Business Info - issue 145

businessinfomag.uk magazine 24 CYBER SECURITY The coronavirus pandemic has tested the strength of cybersecurity in businesses worldwide. The en masse migration to working from home, coupled with changes to businesses’ long-term office accommodation needs, highlight the need for SMEs to update their cybersecurity measures to counter the growing cyber security threat. According to the University of Maryland, hackers attack on average 2,244 times a day or once every 39 seconds.Worryingly, businesses might not even be aware that they have been breached. In its Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020 , IBM reveals that it takes a UK business an average of 256 days to identify and contain a cybersecurity breach! In this time, hackers can do no amount of damage, contributing to an average cost per breach of £3.9 million. Clearly, traditional cybersecurity measures do not cut it anymore. In a world where cybercriminals do not sleep, neither should the vanguards keeping them at bay.Which is where Security Operation Centre-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) can help. Delivered by a provider via subscription, SOCaaS provides real time monitoring, detection and analysis of cybersecurity threats that enable it proactively to detect advanced targeted attacks that wouldn't be detected by existing perimeter controls. What to look for in a SOCaaS provider SOCaaS marries the strengths of 24/7 surveillance through Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) security tools with the analytical expertise of a team of highly skilled cybersecurity specialists. This combination delivers an efficient and streamlined way to identify security gaps and eliminate threats through early detection. How to make SOCaaS work for your business While organisations must build robust cybersecurity measures into their normal operations to match the ferocity of modern cybersecurity threats, it is important to make an educated choice on what is appropriate for their needs. A good SOCaaS provider should be able to scale its services based on what is necessary for each business. And in the current landscape, increased surveillance of activity across a business’s IT estate should include cloud infrastructures and work-from-home deployments. The SOCaaS should also deliver peace of mind and security to the client. It should not bombard them with relentless reporting and action requests that they may not have the time or resources to address, as good collaboration between the SOCaaS provider and customer is integral to cybersecurity effectiveness. The persistence and ingenuity of cyber-criminals mean that in addition to cybersecurity a SOCaaS provider must strengthen a business’s cyber resilience so that they are able to respond to and recover from cyber attacks. The good SOCaaS litmus test When seeking out a provider, it is important to ask five key questions: 1 Is the SOCaaS provider a cloud- native and multi-tenant platform? Rather than providing a selection of products, cloud-native multi-tenant platforms offer end-to-end cohesion and scalability. 2 How easy is it for a non-IT expert to understand the data presented to them? Is it easily measurable in metrics? It is important for a SOCaaS provider to help a client understand the data and what it means for their business. It should be able to provide the appropriate economic information and outcomes without technical jargon. 3 Does it provide simple and relevant advice to ensure business teams comply with security guidelines? Because every business is different, it is vital that a SOCaaS provider is capable of supplying custom playbooks that fit each client’s culture and business priorities. 4 When threats do emerge from the ether, does the SOCaaS provider eliminate them in a timely manner, without the client’s intervention? The quicker a threat is addressed, the less damage it can cause. 5 How easy is it to deploy applications on the platform? Cyber threats are ever changing and it is important security measures keep up with them. The SOCaaS provider must be flexible and allow for swift deployment of security applications and make sure these are seamlessly integrated into playbooks and reporting. With threats to businesses multiplying, there has never been a more important time to implement a SOCaaS capability, while also empowering business owners to understand and take charge of their cyber resilience. METCloud is a multi-award-winning cybersecurity hybrid cloud platform and Microsoft Azure Ecosystem Partner that harnesses sophisticated cyber defence, surveillance, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies in a holistic approach to cybersecurity and cloud computing. www.metcloud.com Ian Vickers of METCloud explains how Security Operations Centre-as-a-Service (SOCaaS) can help counter the growing threat of cyber-crime