNTS has delivered all of these services and more to their clients for over 20 years and can do the same for your organization. Reach out to learn more about how FNTS can be your MSSP by contacting them here.