Most IT professionals are keenly aware of the need for information security. A day hardly goes by where they are not reminded of the dangers to their data from viruses, worms and backdoor programs. At the same time, it’s rarely the primary responsibility for most of those professionals. As a result, most of them often lack the tools and experience to properly secure their company’s systems. Even in those cases where the knowledge exists, vigilance is often neglected in favor of issues that seem more urgent.

Good security is not a singular event or a series of individual steps. It is a process that should be executed every single day. Yet, if you asked most IT professionals what steps they take to ensure the security of the systems they manage, they will usually mention measures such as installing firewalls or anti-virus software.

These are good first steps; however, it’s not likely that the IT manager will review the firewall logs every day or review systems each day to make sure anti-virus software is up to date or check to be sure that untrusted software was not loaded onto a computer. In fact, threats often come from sources that they don’t even suspect such as file sharing networks or instant messaging. If an employee visits the wrong Website or downloads the wrong file or program, the threat may go completely undetected, even if anti-virus software and firewalls have done their job.

The bottom line is that if security to your organization is simply having a firewall and anti-virus, you will likely be one of the thousands of businesses that will suffer some loss due to an attack. If yours is one of the small percentage of companies that have deployed Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), it’s still necessary to review the data from these systems every day. Without that constant review, it’s like having an alarm system without the alarm company to call the police or fire department.
 

What is Managed Security?

Is managed security the right choice? Let’s begin by defining what managed security is. Many companies claim to offer a “managed solution”. In many cases, “managed” simply means monitoring a firewall to determine if it is up or down, updating firmware or responding to requests for changes. This is really system management. A true managed security provider is someone who monitors the activity of firewalls and Intrusion Detection/Prevention systems and responds in the event of a threat.
 

Is Managed Security Right For Your Company?

There are only a couple of decisions to make when considering managed security. First of all, you have to decide whether the services of a managed security provider should be performed at all. If you decide that systems should be constantly monitored, then you only have to decide whether it will be performed by internal staff or by an outside organization.

Let’s first consider whether it is worth monitoring your networks for threats. According to the 2005 annual report by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI, all of the companies surveyed used anti-virus and firewalls. At the same time more than half reported losses due to a variety of attacks. That means that in spite of taking the two most common steps to protect their systems, the overwhelming majority of those companies experienced losses anyway.

The fact is that most companies are largely unaware of the tremendous number of sources and methods of threats. In fact, many have active viruses and backdoor programs on one or more systems on their network and are completely unaware until the symptoms become obvious, if ever.

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