Friday, June 24, 2011

Deploying Managed Security Services in the Changing IT Landscape


As organizations expand globally, there are innumerable challenges that they have to face and so do the need for global information exchange between employees and customers.  Threats to your infrastructure and confidentiality, integrity and availability of information also increase exponentially both from internal and external sources.  As information is one of your most important assets, organizations must be prepared to mount a positive defense against threats.

Organization find it difficult to keep pace with the changing IT landscape and constant changes in regulatory and industry mandated compliance programs. No longer are network firewalls and intrusion detection systems enough to keep your network secure. Organizations need to deploy cost effective managed security services solutions that leverage best practices, simplify management requirements and increase your overall security.

Managed security services protect your business beyond individual devices by managing from a centralized Security Operations Center (SOC). These services can be managed in-house or can be outsourced to managed service providers who can oversee the network and information security.
The services provided by these MSS include 24/7/365 monitoring and management of of intrusion detection systems, overseeing patch management and upgrades, performing security assessments and security audits, and responding to emergencies. Apart from this MSS help with data backup and recovery services that help organizations to recover data to the last point. Thus you save on time and effort that is taken to recover data manually post disaster.
Outsourcing such services to a managed service provider frees businesses to concentrate on their key competencies. According to Gartner, “Managed security services will be the fastest-growing segment of the managed services arena, expanding at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 20% over the next few years”.
Engaging a professional managed service provider offers a number of advantages:
Centralized Security Operation center – Offers seamless service and maximizes the hours of support and provides you with maximum protection against spam, spyware, viruses and other threats. These SOCs are sites with state-of-the-art infrastructure managed by trained personnel.
Staffing- IT departments have to recruit, train, compensate and retain critical staff that puts tremendous pressure on organizations. The cost of in-house network security specialists can be very high with continuous fear of replacing them in case they leave. When you outsource to a MSSP, the costs to hire, train, and retain highly skilled staff becomes their responsibility.

Cost – Organizations are finding that the cost of a managed security service is typically less than hiring in-house, full-time security experts.  An MSSP eliminates the need for dedicated hardware and specialized security staff, while reducing the need for traditional security skill sets. Moving services lowers the total cost of network ownership.

Maximum Uptime - the service providers monitor and update and report near real-time results, 24/7/365 days a year. In case of any problem, MSSPs can be held accountable for the service standards they provide. Their operational procedures are designed to ensure uninterrupted service availability. Upgrading software and hardware and to maintain a secure network configuration is the responsibility of the service provider.

Security – With managed service security solutions with the MSSP, technologies such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, virtual private networks, unsecured VPN endpoints and vulnerability assessment tools are far well-organized because they are managed and monitored by experienced professionals.

Going to a managed security services provider is cheaper as it saves money and more efficient while paying based on security needs and usage.  In future, experts feel that 
managed services in India will play major role as per as managed security service market is concerned. With organizations facing tight budgets, lack of adequate skilled staffs, lack of proper infrastructure etc., they are turning more and more towards managed security services provider.

Other Links
Cloud infrastructure services
Load balancing service

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

India in the Cloud Computing Arena



Cloud Computing is in its nascent stage in today's world and new business opportunities heavily depend on their IT infrastructure availability. Earlier we had application as a service, software as a service (SaaS), but today we are moving to
infrastructure as a service all this with advancement in technology, deals have moved to cloud computing where everything can be offered as a service.

The major advantage of cloud computing is being able to convert large, upfront capital investments in IT infrastructure into smaller, manageable 'pay-per-use'plan. The Indian IT market is very conducive to the growth of cloud computing due to the presence of an end to end IT ecosystem. There is a $1 billion worth of opportunity waiting to be tapped into but Indian firms are yet to bite.

Today India does not have that many clouds or data centers but the scenario is fast changing. According to IDC “The cloud computing market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 40 per cent by 2014, from an estimated $66.7 million in 2009, driven by cost and performance efficiencies.” Cloud computing in India will dramatically change the way we compute.

India has the potential to be the global leader of cloud computing. Can you imagine India has 1.4 million developers, over 11000 system integrators and more than 1300 independent software vendors? The reason it is not can be partly not wanting to change the status quo and partly having apprehensions regarding the security of keeping confidential data on the net.In fact, sometime last year, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer had opined in the press that "India will not only see a surge in cloud computing services but companies all over the world will look to India to support their transition to cloud computing.''

There are many companies that have understood the importance of cloud computing and the changes that it can bring about to their business. They have started evolving as software utility companies. Its immense advantages are in the fore interms of management and network infrastructure and will also help optimize service models.

Indian SMBs particularly, , lack budgets, want business improvement, lack management bandwidth required to manage internal IT and are looking for rapid growth in the next few years. For all of this put together, ‘Cloud Computing’ is indeed the answer”.

The reason why the world may sit up and take notice of India’s immense potential to be a cloud computing is the country’s unique demographics. IT spending in India is one of the highest in the world and there is ample scope for IT adoption, be it by way of enterprise, the private or the ITES sectors.India has the world’s fastest growing mobile market with over 20 million subscribers added every month shows the confidence telecom providers have on data services in the Indian market. India has not yet reached saturation point. Moreover no other region in the world can provide the platform vendor access to the end to end IT ecosystem.

Industry experts predict that not only will India see a huge increase in adoption of cloud computing but will invariably become the global hub with a huge rise in number of data centers in India that aid global transition of IT companies to cloud computing.

Other Links