The Future of MSSPs: Delivering Advanced Security Monitoring in a Cloud-Driven World
Budget constraints and a shortage of skills have led many companies to have no other option but to adopt a hybrid approach for the management of their security. As a way of dealing with the various array of new threats, organizations have turned to managed security services providers(MSSPs) to aid in monitoring and managing their security. MSSPs provides outsourced management and monitoring of systems and devices. These services include virtual private network(VPN), intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning, managed security and anti-viral services.
In order to provide 24\7 services that are directed at reducing the number of security operational personnel that an organization requires to hire, retain and train, MSSPs use security operational centers that are highly available. While most organizations of different sizes have made use of the MSSPs services, the demand for such services is anticipated to rise over the next coming years. The increasing evolution of cyber threats and the shortage of security professionals that is ongoing will be the driving force for this adoption.
A cloud driven world with challenges
Organizations are increasingly operating on multiple clouds and this has led to the breakdown of their applications from monolithic to distributed scalable models. As the adoption of native cloud services increases so does the increase of complexity of its infrastructure with multiple tools. In addition to all these, several companies have been seen to adopt devOP delivery models that have applications that release at pace speed which is very high and the security policies are set by the owners.
Feasibly, the most serious effect of the changing dynamics is the attack surface that has dramatically expanded. However, Conventional method and security tools cannot be able to scale to these cloud environments that is expanding and ever changing. Data centres and security operators tend to lack visibility into the traffic that flows among them and their assets. With this comes security policies that are inconsistent and this results in unmonitored servers and containers as prime targets for launching pad attack. Attackers are then able to move literally in the west and east of the traffic’s blind spot and they land, expand and dwell there indefinitely.
This is a risk that is significant to both business organizations and MSSPs that is involved in securing them. This is something troubling to customers who are in need of safeguarding their data centers assets which are a crown jewel to them. As a way of addressing this issue, MSSPs is working to come up with solutions to address the realities data centers of today by coming up with MSSPs with new levels of capabilities by doing the following.
Visualizing the environment
This is a fundamental element that modern security requires but lack. This is the ability where operators are able to visualize not only the applications, workflow and networks that are running but also the dependencies, processes and relationship among them. This provides arrange of possibilities for the new MSSPs from incident response, threat attacks, security audits and audits to gaining greater efficiency in the security operational centers.
Segmenting and isolating at the level of processing.
In order to enforce policies, MSSPs need micro segmentation at the level of processing. This seems to be the best practice to reduce surface attack and secure applications in data centers. This is done by securing the process to process communication. Many organizations cannot implement micro segmentation on their own and hence the provision of segmentation by MSSPs will advance its credibility. Microsegmention also has the ability to strengthen automated breach detection and response and hence an unauthorized communication is a threat indicator.
Combining capabilities for seamless offerings
Important to the successful implementations of the new technical capabilities, they ought to be devOps friendly, simple to operate, easy to integrate using APIs and infrastructure -agonistic. The new generations of MSSPs in 2020 will be embracing solutions that meet the above requirements in a seamless manner.
The MSSPs that are willing to deliver the mentioned capabilities successfully, they stand a chance of gaining a competitive significant advantage that is significant. Their security services that will be highly differentiated, will positon them as the pioneers MSSPs of the next generation in a cloud-driven world.
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