With the ever-changing threat landscape, more and more organizations are tapping managed IT security services. With their security talent and expertise, they can monitor and manage your IT environment on a 24/7 basis. In this article, we will find out how managed security services work and how they can benefit your company.
What is Managed IT Security Services?
Managed IT security service is a type of IT service delivered by a third party organization. A Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) is responsible for the monitoring and management of an organization's security systems and devices. They are in charge of your anti-virus, firewalls, Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) tools, as well as Intrusion Detection Systems/Intrusion Prevention Systems.
Many businesses invest their security budget into MSSPs to lessen the workload of monitoring security incidents. If your organization is short of in-house security resources, outsourcing managed services are the way to go. With their knowledge and expertise, you can be sure that your security environment is in good hands.
Fully Managed vs. Co-Managed Security Services
The two types of managed IT security services are the following:
• Fully Managed Security Services - with this type of service, the MSSP monitors and manages security incidents using its own equipment and technologies. This is often considered by organizations who are budget-conscious and those who lack internal resources to learn and manage a range of latest technologies.
• Co-Managed Security Services - this security service is often utilized when the organization has internal resources and security technologies in place. As your business scales up and becomes more stable, you can eventually bring the monitoring and management of technologies back in-house if you choose to.
Using co-managed security service keeps your IT team informed about each tool's features and functionality, and in setting up the best configuration. Aside from this, they also enable your staff to allot more time for other strategic security projects and offload their intensive job of monitoring and managing events during non-business hours.
Functions of Managed IT Security Services
1: Threat Monitoring & Management
With countless cyber risks present today, continuous monitoring and investigation of threats are critical for organizations. Managed IT security uses data gathered from a variety of sources to identify correlations in your security incidents, ultimately, identifying anomalies and malicious activities detrimental to your IT network.
The security analysts provided by your MSSP will assess your security data and analyze if these incidents are to be considered major security events. If so, notifications will be sent out and proper incident response will be made. In addition to this, they can also perform threat hunting. So, instead of just waiting for alerts or security incidents, the analysts at MSSPs proactively look for anomalies and malicious activities to prevent disasters from happening.
2: Incident Response and Event Investigation
Once a security notification is created, it will be escalated to the staff who will work on remediating the incident. As your internal IT team may be overwhelmed with other essential security tasks, offloading incident response to a service provider would be helpful. This will enable businesses to quickly handle incidents that usually require multiple shifts or even days to fix.
Updating software patches, pushing out new AV signatures, investigating the different aspects of the security event, and communicating a security breach to your employees and customers will be easier when you have a team of skilled analysts provided by MSSPs.
3: Security Intelligence
By having security intelligence from open and private sources, the organization's detection and response activities will improve significantly. However, if your organization doesn't have a dedicated full-time staff for threat intelligence gathering, hiring a managed IT security service is ideal.
MSSPS's Threat Intelligence provides insights to the security team to help them proactively hunt threats. As MSSP's threat intelligence is based on a wide variety of scenarios across its entire client base, they can analyze risks and determine their short-term and long-term effects on your organization.
Swift Systems
If you are looking for high quality managed IT security services provider, Swift Systems is here for you. We offer fully managed or co-managed security services to help manage and monitor your IT environment. With our latest technologies and specialized services, your business is guarded against advanced threats. Get in touch with us today to discuss your needs and requirements!