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Cybersecurity Study: 80% of CISOs Prepared to Work with MSSPs

Many chief information security officers (CISOs) plan to work with MSSPs to address cyber threats in the years to come, according to a study conducted by mobile device management and attack detection platform provider Cyber adAPT and research firm Ovum.

Key findings from the Cyber adAPT-Ovum study of more than 6,000 senior business professionals included:

  • Most CISOs are looking to outsource their security services to MSSPs. Eighty percent of CISOs said they are prepared to work with an MSSP. Also, among organizations that are already working with MSSPs, 60 percent said the best managed security services model involved an MSSP collecting and analyzing threat data and providing prioritized threat reports for internal review and action.
  • Cybersecurity spending is on the rise. On average, annual cybersecurity spending growth rates range between 9 percent and 12 percent, yet most organizations fail to see measurable results from their cybersecurity investments.
  • Security managers are tasked with mitigating cyberattacks in a rapidly evolving threat landscape. More records were lost or stolen in the first six months of 2017 (around 1.9 billion) than in the whole of 2016. In addition, the number of cyberattacks continues to increase, and the rise of advanced persistent threat (APT) technology likely will cause the size and severity of data breaches to increase.
  • Security teams continue to rely on outdated tools to address cyberattacks. Thirty-one percent of security teams depend solely on outdated tools such as basic search and monitoring for their cybersecurity needs, and 57 percent of all study respondents are not ready for next-generation security analytics.

Future strategies for security intelligence and analytics must match business detection and protection requirements, Cyber adAPT noted. Fortunately, MSSPs can deliver managed analytics services that may prove to be exceedingly valuable to organizations around the globe.

Managed Analytics Services: Here's What MSSPs Need to Know

Managed analytics services enable organizations to obtain timely, relevant insights faster than ever before. The services reduce the need for organizations to allocate time and resources to build data analytics teams; instead, organizations can collaborate with managed service providers (MSPs) that perform data analysis and provide insights and reports.

MSSPs can deliver managed analytics services to empower organizations with insights into incident response and remediation. By doing so, MSSPs could differentiate themselves from the competition and capitalize on the rising demand for managed analytics services.

In the Cyber adAPT-Ovum study, 45 percent of CISOs and security managers said the ideal MSSP partnership would involve the delivery of regular support and services, along with prioritized threat and breach notifications for local security teams to address. The study also showed that security managers often are "wary" of intrusion prevention systems that generate massive amounts of threat data.

CISOs and security managers can work closely with MSSPs to provision analytics-based projects, according to Cyber adAPT. By doing so, organizations can reap the benefits of security intelligence and replace out-of-date security products and services.

Dan Kobialka

Dan Kobialka is senior contributing editor, MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E. He covers IT security, IT service provider business strategies and partner programs. Dan holds a M.A. in Print and Multimedia Journalism from Emerson College and a B.A. in English from Bridgewater State University. In his free time, Dan enjoys jogging, traveling, playing sports, touring breweries and watching football.

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