FEATURE
TAREK KUZBARI, REGIONAL
TAREK KUZBARI,
REGIONAL
DIRECTOR
– MIDDLE
EAST,
DIRECTOR
–
MIDDLE
EAST,
BITDEFENDER, TALKS US
BITDEFENDER,
TALKS
US
THROUGH HOW THE MSSP
THROUGH
HOW
THE
MSSP
MARKET HAS EVOLVED AND
MARKET
AND OF
WHAT
THE HAS
MAIN EVOLVED
ADVANTAGES
WHAT
THE
MAIN
ADVANTAGES
THESE SERVICES ARE.
OF THESE SERVICES ARE.
How has the MSSP market
evolved and changed over
the years?
Several years ago, security vendors
were providing remote security
capabilities to enterprise customers that
were looking to outsource security. This
has completely transformed today with
almost no resemblance to earlier years.
The Managed Security Services
Providers (MSSPs) today are much
more stable and can be considered as
a strategic partner for organisations.
Main players in this market are the
telecommunications providers, enterprise
pure play providers and boutique pure
play providers.
growing at CAGR of 20.6%. However, the
demand for advanced Managed Security
Services will continue to rise and is
fuelled by a few key criteria:
• Cybersecurity skills shortage
• The growing need for compliance
• Increased cost of acquiring, managing
and maintaining ever evolving security
products and practices
• Scalability
What is driving the increased
adoption of MSSPs? What are the
main advantages of an MSSP?
Here are the key challenges that
organisations currently face and how
MSSPs are able to address them:
Focus on core business activities
With the increased competition,
efficiency and productivity across
different industries, most companies
are choosing to focus on their core
competencies and, as a consequence,
they are allocating resources to offer
products and services that their
customers are looking for.
Since the majority of organisations are
not in the business of securing their
infrastructure, they are increasingly
outsourcing their cybersecurity to
MSSPs which possess the advanced
security skills and the tools needed to
achieve that.
Skills shortage
According to Gartner, skills challenges
continue to plague organisations that
undergo digitisation, with digital security
staffing shortages considered a top
inhibitor to innovation.
Tarek Kuzbari, Regional Director – Middle
East, Bitdefender
Monitoring customers’ infrastructure,
in real time, against threats to improve
security posture, was the main driver
for MSSP services. Due to the increase
of threat sophistication, the advanced
capabilities are now in more demand.
According to IDC, the Managed Security
Services (MSS) market in the Middle
East, Africa and Turkey (META) market
will cross US$900 million by 2022,
50
Reports state that the worldwide
workforce is heading for a shortfall of
1.8 million cybersecurity workers by
2022 and the industry is not attracting
newcomers to fill the gap. This is
exacerbated in the Middle East, where
organisations typically have smaller IT
teams and therefore struggle to keep on
top of new threats and technologies.
Increasing complexity of compliance
British Airways faces a record fine
after a website failure compromised the
personal details of roughly
500,000 customers.
With GDPR, organisations must bite
the bullet and invest in cybersecurity
solutions that ensure compliance. But
this is not easy – firstly, they need
to understand the complexity in the
legal requirements and, secondly,
they need to constantly tweak their
security solutions to make sure they
are compliant with the most current
regulations. Since MSSPs’ core
focus is security for clients, they offer
comprehensive knowledge of legal
requirements and industry standards.
Costs
With the increase in the number of
security solutions needed to provide
organisations with a comprehensive
security defence, we have seen
a corresponding, and arguably
exponential, increase in the costs of
managing security.
Outsourcing security services to a
third-party service provider is one of
the most significant advantages MSSPs
provide. MSSPs tend to have multiple
clients, which enables them to achieve
economies of scale by spreading the
cost of people and infrastructure they
use to secure their clients.
The increasing sophistication of attacks
Intellectual property theft, financial
gains and sabotage are motivating
cybercriminals to evolve their attacks
against organisations. These attacks
are far more sophisticated than ever
and require robust security frameworks,
technologies and tools, management and
monitoring capabilities and analysis of
threat evolution.
Key considerations when working
with an MSSP
It’s crucial to consider the following
criteria when working with an MSSP:
•
•
•
•
•
Technology stack
Team expertise
Industry knowledge and references
Service cost
Brand reputation and
financial stability u
Issue 18
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