When it comes to meeting business objectives, keeping up with the frenetic pace of innovation and competition – no matter what vertical or industry segment you happen to dwell in – is a top challenge for organizations. It’s the impetus behind digital transformation, DevOps and convergence – and it’s driving the implementation of critical collaboration tools like unified communications. But it’s creating trade-offs: Amidst this rapid growth and advancement of core business goals, cybersecurity measures are taking a backseat, with a significant shortage in workforce skills hampering efforts to protect the very networks supporting business transformation.
Given the rapidly expanding threat landscape, this is clearly a risky state of affairs for any business. Fortunately, security need not be an impediment to fast growth, thanks to managed IT services.
When Security Falls by the Wayside…
Despite an ever-growing crowd of cybercriminals and attackers lurking in the wings, many companies are finding themselves unable to match their security efforts to the speed at which they do business.
At the heart of the problem is an ongoing and oft-discussed issue: the workforce skills gap. DevOps and security teams are not routinely integrated, largely because it’s challenging to develop in-house competencies. All too often, developers are not trained in secure coding, and operations staff are not trained in basic security practices; meanwhile, security specialists are too few and far between in both areas.
Further, a lack of training and finding talent within existing employee pools is hampering the quest to close the gap, according to (ISC)². In its study, “IT Professionals are a Critically Underutilized Resource for Cybersecurity,” the group found that many organizations are not fully maximizing the opportunity to empower and equip their IT staff—the very individuals most often tasked with implementing security policy and technologies—with the education and authority they need to effectively bolster their cybersecurity.
The research, based on responses from more than 3,300 IT professionals worldwide who participated in the 2017 Global Information Security Workforce Study, revealed that 43 percent of organizations don’t provide adequate resources for security training; and more than half (55 percent) don’t require IT staff to earn a security certification.
These stats bolster many studies finding companies unprepared for today’s threat landscape. Most small and medium businesses (SMBs), which are the targets of most cyberattacks, are unprepared even for front-line cyberthreats like ransomware, DDoS, malware and phishing attacks.
Managed Services Put IT Back on Track
Faced with a lack of skills in-house, and a need to stay up-to-date with the latest threats and mitigations, businesses have an option to rely on managed security to meet their needs – while allowing the business to move forward unhampered.
By turning to managed services, which combine the necessary people, process and technology for world-class security operations, businesses gain a turnkey solution that requires little installation and provisioning time.
For instance, TPx offers 24/7/365 protection and mitigation against ransomware, DDoS attacks and an increasingly sophisticated panoply of threats to business information and security. Managed security is always up to date, which means that the latest threats and security incidents can be quickly identified and receive an immediate response.
These capabilities are backed up by state-of-the-art security operations centers (SOC) in St. Louis, MO and Portland, ME. Our SOCs are supported by a nationwide team of security analysts with deep military and intelligence backgrounds, which lets us take full responsibility for keeping an eagle eye on all the activity traversing TPx’s customer networks.
This approach is more cost-effective too: Outsourcing SOC capabilities costs a fraction of what it would require to build an in-house equivalent, with little to no lead time.
Contact your TPx representative today for details on how we can help you protect your company’s network against the latest threats and attacks – so you don’t have to sacrifice security for speed.
About the Author
Matt Mair is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Managed Services. His role includes marketing and communications for TPx’s suite of managed IT offerings including Managed SD-WAN, LAN Monitoring, Office 365, Managed Endpoint, Colocation and Server Backup solutions. Matt holds an MBA from Michigan State University’s Broad School of Business and resides in Los Angeles.