Many Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are adding cybersecurity and IT compliance offerings to their portfolio in order to generate incremental revenue, strengthen customer loyalty, and improve profit margins. Per Statista, the worldwide market for managed services is forecasted to grow to $215 billion in 2020 with a compound annual growth rate of over 11%. MSPs looking to capitalize on this opportunity and grow their operation need to do so without the hurdles of staffing and retaining a team of security specialists and investing in multiple layers of cyber defense technologies.
SOC-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) is one approach you can use to evolve into a Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP). Global research firm Gartner Inc. defines a Security Operations Center (SOC) this way:
“ …a team, often operating in shifts around the clock, and a facility dedicated to and organized
to prevent, detect, assess, and respond to cybersecurity threats and incidents, and to fulfill and
assess regulatory compliance.”
While there is no standard definition of SOC-as-a-Service, many enable MSPs to provide network monitoring, endpoint detection and response (EDR), forensic investigation, and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) – all on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis. Leveraging a third-party partner with a global SOC and security analysts can offset the startup costs and accelerate your learning curve. The time and money needed to build your own SOC from scratch will be extensive, to say nothing of the challenge in hiring and retaining security professionals for 24/7/365 coverage.
Key Capabilities and SOC-as-a-Service Benefits
Modern cybersecurity threats are evolving and morphing at a rapid pace. Small and medium-sized businesses who face the same cybersecurity threats as larger enterprises, but often with smaller IT teams, are leading candidates for the SOCaaS approach. A world-class SOC with a comprehensive SIEM solution provides the visibility needed to detect advanced threats and quickly recommend effective mitigation steps. It offers the continuous visibility that detects threats early and reduces dwell time inside client organizations. SOCaaS provides many benefits for MSPs as well as their clients:
Accelerate Your Time to Market
- Your organization may already be offering some type of security tools and point services such as vulnerability scanning or basic anti-virus. That does not preclude you from adopting SOCaaS to move up the tech stack and to position your business as a group of managed security experts.
- Assess whether you have the time and expertise for a build-it-yourself SOC. Outsourcing your SOC may likely be the appropriate model for your organization and strategic priorities.
- Embrace a Managed SOC service with its 24/7 threat analysts and comprehensive visibility to scale your MSSP business without incurring significant up-front expenses and headaches.
- Adversaries and their cybersecurity threats continue to evolve and mutate to capitalize on the latest security gaps like Zero-day threats. The bar is constantly being raised in this battle. SOCaaS allows you to provide valuable services without investing directly in what has been termed the “cyber arms race”.
Improve Security and Enhance Productivity
- Harness the complexities of machine learning, automation, and threat intelligence so that you don’t have to invest finite time and money keeping up with the latest adversary tactics and security technologies.
- Enable your IT staff to focus on other mission-critical activities instead of developing and staffing a 24/7 SOC.
- Enhance real-time cybersecurity visibility with integrated SIEM and EDR that correlate vast amounts of log data into actionable threat detection.
- Prioritize threats and eliminate false positives that waste valuable time that could be better spent on forensic investigation.
Optimize Financial Results for You as Well as Your Clients
- Address real marketplace needs for subscription-based services so that your clients only pay for services they need.
- Provide a service that allows clients to spend operating expenditure (OpEx) funds instead of hard-to-procure capital expenditure (CapEx) dollars.
- Generate a more consistent revenue stream from annual subscription services than less predictable one-time services.
The SOC has become the foundation for security analytics and threat expertise, combining people, processes, and technologies such as behavior analytics, intrusion detection, machine learning, and endpoint detection and response. While building an in-house SOC may be appropriate for some organizations with the resources, SOC-as-a-Service is both practical and affordable for the majority of MSPs.
Reach out to Netsurion to expand your portfolio with a proven partner who understands the SMB marketplace and the evolving threat landscape. SOCaaS provides fast time-to-value for emerging MSSPs looking to address new markets without the high cost of a physical facility and hiring and retaining threat analysts. Offered as a managed service, Netsurion’s EventTracker SIEM is an 11-time Gartner Magic Quadrant solution with its 24/7 SOC that augments your staff with hard-to-find cybersecurity analysts, providing advanced protection to your clients and enabling you to rapidly expand your business.
Blog courtesy of Netsurion, which offers the EventTracker security platform. Read more Netsurion guest blogs here.
