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Business technology continues to carry a focus on protecting firms from cybersecurity threats. Each year the investment curve rises.
Digital Journal has been hearing from experts at AT&T Cybersecurity about the first directions of business systems over the next year. Offering thoughts on cyber-defence is Bindu Sundaresan, Director at AT&T Cybersecurity.
The cost of keeping secure
Sundaresan begins the analysis by looking at how businesses can consider cybersecurity in the context of spiralling business costs: “With budgets tightening across the board and competition for a limited pool of IT and security talent growing fiercer, cyber as a service providers have become an optimal solution for many companies. I predicted this in 2023, and the same theme rings true for the coming year.”
Cybersecurity as a Service
This appears to have been borne out, as Sundaresan continues: “Over the last year, cybersecurity has become an increasingly important aspect of doing business, with more and more companies falling victim to cyber-attacks each year. As a result, many businesses are turning to Cybersecurity as a Service (CSaaS) solutions to protect themselves and their customers from cyber threats.”
In other words, CSaaS is an outsourced model of cybersecurity management. Rather than handling it in-house where you may have limited resources and expertise, a company outsources this to a third-party vendor typically on a pay as you go basis.
What does this type of service entail? Sundaresan defines this as: “CSaaS is a subscription model that offers organizations cybersecurity protection on demand. CSaaS can help organizations reduce the cost of ongoing security investments while allowing businesses to focus on what’s really important to them. In response, knowing they can count on their partners to focus on specific vectors, internal security teams can concentrate on their core missions.”
A better option?
For many firms this represents a more affordable option: “This could be high-priority or critical items within security or something completely outside of cyber that simply needs more attention at a given time. Most importantly, the flexibility of CSaaS allows the services utilized to change over time and be periodically realigned to ensure the customer’s business needs are being met.”
