The past couple of months have seen the topic of cyber security hit the headlines like never before. Boards are asking questions, CxOs are sweating, cyber security teams are burnt out and customers are panicking.
There are a lot of questions being asked about the effectiveness of cyber security strategies. Boards are coming to the realisation that security teams can’t prevent every attack, leaving many to lose confidence in their strategies.
There’s a lot of advice swirling around, from improved data and record management to end-point security. Unfortunately, many organisations don’t have the capacity or expertise to be implementing expensive, highly complex technologies and processes.
If that’s you, we thought we’d take some time to share why Sekuro’s Managed Security Service (MSS) might be the right fit.
Sekuro’s Managed Security Service (MSS) acts as an extension of your security team. We provide fully managed 24/7/365 monitoring, detection, triage and response services carried out by certified security experts through our highly available and ISO27001 compliant virtual Security Operation Centre (SOC). We also run continuous compliance and continuous optimisation services to ensure you keep abreast of regulatory requirements and that your cloud and security stack remains protected against the latest threats.
Our technology and platform stack is SaaS and cloud-hosted and integrated with Identity and Access Management (IAM) to protect against unauthorised access.
What’s a SOC and why do I need it?
When you design any IT system there are going to be security vulnerabilities and issues. You can put technology controls in like firewalls, content checkers and endpoint protection systems, but that’s not going to work for all environments.
The team within a SOC act as detectives, monitoring all running systems across a network for activities that resemble an attack. They rely on technology to collect and analyse the data, but they also need logic applied by cyber security experts based on known or inferred attack patterns. For example, a security guard monitoring a building knows that the same car driving past multiple times is a sign of something suspicious – but it takes human intervention to determine what patterns are suspicious.
Sekuro’s SOC is designed to enable continuity, bypassing the disruptions that can occur in a physical capacity. Our MSS reduces the number of operational security personnel an enterprise needs to hire, train, and retain to maintain an acceptable security posture – taking the pressure off an organisation.
What makes one SOC better than another?
When looking for a SOC partner, it’s important to know that it’s not all about the tech stack, but the quality of people looking under the hood. So due diligence is needed to ensure confidence in the skills of the team responsible for protecting the crown jewels.
A lot of SOC providers will lend the hardware to the customer, which sounds great in theory, but what happens if an organisation is unhappy with its services and decides to replace them? Well, they’ll decommission the database, take all of the equipment back and the customer will be left with a data dump that’s of very little use. This can be very disruptive and costly to an organisation, and even if they start working with a new provider, it could take six months to get back to the same level of protection.
Sekuro lets its customers take ownership of the infrastructure after the engagement ends. This also means they’re more likely to benchmark their performance on the quality of service delivered, rather than contractual obligations.
When it comes to information sharing, some SOC providers will gatekeep and only send incident notifications to their clients. This means the client has no way of verifying issues or participating in the investigation. Furthermore, they can’t get their hands on the tools and have their own internal teams learn from the experts.
How Sekuro does it
Sekuro promotes a collaborative partnering approach. We drive improvements in our own people, processes and technology, whilst being a partner that is happy to provide access to the tools of the trade. If an organisation already has a security team, it’s better if they are involved in the work of the SOC provider and learn from the engagement. That means they can focus on gaining that advantage, rather than having a service provider throwing stuff at them.
We know it’s tough out there for cyber security teams at the moment. It’s hard to convince decision-makers to take money away from growth and invest it in cyber security. In the same vein, security teams are the first ones questioned when something goes wrong.
Engaging Sekuro’s MSS team can ensure that when (not if) an attack does occur, organisations have the technology and the expertise in place to identify and remediate threats quickly and avoid becoming the next headline.
If you’re interested in learning more, you can contact our sales team or get a quick quote.
Parts of this blog originally appeared in Technology Decisions as “How Universities can avoid cyber attacks”.
Benefits of engaging Sekuro’s SOC services:
Tony Campbell
Director of Research & Innovation, Sekuro
Tony has been in information and cyber security for a very long time and delivered projects and services across a bunch of different industries through a variety of different roles. Over the years, Tony has always tried to bridge the growing skills gap through his employment, by mentoring, teaching and working with other disciplines to help them understand the complexities of what we do.