With the advancement of technology, migration into the cloud, IOT, etc., the target surface grows day by day for cyber attacks. Small organizations undermine the importance of security as they do not deal with high money cycles, making them a soft target for attackers. Hence security should be considered equal for any organization or individual. But, can a small organization have a lot sufficient budget for security? Should they outsource security? Or should they take care of it themselves?
Stand:1
It is often a tough decision that a company should take whether to outsource security or not.
Well, some people say they should not, considering the privacy of data, code, algorithms, and other sensitive and confidential information, especially to an MSP, which might also deal with competing organizations even with strong service level agreements.
And some may say handing over control to a different organization undermines the organization’s inefficiency and challenges the organization itself. And some may say MSP might put less focus on dealing with multiple organizations at the same time. Handing over an organization’s cyber security only leads to MSP having the upper hand in SLA’s terms. Even the outsourcing company might force an organization to use specific software that might affect efficiency or productivity. The organization might lack the skills to control the outsourcing team or even define clear and achievable goals. This is one side of the dilemma.
Stand:2
The other side suggests opting for security outsourcing(Managed Service Provider), especially in small and medium organizations.
Small organizations usually lack the resources to hire in-house security professionals or sometimes even a CISO. The entire responsibility is on the IT team of the company, who might not always have professional cybersecurity expertise, which brings immense pressure and workload and might even make it less priority.
I take my stand considering small and medium businesses should outsource cyber security as
The time to hire and train security professionals and pay them is very expensive, considering the company’s margin. And hiring limited staff might not be efficient as expertise in cyber security is limited, such as network security, secure application development, etc.
This brings a large number of benefits and supports my stands
The primary thing is lower costs as costs of individual aspects such as risk analysis, security appliances, applications, and intrusion detection are much covered together and provide cost-effective solutions.
The second would be 24/7 protection, as security is of prime importance to MSP. They provide constant and obsolete security services around the clock.
They tend to provide Proactive security measures and possess a wide knowledge of working with multiple organizations. And they tend to be ahead in learning new and better security features and technologies. The MSP provides round-the-clock protection, which ensures minimal intrusion detection time and the least response time to resolve the issue. They even provide independent validation of organization security and define a well-designed and systematic approach to improve security.
Even large organizations can consider above mentioned points even though there is a dedicated security team already in place. For example, outsourcing intrusion detection provides an extra layer of security, and an immediate response can minimize the effect of a security incident.
In contrast to my stand, I think a combination of both is important and necessary as even the best of the best security outsourcing companies could not protect the organization from certain attacks like phishing, where it is the sole user who should be responsible for a threat hence cybersecurity culture should be developed.
And considering a startup should implement security in-house and also outsource to build a robust defense from the roots, at least until the company grows to independently take care of security 24/7 and be ready to face any threat or challenge in security.
References:
https://ayehu.com/shouldnt-outsource-cyber-security/
https://www.netstandard.com/weigh-the-benefits-and-risks-of-outsourcing-your-it-services/
https://www.itworld.com/article/2800784/should-you-outsource-security-.html
https://medium.com/@gera_it/when-outsourcing-is-bad-idea-ae7832e2f815
https://www.thrivenetworks.com/blog/2018/08/14/what-are-the-benefits-to-outsourcing-cybersecurity/
https://www.bradenonline.com/blog/outsourcing-business-it-security/