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While regional IT chiefs face mounting pressure on issues like application performance and customer experience , they must also contend with an escalation in threats from those who are simply looking to steal , damage , disrupt , or embarrass . In December 2020 , the United Arab Emirates ’ ( UAE ) cybersecurity head flagged a 250 % increase in cyberattacks during the pandemic . And UAE telecom giant Etisalat ’ s digital-security arm , Help AG , this year warned of a 183 % uptick in DDoS campaigns .
Whether an enterprise has a separate CISO or looks to the CIO on security issues , regional firms still must find ways of fulfilling their compliance obligations amid a sea of complexity brought about by COVID migration . Thousands of employees working on home devices of unknown pedigree present a risk , as does the presence of multiple domains through which sensitive data travels , en route from the data centre to the unvetted endpoint and back again . IT leaders and business stakeholders are confronted with costly paths to adequate security , with no guarantees that they have the inhouse skills to manage these solutions .
Enter Security-as-a-Service ( SECaaS ) – the increasingly popular solution to modern resilience . Businesses can outsource the security function to a trusted partner while retaining granular control of IT policy and business operations . And for a region with economies that are majority SME , the SECaaS proposition is particularly alluring . Even before COVID struck , smaller businesses were continually looking for ways to streamline their business models for cost-effectiveness and operational efficiency .
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platforms ; remote workers and their unpatched devices ; multiple network environments , many of which they do not own ; and possibly DevOps workflows , with all their attendant code changes and cloud-native requirements . Add to that the skills shortage – this year , an estimated 3.5 million cybersecurity jobs around the world will be unfilled .
SECaaS delivers not only the right technology , but a ready-skilled team of professional threat hunters that are well-versed in the issues surrounding the protection of data , networks , endpoints and applications . In addition , they have spent decades studying the behaviour of bad actors and have a keen sense for how they think and what they will target . These professionals deliver a 24 / 7 , year-round Security Operations Centre ( SOC ) to SECaaS customers at a fraction of the cost it would require for those enterprises to build their own .
SECaaS is cost-effective ; it allows customers to subscribe to a service
Businesses can outsource the security function to a trusted partner while retaining granular control of IT policy and business operations .
Giuseppe Brizio , EMEA CISO , Qualys
I would , however , be remiss if I didn ’ t point out that while a business can outsource responsibility to a third-party for carrying out cybersecurity activities , it cannot and should not outsource the related accountability .
A ready-skilled team
There is so much to think about for the IT team that looks after web and mobile that is continually improving – through the latest tools and intelligence – rather than buying an asset that requires timeconsuming maintenance and eventual replacement . With SECaaS , third-party experts are active on day one and in-house security teams ’ workloads are diminished and rationalised . By outsourcing humdrum tasks such as monitoring , vulnerability management , threat detection , remediation , detection www . intelligentciso . com
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