Symantec has chosen Faritec as its local partner to co-launch the vendor`s managed security offering, Symantec Managed Security Services (SMSS). SA is the first "tier-two" country to be offered SMSS.
William Beer, director for SMSS in southern Europe, Middle East and Africa, says Faritec`s R8 million investment in a security operations centre (SOC), its skills in all areas of security and Africa`s economic realities dictate that a local partner perform the management, which Symantec will monitor.
The case for managed security
<B>Managed versus in-house</B>
Managed security has a lower cost than in-house security, does not require the same inhouse resources, poses a shared risk scenario versus assuming it all oneself and has a short time-to-value, according to Symantec.
Although managed security has been slated for "outsourcing risk", Beer says the case for it is good.
"We take on the grunt work, allowing IT staff, already over-burdened, to focus on their jobs," adds Patrick Evans, regional manager for Africa at Symantec. "SMSS can control cost, maximise the investment, speed recovery and improve business efficiency."
Information overload from infrastructure logs in a multi-vendor modern company with global Internet-enabled reach can run into the terabytes, Beer says. "A firewall can produce 164GB of log data per week. You have to ask yourself - who accesses that amount of information? What can they do with it?"
You manage, I`ll monitor
Whereas Faritec will manage security from its SOC, Symantec will automatically monitor it through the $32 million SOC it acquired through its purchase of Riptech last year.
Together, they will provide managed firewalls and intrusion detection, vulnerability assessment, security policy compliance, virus protection services and managed gateway servers. This includes fault management, configuration management, performance management, data analysis, aggregation, normalisation, mining and correlation.
Virus protection and managed gateway servers are Symantec-specific services, whereas the other services are vendor-agnostic. "Up to 80% of the technology in our six SOCs is other-vendor gear," adds Beer.
The customer gets what Symantec calls a Secure Internet Interface, a digital "dashboard" providing a window on log data, as well as the ability to communicate with the SOC or generate reports.
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