Traditional security solutions were not designed with the cloud in mind, which creates problems with complexity, administrative effort and incomplete protection. In today’s hyper-connected world – where both users and data are everywhere – cybersecurity is more important than ever, and it should also be everywhere.
For cybersecurity to be everywhere, it has to be delivered as a cloud-based service. When this happens, cybersecurity solutions can take advantage of the elasticity of the cloud to provide scalability to support today’s rapidly changing businesses.
Who would have predicted that in 2020, large numbers of employees would transition to working from home in a matter of days? That rapid scaling is best addressed from the cloud.
Any new service – even a cloud-based one – comes with overhead that many organizations are not equipped to support. One option is for an organization to turn to managed security service providers (MSSPs), which can help address issues such as the increasingly complex threat landscape and the shortage of skilled cybersecurity personnel. Often these organizations are looking for security services that are rapidly and easily turned on while fully managed by security professionals.
The increased adoption of cloud services makes enterprises more open to adopting cloud-delivered security solutions. By consuming cloud-delivered security, organizations can eliminate on-premises security appliances, thus reducing capital cost and cutting the overhead – operational costs and IT resources – normally associated with deploying security at scale. It speeds up deployment time and reduces the time to protection by eliminating the need to set up the typical infrastructure normally associated with security and networking.
In addition, organizations can migrate to this model at their own pace. Existing routers, firewalls, or SD-WAN edges can connect to the cloud-delivered security platform where policies are globally applied to ensure consistent security and a seamless user experience.
While an organization can make this journey to cloud-delivered security directly, it can also be a part of working with an MSSP.
MSSPs bring many benefits to organizations at large by focusing on their specific security requirements, which may vary depending on the type of business, industry and plans for future development.
Combining a managed security service with a cloud-delivered comprehensive security solution is one way to achieve the highest level of protection, simplify operations and lower the total cost of ownership.
Any new service comes with additional expenses in addition to the initial investment. Examples include training the staff to manage and support operations, monitoring and maintaining the service. A managed service eliminates heavy initial investments and dramatically reduces management and operations overhead. It can free up in-house IT for value-driven work.
An MSSP cybersecurity workforce compensates for organizations' lack of high-skilled security professionals to handle challenging environments. By deploying robust security solutions and best practices, MSSPs help organizations to abide by stringent government policies, secure customer data and ensure business continuity with minimal downtime.
MSSPs have in-depth knowledge of common network security issues that many in-house IT cybersecurity teams lack – and they often also have experience with rare issues. This is because they leverage extensive experience gained from other industries and verticals that makes them adaptable and flexible. As a result, deployments can be faster and more cost-effective.
MSSPs bring solutions and expertise in other areas such as transport and network that complement the cloud-delivered security offering. Organizations benefit from solutions, expertise in network design and integration, solution bundles, and more. Additionally, established relationships with service providers provide possibilities for discounts, incentives and bundle offerings, ultimately lowering the overall total cost of ownership.
MSSPs can customize the cloud-delivered security offering to the needs of an enterprise and define the required security policies that best fit. A cloud-delivered security solution comes with a predictable operational expense (OPEX) model – and flexible licenses – that enables organizations to effectively manage their future expansion plans. On this note, when selecting an MSSP, organizations should look for partners with a comprehensive secure access service edge (SASE) solution that enables consistent cloud-delivered security from the multi-cloud architecture and provides users with the best quality of experience. Prisma Access delivers the networking and security organizations need in a cloud architecture designed for all traffic, all applications and all users, no matter where they are located. Today, our MSSP partners offer Prisma Access as a managed cloud-delivered security solution.
With digital transformation initiatives and cloud usage increasing across the globe, organizations – large and small – must ensure that any cloud strategy encompasses performance, connectivity and – too often overlooked – security for branch offices, retail locations and mobile users.
Organizations can truly benefit from a cloud-delivered managed security solution. A clear reduction of initial investments and management costs, along with cybersecurity expertise, is a very compelling proposition to make the business case from moving from a traditional security solution to a cloud-delivered managed security solution.
Learn more about what goes into an effective SASE solution.
This post is part of a series on MSSP partners.
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