Symantec’s Hanlon said that one of the most popular plus-points at present with the company’s clientele is ‘always-on’ threat monitoring. “Through outsourcing the monitoring of their estate, businesses can gain better insights into any difficult to detect events which could affect them,” he said. “We’re also seeing an industry shift from purely providing security protection, to having the ability to switch on incident response capabilities to any threats, which is becoming an increasingly popular emergency and managed service.”
Trustworthy and scalable
For Irish businesses putting their security in the hands of a third party, Ward Solutions’ Hogan made the point that the provider must be able to address “their specific requirement”. This is the case, he said, whether that is focused around a “managed firewall, managed intrusion prevention systems (IPS), managed endpoint, managed network, managed security incident and event management (SIEM) or some other specific need.”
Something which is “trustworthy, scalable and that protects [businesses] in real-time” is what most clients are after added Moore. He continued, “One particular area we see as a real bonus for businesses is a solution that covers application level analysis and reporting. It is a huge benefit to Irish businesses to have transparency over the applications that are running on their network so that they can make informed decisions to prioritise core applications and throttle down or block unproductive ones.”
More Irish businesses will think about placing their trust in a third party when it comes to security. We are also likely to see more services offered by MSSPs such as managed endpoints, managed mobile devices, and further use of managed vulnerability assessments and scanning services, Paul Hogan, Ward Solutions
Moore said too that “a common theme of our conversations with clients” is the desire for a security solution that results in best-of-breed protection while also not hindering business and productivity in any way. “A managed security solution is very well placed to strike this balance through ongoing management that allows security to be a business enabler rather than an inhibitor,” he said.
Popular products
The E-Mit managing director also commented that the three key areas that he has seen “substantial growth” in of late are endpoint protection, managed identity and access management, as well as data protection. “Solutions such as Dell Data Protection Encryption, KACE K1000 any-point management and Enterprise Single Sign-On are proving to be very popular as businesses look to invest in protecting their users no matter where they are,” he said.
Looking back at the past 18 months within this marketplace Paddon said he had seen a number of companies move to platform-based security where a single vendor “stack” is used to avoid issues around compatibility and integration. This approach to managed security services, he said, is often a combination of “UTM and next generation firewalls (NGFW) along with integrated endpoint and web security.” Paddon added too that the most prominent development in this regard has been the continued quest to integrate mobile device management properly into the mix.
Reasonable cost
Striking a similar chord, Hogan said managed firewall solutions, “whereby we provide a 24 x 7 firewall management service covering administration, monitoring, optimisation and responding to security and device issues and events” have been a popular choice for clients. “This also covers NGFW and UTM devices,” he added.
The other big seller within the Irish market he said is managed IPS based on the “latest advanced threat research and security intelligence information out there”, in order to enable organisations to identify and respond to threats much quicker. While Datapac’s O’Connor made the point that, should a company be unsure whether such specific needs are suited to them, within a flourishing marketplace there should be something for even the pickiest business out there.
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