MSSPs today offer extremely advanced tools and possess the expertise needed to run them. But, it’s understandable that your company may have some concerns about turning over any security-related functions to an outside provider.
An Enterprise Strategy Group survey reported that 57% of 340 surveyed IT and security professionals reported that they are currently using an MSSP in some capacity to protect their company. The reasons may include the fact that many internal security initiatives struggle to get adequate funding and teams often lack the skills, tools, and people to deploy security programs to their enterprise.
According to Tech Target, the pros of outsourcing security services to an MSSP include the following:
- Capital expenditures are kept to a minimum.
- There’s a dedicated expert staff for the protection of critical assets.
- Typically, the largest expenditure—for IT personnel – is greatly reduced.
- There is continuous security monitoring.
- Enterprises do not have to spend funds on training, office space, equipment, software tools, and other operating costs.
- The cost of a managed service is significantly less than maintaining the same level of service in-house.
While the financial benefits are significant, your organization will still need a foundational security program, like NIST CSF.
NIST CSF is guidance, based on standards, guidelines, and practices, for organizations to better managed and reduce cybersecurity risk. The recommended cybersecurity framework includes 5 functions:
Identify – develop the organizational understanding of managed cybersecurity risk to systems, assets, data, and capabilities.
Protect – Develop and implement the appropriate safeguards to ensure the delivery of critical infrastructure services.
Detect – Develop and implement the appropriate activities to identify the occurrence of a cybersecurity event.
Respond – Develop and implement the appropriate activities to take action regarding a detected cybersecurity event.
Recover – Develop and implement the appropriate activities to maintain plans for resilience and to restore any capabilities or services that were impaired due to a cybersecurity event.