Saving Money In Your
Security Spending During
a Financial Crisis
Kevin Prince
Chief Security Architect
Perimeter eSecurity
440 Wheelers Farm Rd, Milford CT 06461 Phone 800.234.2175
www.perimeterusa.com
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Maximizing IT Security Spending in a Financial Crisis with SaaS, Exams of Introduction to Business Management
How organizations can save money on it security spending during a financial crisis by utilizing software as a service (saas). The benefits of saas, including cost savings, reduced upfront costs, and no integration nightmares, are outlined. The document also provides a three-step process for implementing saas for edge security, core network security, and end point security.
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Pre 2010
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Saving Money In Your
Security Spending During
a Financial Crisis
Kevin Prince
Chief Security Architect
Perimeter eSecurity
440 Wheelers Farm Rd, Milford CT 06461 Phone 800.234. www.perimeterusa.com
Introduction
Belts are getting tighter around all budgets and IT budgets are no exception. Now is the time for administrators and executives to look at ways of getting the most out of their IT budget. But how can you do it? How can you optimize your spending while the number of threats that must be defended against are increasing at such a rapid pace? You simply have to do more with less; but how? The answer is Software as a Service, or just “SaaS.”
Software as a Service
SaaS (and in the security industry it is often referred to as Security as a Service) is a new way of utilizing technology that is revolutionizing the industry. It works by having a provider build out a shared application or infrastructure, usually on the Internet, which multiple customers can use. This offers customers a lower cost alternative for the same level of security because they don’t have to host, manage, and monitor the systems in their environment. With SaaS there are significant savings in up front or CapEx costs as those large fees are traded for small monthly recurring charges. Typically, you reduce or eliminate expensive equipment required for typical security deployments within your company. Additionally, there is:
The benefits from using a SaaS provider are clear. Companies around the globe, both big and small, are turning to SaaS providers to get more out of their IT budgets in terms of necessary security services and better utilization of their existing staff.
If you aren’t using a SaaS provider today, how do you make the switch? Will it cost you more to move over to a new provider right when you are being asked to reduce your budget? Well, these answers depend highly upon what you are doing today. The first thing an organization must do is evaluate which security technologies they are using to perform risk mitigation. These might include a firewall, intrusion detection or prevention system, system anti-virus, patch management, and so on. Then you need to associate if each of these technologies are managed in-house or outsourced; and if outsourced, by whom. Also, calculate what you pay in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs each year and attempt to assign how many man hours are spent each week maintaining the system. Then ask yourself, do you have true 24x7 coverage by live people or do you rely on pagers for off-hours notifications? What you might find is surprising. I always find this exercise interesting because one of two things will happen; either you will assign too few man hours to a process or the man hours are overstated.
- No need to build out collocation facilities or expand existing data centers
- No need to hire additional personnel to configure, integrate, manage and monitor these systems. You can actually assign existing personnel to other tasks because they will be freed up from their previous tasks
- No integration nightmares
- No burning the midnight oil to generate reports or to verify who is and who is not protected. All reports are available at the click of a button
440 Wheelers Farm Rd, Milford CT 06461 Phone 800.234. www.perimeterusa.com
SasSify your Core
Use a SaaS provider to take on the burden of hosting. Have someone else make the investment in data center space, power, redundancy, hardware, and time. Also look to your SaaS provider for archival and other business continuity solutions. Usually it becomes a very cost effective way to achieve your disaster recovery planning goals and compliance. Allow a SaaS provider to do device (such as routers, switches, servers, etc.) management and monitoring for you. Use a SaaS provider to schedule, run, and provide content-rich vulnerability assessment reports to you. By using a SaaS provider, your employees can spend their time proactively remediating security threats rather than putting out the latest fire. Again, these services should all be available for you to review at the click of a button.
SasSify your End Points
You can even use a SaaS provider to help you manage the security of your end point systems. Long gone are the days when you can load and manage individual security solutions on each desktop, server, and other systems individually. You need a holistic management portal where you can view the level of install, configuration, version levels, and compliance for all your systems from a single interface. And this isn’t just your desktop anti-virus, but rather advanced system security suites that include virus protection as well as malware defense, SPAM filtering, malware detection and more. Additionally, your SaaS provider should offer you end point security solutions such as patch management and host based intrusion detection and prevention systems. These items are critical to a complete security posture. Make sure that your vendor provides easy to generate and review reports that give you actionable data.
Conclusion
Combining edge security, core network security and end point security solutions into a SaaS model, where you get all the same security benefits but do it at a fraction of the price, is the way to do more with less money. Get more security within the existing budget you have today. You will not have to hire additional personnel for new solutions and existing personnel will be able to focus on tasks that help advance your core business objectives rather than just putting out fires all day.
Some people argue with the SaaS philosophy, saying that once you fully move to SaaS you are spending the same money and time managing the SaaS providers that you would have doing it all yourself. This is not true if you use a single or even a couple (depending on your company size) of providers for all your security needs.
The SaaS revolution is real and here to stay. A few years from now, it will be the default platform used by everyone, so why not get on the band wagon and start seeing benefits today?
440 Wheelers Farm Rd, Milford CT 06461 Phone 800.234. www.perimeterusa.com
440 Wheelers Farm Rd, Milford CT 06461 Phone 800.234. www.perimeterusa.com
Finally, start small and work your way up with the vendor(s). There is no reason to jump into the SaaS pool all at one time. Take it slow and either replace an existing service such as Firewall/IDS/ISP or take a new service that you want to deploy such as Patch Management and try out the SaaS model. Getting your toes wet will give you the confidence to take the full SaaS plunge. Perimeter eSecurity offers dozens of security, hosting, and business continuity solutions in an On Demand, software as a service model. All services are available through a single, simple web portal for easy management. Consolidated billing gives you a single bill each month and you only pay for what you use. You don’t need dozens of vendors; you simply need Perimeter eSecurity, your single On Demand security, hosting, and business continuity provider.
Kevin Prince
Chief Security Architect
Perimeter eSecurity KPrince@perimeterusa.com
About Perimeter eSecurity As the only provider of complete security on demand, Perimeter eSecurity makes security easily available and affordable for all businesses. Perimeter’s on demand security services protect thousands of computer networks nationwide, offering more than 50 different services on a subscription basis in the areas of: Vulnerability Defense, Intrusion Defense, Network Defense, Email Defense, System Defense, and User Defense. With the proliferation of security threats and technologies, clients benefit from a single-source provider that offers all services through one pre-integrated platform and web portal. Perimeter’s security SaaS services are continuously expanded, enhanced and upgraded for current and future regulatory compliance. With seven geographically distributed technical offices and three redundant data centers, Perimeter’s complete, On Demand and affordable security services are always available and have been validated by multiple independent third parties. If you would like to speak with us or view a product demo, please don’t hesitate to call at 800.234.2175 Option #2 or visit our web site at www.PerimeterUSA.com.