Johannesburg, 05 Nov 2008
“While all indications are that the local IT market is facing tougher times as it heads into 2009, the future of managed security services (MSS) in South Africa is looking very bright.”
This is according to Henry Peens, Sales and Marketing Director at Chameleon Secure Solutions (Chameleon), which has developed a next generation MSS that offers a truly correlated and normalised security posture view.
“The volatility of global markets makes it very difficult to envisage the impact on local and international IT markets, but less IT spent is a certainty. Companies will, therefore, need to adjust their spend according to shrinking budgets.”
Peens maintains that one way of optimising IT budgets is to outsource specialised IT functions, such as security, to MSS providers. “Through a tightly controlled and managed service level agreement one is able to gain real value for money, without exposing the company to increased risk created by a depleted IT Security budget.”
He further elaborates on MSS as a feasible option, with the cost-saving aspect leading the charge, in terms of:
* Over the past few years the market has undergone a lengthy MSS educational phase, adopting the MSS concept.
* The ever increasing skills shortage makes it difficult and costly for companies to recruit, train and retain security professionals, especially if IT security is not their core business.
* Legal and regulatory compliance requirements are enforced on companies adding to the burden of having a secure environment.
* Calculating security cost is becoming a nightmare. Effective security solutions are not only too expensive for small and medium enterprises but also for many big corporates.
* Over the past few weeks the rand/dollar exchange rate instantly increased the cost of imported security products by up to 40%. The result - less margin for resellers as they attempt to absorb price increases to customers.
Traditionally, MSS providers offered an outsourced security service, but with the following challenges and limitations:
* The service came with a hefty price tag, creating the impression that all cost had to be recovered from a few customers in a limited time.
* The services offered were not scalable and offered no customisation, but were rather based on selling volume of security products.
* The concept of true correlation never really materialised, maintaining a silo approach rather than a consolidated security posture view.
* Outsourced security services could not be mapped against compliance, legal or/and regulatory requirements.
* Vulnerability management and change detection solutions were viewed as separate solutions and therefore could not be incorporated into a single security posture view.
* Security Service Providers had to rely on volume business to justify the cost of building a security operations centre.
“Chameleon's next generation MSS has been developed in South Africa over the past 22 months by a team of dedicated security professionals backed by a software development team ensuring integration and customisation,” explains Christo Boshoff, Director of Security Solutions at Chameleon .
This solution has been implemented at various local blue chip companies as well as one of the largest international financial service providers with huge success. “We are providing 24/7 managed security services to these customers, enabling an on-demand correlated security posture view,” says Boshoff.
Chameleon is a services-orientated company providing world-class technology backed by a team of dedicated IT Security professionals. As part of its complete MSS offering it also provides vulnerability management and change detection services, IT security consulting and secure code review services. Contact us on http://www.chameleon-ss.com
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