Managed Security Services: How to scale for success

The Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) industry has blossomed over the last five years. Moreover, analysts predict growth as high as 15% year-on-year for the foreseeable future, with the cyber security market set to be worth US$1 trillion by 2020. How can  Managed Security Service providers scale for success?

For new entrants and existing providers in this growing market, it is important to understand the core business proposition of an MSSP and how to drive benefits. Huntsman Security has worked with several world-leading MSSP businesses, helping them ensure they tick all the boxes to deliver real value add to their customers.

“The remote monitoring or management of IT security functions delivered via shared services from remote security operations centers (SOCs), not through personnel on-site.” Gartner, 2015

Managed Security Services: What services are in demand?

Each year, certainly as far back as 2015, Gartner survey the managed security services market and publish the results in the Magic Quadrant for Managed Security Services, worldwide.

For a few years now the trends have shown that MSSPs needed to provide the a number of services if they are to be considered competitive:

• Monitored or managed firewalls or intrusion prevention systems (IPSs)
• Monitored or managed intrusion detection systems (IDSs)
• Monitored or managed multifunction firewalls
• Managed or monitored security gateways for messaging or Web traffic
• Security analysis and reporting of events collected from IT infrastructure logs
• Reporting associated with monitored/managed devices and incident response
• Managed vulnerability scanning of networks, servers, databases or applications
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection
• Monitoring or management of customer-deployed security information and event management (SIEM) technologies
• Monitoring and/or management of advanced threat defence technologies, or the provision of those capabilities as a service

Remote Monitoring is Key

The above list identifies both monitoring and management; but the reality is that management requires monitoring anyway, so the heart of every successful MSSP offering is remote monitoring capability – both the technology and the delivery of services in a cost effective and competent way.

Managed Security Services: Multi Tenant monitoring technologies

Monitoring solutions ingest security events directly from their customers’ networks, including events from firewalls, IPSs and endpoint protection suites, plus telemetry from applications, network devices, workstations and servers. Service providers that want to build and operate sustainable Managed Security Services need a technology partner that understands how to deliver services in a multi-tenanted environment, whether they are an MSSP or a Cloud Security Service Provider.

Ensuring data sovereignty and separation to customers using different database instances or multiple instances is only the tip of the iceberg. A fully integrated multi-tenant solution needs to be able to deliver the services described in a fast, efficient and cost effective manner.

Managed Security Services: Customers want context

Customers want behavioural anomaly detection, threat intelligence and customised reporting and service capabilities; they want a system to support the increasing demand for “mix and match” services and customisation and so the technology selected must be able to deliver these capabilities without the burden of sky-rocketing costs and analyst fatigue.

Huntsman Security Analytics technology meets these needs and has proven its ability to successfully operate within business critical cyber security environments of law enforcement, defence and intelligence customers.

The multi-tenancy capabilities built-in from the ground up provide assurance to satisfy even the most rigorous auditor, security assessor, or government accreditor. It provides total end-to-end operational separation with options to segregate, categorise and create structure within the data across a broad and diverse monitoring estate.

The result is that MSSPs and Cloud Security Providers can provide customers true end-to-end separation, with total control over data utilising our role-based access model. Role-based access means SOC operators only access the client data they need and so reducing the risks to the customers.

Our Security Analytics offerings incorporate our award winning Enterprise SIEM (Security Information and Event Manager) with external threat intelligence and machine based behavioural anomaly detection capabilities for accurate real time security decision-making. Easy customer on-boarding, less analyst workload per customer and customisable security management offerings are all key financial benefits of Huntsman® technology. Specifically the Cloud Edition offering includes rapid VM hypervisor deployment, flexible subscription-based licencing models and flexible architecture to meet the business and technical operating requirements of any customer.

Managed Security Services: Choosing technology for competitive advantage

To be successful in the rapidly evolving service market, providers need technology that is flexible and scalable, coupled with compelling capabilities that help them stand out from the crowd. This is what Huntsman Security provides: the technology to create a highly-efficient process-driven SOC and best-in-class security services, while at the same time reducing upfront costs with a solution to enable new customer connections and individualised services to be rolled out with ease.

The Huntsman Security Analytics suite is a true game changer for MSSPs and Cloud Security Service Providers. Recognised by Forrester Research in its 2018 Security Analytics Wave, it extends core SOC services with the addition of end-to-end multi-tenancy and real-time threat verification to reduce time-at-risk and enable businesses to focus on building stakeholder value.