Cyber risk holds economic weight. Beyond halting the business, cyber incidents affect how fast and how well you can provide the service or product you’re selling. If you’re thinking about working with a managed security services provider (MSSP), here are a few economic considerations:
1: Outsourcing elements of your security strategy
People are critical to a successful security program, but that doesn’t always mean hiring specialized practitioners. Cyberseek reports the time to hire a cyber expert is 21% longer than the typical IT hiring lifecycle. Outsourcing elements of your security program requiring high time, money, and people investments can relieve stress from current employees.
Security operations often reach the point when your in-house team is overwhelmed and starts deprioritizing manual tasks or strategic planning. An outside partner’s insight often identifies gaps your leadership may have overlooked. Managed security doesn’t mean your business gives up control of the security program. Once you’ve identified gaps, experienced consultants who understand the threats specific to your business and know how to articulate and manage those risks recommend the best next steps.
2: Right sizing your security strategy for the complexity of your business
Protecting against every potential threat to your business can waste security budget on irrelevant risks. Commercial retailers may not need to worry about operational technology at store locations, but they should prioritize identity and access management for cashier sign-in. A midsized business may be a few years away from acquiring a competitor and migrating applications during an M&A, but IT leadership should still prioritize cloud security.
Managed services consultants seek to understand the severity of the risks specific to your business situation. Ascent tracks threat actor TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) against your current security controls, identifying the highest risks your business faces.
When working with a managed services provider, don’t be afraid to ask for concrete recommendations: what threat intelligence do we need to stay ahead of an incident? What type of tooling do we need or what tooling do we have with a more modern alternative available? Does our current approach to monitoring and alerting detect the risks we’ve identified as most relevant to our business?
3: Finding efficiencies through platform consolidation
Every IT leader has faced budget cutting conversations with executives, but most know it’s not enough to just reduce costs. Are you eliminating the right expenses that still leave your business secure? Platform consolidation often reduces redundant technologies and increases IT efficiency. Monitoring one interface instead of configuring four tools to monitor endpoints, cloud real estate, alert triage, and company devices is far easier for your team. Sometimes the answer to cutting the right costs is even less complicated: a second pair of eyes on your Microsoft licensing structure can identify services you aren’t using or negotiating leverage to make your current investment worth every dollar.
Every part of the business likely has a process that could be simplified. For IT, that might mean eliminating new employee down time between the first day and the day a remote employee receives their laptop or access to the network. It could be as complex as eliminating performance costs by timing machinery updates within acceptable downtime or conducting app migrations overnight so employees don’t notice a change in their day jobs. A unified security platform managed partially or fully by an outsourced team provides flexibility and scalability. Taking steps to reduce your business’ tech debt eliminates redundant point solutions and frees up budget dollars.
Budgeting for cyber risk management
IT and cybersecurity are tightly linked to budgets, but not all costs are quantified in dollars. Managed security services tailors a cybersecurity strategy built for your business at your size and maturity. It also supplements your team with experienced consultants who understand your business’ unique threat landscape and know how to articulate and manage risk.
We want your cybersecurity to be an enabler of business success. If you’re interested in Ascent’s managed security services, reach out to info@meetascent.com.
