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The IT Security Arms Race: How Well Are You Keeping Up?

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Today’s digitization of just about everything – especially a whole lot of business data – means the technologies your organization depends on may be changing more quickly than you think.

Of course, this has been true for some time. But for a while it wasn’t the case – software patches and antivirus updates were less frequent, and the sense of urgency was by similar degree, less as well.

Alas, that was then. Now if you let your IT environment – especially your security stance – fall behind, you could be left exposed to some pretty insidious threats.

Source: 2015 Global Megatrends in Cybersecurity , Ponemon Institute

 

No wonder 89% of small and midsize business IT professionals surveyed last fall acknowledge their organizations have seen at least some impact from security breaches.

So do you have a cybersecurity plan?

IT security best practices recommend a proactive approach involving multiple layers of defensive, real-time monitoring/management by cybersecurity planning experts – the first step in IT security best practices.

Unless your business is large enough to employ the necessary platoon of experts, your plan should include finding and deploying a set of Managed Security Services able to:

  1. Detect anomalies by monitoring your network for new or unexpected events, patterns, or issues
  2. Perform security information and event management (SIEM), as well as log management that’s integrated on a single console interface
  3. Provide real-time reporting so you can track how your organization’s security and compliance posture changes over time
  4. Offer pre-built reports and customizable policies that make reporting easier
  5. Create two-tier data storage to reduce management hassles – i.e., one tier of heavily indexed historical data for quick search/reporting, and another capable of real-time data collection and reporting
Getting proactive and preventive

With Managed IT Security, all this and more (yes, there’s much more, which I’ll explore in my next post) can be customized to your specific requirements, then coordinated and integrated into a service that’s easy for you to manage – without in-house security experts.

Remember: the best Managed Security Services offer more than just a set of post-attack guidelines. Effectively managed IT security delivers ongoing preventive measures that keep your network, applications, and data safe from malice and error.

Meet the Author
Tim Burke is the President and CEO of Quest. He has been at the helm for over 30 years.
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