What is a Managed Cybersecurity Service Provider?

Since it is more tedious to hire a full-time IT Consultant, managed cybersecurity services providers are becoming worthy alternatives. If you want to find out more about how MSSPs can help protect your online network, you can read through..

Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, more and more businesses are shifting to online stores. In order to meet the demands of the current market, businesses are becoming more protective of their virtual presence because it is also an asset that needs to be protected.

What does Managed Security Services mean?

Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs) are third-party network security firms. Similar to most outsourced services, MSSPs provide 24/7 monitoring, conducting security and vulnerability assessments, managing patch management and upgrades, and rapid incident response.

Due to the increase in cyber vulnerabilities on the market today, businesses that have shifted to online stores are becoming more protective of their network. This is becoming more evident since hackers are targeting payment information and data.

When the security of your e-commerce page is compromised, your clients will lack the confidence in your page and this will become a reason for you to lose some of your potential customers.

However, your in-house IT personnel may find that cyber-attacks happen consistently and continuously. Since these vulnerabilities happen no matter what time of day, it is important to hire a managed cybersecurity service provider because they can handle the attack all day, every day.

Your in-house IT personnel can handle these threats for you but managed cybersecurity services providers have specialized expertise on the manner plus tools that are designed to counter these attacks.

How to Choose the Best Managed Security Services Provider?

When choosing a managed security services provider, you should look for three things -- integrity, availability, and confidence. Picking your managed security services provider will help you in improving your business, which is why it is important to hold them to a standard.

1. Look for an MSSP that has a good reputation

Ask around for feedback and reviews from past and current customers of your desired cybersecurity firm. It is important to understand how they work since you would want to know if how they work will also work with your organization’s culture. You must check their response rate, their level of expertise, and the efficiency of their cybersecurity management.

2. Find a Team with a Quick Response Time

Cyber attacks can occur anytime, which is why you need to work with a team that can respond to your issues no matter what the time of day. It is important to find a managed cybersecurity services provider that can handle any technical issues or data breach that is happening whenever you give them a call.

The quicker they reply to your emails or calls, the less damage to the system will be done. Open Security is a managed cybersecurity services provider that has a quick response time based on the reviews and feedbacks given by their current clients.

3. Your MSSP team should be loaded with technical Knowledge

When looking for an MSSP team to work with, it is important to find a team with the right expertise and experience for the size of your business. You can ask about their certifications or the areas of their expertise.

Moreover, you can ask about the seminars and training that they have attended recently since this will help you gauge if their knowledge is current and up-to-date.

What tools should your Managed Security Services have?

When choosing a managed cybersecurity services team, it is important that they have the right set of tools to use. As HarmonyTech has stated, ‘your MSSP must have the tools and know-how to help you comply with all applicable privacy and security laws.

The MSSP must know what laws apply to your particular business, and, from a technology standpoint, the provider should offer functionality such as asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, and log management. The MSSP should also provide the ability to integrate data from legacy security tools to ensure compliance.’

Security Information and Event Management [SIEM]

This type of service gives a real-time analysis of security alerts and it is also able to produce a report regarding cybersecurity attacks. Commonly, it is centered on providing security services like authentication, anti-spyware, host intrusion, network intrusion, firewall, PenTesting, and other similar services.

Security Automation

Using security automation tools is another managed security services to tool that can help identify and investigate the occurrence of security vulnerabilities. This type of software can also help when it comes to resolving the issue and finding the right course of action to take when threats are being detected.

Heuristics Analysis

Detecting viruses used to be detected through signature detection, which compared the code by a virus that has already been recorded previously.

However, heuristic analysis is a way to detect the virus by learning about codes that originate from doubtful sources by checking the source code. If the suspected virus matches an old virus from the heuristic database, the code can be tagged as a potential threat to the network.

What are the Benefits of Hiring Managed Security Services?

Cost-Efficient

Despite being an added expense for your business, outsourcing managed security services provider is more of an investment than another cost. First, it is cheaper to hire a third-party cybersecurity firm than hiring an in-house cybersecurity consultant.

On top of that, you don’t have to go through the process of posting job advertisements, interviewing candidates, and walking them through company policies and processes.

Advanced Technology and Tools

MSSPs work in an organization that is built to handle vulnerabilities and attacks. This means that they use the technology and tools for this purpose specifically in a consistent manner. Your in-house IT team may also have these tools, but they don’t use it to its’ full capacity. Cipher has further emphasized this point by saying,

‘Another benefit of an MSSP is they will offer the necessary skills and technical resources your team needs to manage and administer these new security assets.

An all-star MSSP will also take a holistic view of your security environment and understand the specific requirements of how to integrate the new security assets with the latest patches, configuration changes, and security policy changes.”

Specialized Expertise

Since MSSPs are focused on cybersecurity, they have a wider range of knowledge when it comes to the matter. As mentioned by Eric Dosal, “In most cases, an active managed security service provider will have more current knowledge than an in-house cybersecurity team will.

This is often because the MSSP can leverage experience gained from managing network security issues for a large number of companies operating across different verticals. Meanwhile, the in-house team is only exposed to one company’s cybersecurity challenges and will not benefit from exposure to as many different attack strategies and security architectures.”

Early Detection

Since managed security services work to ensure advanced threat detection, e-merchants can be assured that the risk of hacking is being mitigated and that the damage can be reduced to a minimum.