April 11, 2017
When an enterprise organization wants to ensure its data is secure, it assembles a team of security experts to form a security operations center (SOC). This team is responsible for the maintenance of security applications, protection of the environment, and the tedious task of filtering through security “events” in an attempt to locate threats and attempted breaches. It’s difficult, specialized work, and it often requires a significant financial investment from the company to maintain.
Many mid-market and small-to-medium businesses are finding managed services and Security as a Service (SaaS) applications to be cost-effective alternatives to staffing their own SOC. In our own experience at Mindsight, there have been two instances recently that further prove the value of the managed services approach to data security.
Scenario 1: A New CIO
One of our clients recently hired a new CIO who wants to have a more hands-on role in the security of their environment—the prior security strategy largely relied on a legacy, on-prem approach of a firewall and intrusion detection/prevention system.
With a Security as a Service approach leveraging the insights delivered by Alert Logic, this new CIO can have much more visibility into security events. Reports regarding security events occurring within the firewall, endpoints, or more can be delivered directly to him. Furthermore, Mindsight can create customer reports on network activity to provide an even more in-depth look at the state of his environment’s security.
This level of insight can be achieved, along with a significant reduction in risk, without the need to staff and finance a large-scale security operation. By leveraging managed services, this client gains the access to top engineering and security talent for a much more modest cost.
Scenario 2: Toll Fraud Attacks
While toll fraud attacks have existed for almost as long as phones, the wide-spread adoption of VoIP has made the risk of such an attack even more likely. Here’s how they work. A hacker, through a variety of potential means, gains access to your business voicemail server. Once inside, they use scripted programs to guess your four-digit PIN number and then use this information to make calls from your voice account. Over a short period, the hacker can rack up thousands of dollars in tolls from paid numbers or international calls. Unfortunately, these attacks often aren’t caught until long after the fact when the telephone bill arrives.
A Security as a Service solution has a significantly higher chance of catching these sorts of attacks than legacy security systems. One of Mindsight’s partners, Log Rhythm, provides an analytics platform that allows you or your managed services partner to detect breaches in your environment when they happen. It identifies trends in logs that may be indicative of a breach. For example, if one employee’s computer becomes infected, it may perform certain activity as it tries to spread its corruption. As other devices become infected, they’ll perform similar activities. Log Rhythm will identify these issues and allow you or your managed services team to properly respond.
In the event of a toll fraud attack or other identity theft, Log Rhythm ensures that all events taking place are accurately sequenced based on chronological fact. For example, the user can’t be making two calls at the same time from the same account in two different locations. Visualization tools help the team sequence these events and track suspicious behavior.
A Dangerous Security Landscape
The security landscape is becoming more diverse and more treacherous—even the largest of companies are not completely safe. Over the past few years, there have been dozens of high profile breaches and attacks that have stolen an immense amount of personal information. Security is no longer an expense a company can do without, but it doesn’t need to cost millions. Security as a Service and managed services solutions could be the effective workaround to staffing your own SOC.
Download Mindsight’s FREE Security as a Service Guide — Security in the Cloud
Security as a Service is a new approach to security for a new generation of data centers. Today, companies are finding more and more value in the cloud, but their legacy security solutions are ill-equipped to protect the data hosted there. Security as a Service makes up for these shortcomings. To protect the cloud, you need a security strategy built for the cloud, and that’s precisely what SaaS provides.
Learn more about Security in the Cloud: Protecting Your Environment Beyond the Edge.
Like what you read?
About Mindsight
Mindsight, a Chicago IT services provider, is an extension of your team. Our culture is built on transparency and trust, and our team is made up of extraordinary people – the kinds of people you would hire. We have one of the largest expert-level engineering teams delivering the full spectrum of IT services and solutions, from cloud to infrastructure, collaboration to contact center. Our highly-certified engineers and process-oriented excellence have certainly been key to our success. But what really sets us apart is our straightforward and honest approach to every conversation, whether it is for an emerging business or global enterprise. Our customers rely on our thought leadership, responsiveness, and dedication to solving their toughest technology challenges.
Contact us at GoMindsight.com.