The ever-changing threats associated with cyber security – combined with a shortage in qualified personnel who specialize in protecting networks, data, and systems – is leading to growth for managed security providers. Enterprises struggling to keep up with monitoring and threat detection may entirely replace their security team with managed service providers, or they may augment a team that is just short of covering all of the enterprise’s needs.

There are two important benefits of using managed security in the cloud era:

Protections Against Erring Employees: You might be surprised to learn that it’s not malicious hackers causing the bulk of cyber security incidents. It’s much more likely that an employee making a mistake will be the cause of a breach in your organization. From sharing passwords to losing a device or having access to a part of the system they aren’t authorized to use, employee error can open your enterprise up to some serious risk.

Managed security helps prevent these incidents by promoting and educating employees about authentication, access, and how to handle a suspicious email. They also monitor employee behavior. If an employee – for example – is accessing an area they don’t need, or they are using systems in a location or a timeframe that seems odd, the security team can follow up.

While there are certainly malicious employees out there, the most common occurrence is simply unawareness. You don’t want to have an employee click on a dangerous phishing email when they could have been educated about that in a training session.

Filling in Gaps: Even an enterprise with a full, dedicated security team may struggle to keep up with the by-the-minute changes happening to the threat landscape. From 24/7 monitoring to handling detected threats, many enterprise teams are unable to adequately staff for security purposes.

Managed security providers eliminate some of the difficulty in addressing every critical area of security by offering services related to prioritization, threat hunting, incident response, solution deployment, and uptime. While your enterprise security team may be able to handle some of the tasks related to these areas, there’s an ongoing shortage of security talent, and it may be beneficial to augment your security team with a third party provider.

Managed security providers also bear a great amount of expertise. They will be up to date on the latest threats trending in cyber security, and they are well-versed in the best security solutions that may help eliminate vulnerabilities in your organization.

For further insight into how managed security could help your enterprise fulfill your security policy goals, contact us at eXemplify. We can help you identify areas of vulnerability and the solutions that will best address them.