Reason #3:  Eliminate the Knowledge Gap

 

Do you enjoy getting your team up to speed on security issues? Many companies take a toll logistically and financially by retraining their employees on updated software and security procedures. How else does keeping your employees educated drag down your bottom line? Those not trained in the best practices for security may inadvertently compromise the system. This adds the cost of remediating the damage caused by a breach—which can be devastating.

Employee or “insider” mistakes can seem harmless at first, but they are deceptively dangerous. Did you know that the combined breaches caused by malicious and inadvertent insiders far outnumber any other computer security threats faced by today’s companies? Whether these employees meant to cause harm isn’t the issue; they still wreak havoc.

The Ponemon Institute’s 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study found that among a total of 874 security incidences that year, 568 were caused by an employee’s or contractor’s negligence; just 85 by outsiders using stolen credentials; and 191 by malicious employees and criminals (Source: Tripwire.com). Insiders are far more harmful to security than outsiders.

 

Tripwire makes the case, “Why should we lump all those incidents together? Because regardless of whether they are malicious or not, the action was taken by an employee or a person with legitimate access located inside of the company network – that is, where security is much more relaxed than on the perimeter.” Even if the breaches weren’t intentional, they still damaged the companies’ security.

 

Minding the Gap

There is a way to cut those negative consequences completely. Outsourcing critical security to a trusted managed services provider allows security focused employees to undergo rigorous screening and monitoring. A provider like IST handles all functions internally to eliminate this knowledge gap completely. However, there’s an important distinction: A managed services solution takes care of this issue; with a hosted solution, you need to train an internal employee(s) to manage the system.  Before going down that route, be sure that you’re comfortable with your IT team handling security first.

 

Our next post focuses on the fourth and final business reason for moving to a hosted or managed security solution:  eliminating the manpower expenses. The following information and other security tips are in our free e-book.