Today’s threat landscape is constantly shifting, which makes company security like a game of whack-a-mole. Full marks go to cyber-professionals for their effort and ingenuity in trying to keep hackers at bay. Unfortunately, the problem is not around effort levels but around a level of security complexity that continues to rise.
Overnight, the pandemic and lockdown drove tens of millions of people to home offices. This has created a bonanza for cyber-criminals, which in turn has spurred the majority of organizations to up their investments in cybersecurity solutions.
Businesses are now facing more cyber-attacks than ever — an 800 percent surge since the pandemic hit. Costs associated with these attacks are also rising sharply, with one report saying cyber-crime will cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015.
On top of frequency and cost, there is the skill level of the criminals themselves to consider. Bad actors now bring an exceptionally high level of know-how and creativity to their “work.” Couple this with how well-funded they now are, and set it all against the cold fact of a worldwide cybersecurity skills shortage.
“It’s an interesting situation — a crisis within a larger crisis,” said ITWC CIO Jim Love. “The pandemic has forced organizations to relocate a large percentage of their people to home offices. This has been like ringing the dinner bell for hackers, who suddenly have a vastly expanded attack surface stretched out before them.”
The insult to injury, said Love, comes when a company, short on people or collective knowledge, realizes it is unable to cope. “These teams are losing their focus, and getting caught out of position more often than they would probably care to admit.”
Managed security services provider (MSSP) frameworks are a possible way out of a difficult situation. The MSSP market is set to explode over the next few years. More and more business leaders and solution providers are looking at the skills gap and time crunch, and opting to place some or all security risk in the hands of an MSSP.
“The hope,” said End to End Networks Director, Product Management Jennifer Gagan, “is that these providers will anticipate and secure corporate networks against an increasingly proficient and innovative threat actor. In the case of providers like Fortinet, this faith is not misplaced but instead rewarded.”
It’s quite the trick for MSSPs to pull off: securing a large number of customers while balancing security efficacy against business profitability. As a result, today’s top-tier MSSPs must have highly scalable tools that can support multi-tenant environments, and provide robust management and orchestration using a single pane of glass. They must be able to provide rock-solid, high-performing but reasonably priced security that allows their networks to dynamically adapt to fluid risk environments.
“And there’s that not-so-small matter of having the ability to scale to secure many thousands of customers at one time, even when and if there’s an unexpected spike in traffic,” said Love.
A paper released by Fortinet titled How to Build a Successful OPEX Security Service looks at how to develop an MSSP service model, providing seven solution areas security service providers must check off when developing MSSP offerings.
Based on its recent analysis of the global network access control market, Frost & Sullivan recognized Fortinet with the 2020 Global Growth Excellence Leadership Award. Fortinet covers critical aspects of an MSSPs’ business models like no other security manufacturer — offering the best in multi-tenancy, the most hardware flexibility, the highest performance through hardware acceleration, and the lowest total cost of ownership of any security vendor.
Download a copy of How to Build a Successful OPEX Security Service
