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RETURN ON INVESTMENT
(ROI) AND REDUCED
TOTAL COST
OF OWNERSHIP (TCO) JUSTIFICATION FOR SME's
"The Future of
Information Security"
The Information Security Landscape: The Fear, Uncertainty
and Doubt (FUD) factor has traditionally been the main
driver for information security. Shrouded in "techie
talk" and using the security "alphabet soup"
(SSL, IDS, ESM), it has always been perceived as the
domain of experts.
Whilst integration and technical expertise is still
a must to implement an efficient security policy security
must be understood to be a business cost and not a business
"insurance".
Information Security is an enabler to new business initiatives.
Reducing TCO along with proving ROI, is the best way
to prove the business case for information security
We will now look at the main methods of reducing the
Security Total Cost of Ownership FOR SME's.
SIMPLIFY
This is best achieved through:-
- Security Appliances for deploying security functions
- Extensive use of intuitive GUI based management
to lower skill levels required for managing security,
or indirectly make better use of skills that are in
short supply
- Centralised Management to provide more compliance
to security policy throughout the Enterprise
- Centralised alerting to provide better response
to security incidents
INTEGRATE
Integration of high end products usually incurs high
costs as it requires high-level consultants able to
engineer the "glue" required to bring the
systems together.
Putting more functions in a single product and linking
products and vendors together are both ways of providing
pre-integrated solutions or product suites to SME customers.
The integration trend is currently very strong in the
security marketplace. Some vendors are taking the original
equipment manufacturer (OEM) route, whereby they use
a product components from one or more companies to build
a product sold under their own name/brand. eg Checkpoint
OPSEC (Open Security) Alliance.
OUTSOURCE
If developing and keeping security skills is a distraction
to focusing on your core business then outsourcing is
an efficient option. This allows you to rapidly access
security skills and deploy a constantly monitored and
managed security infrastructure.
For a technical consultant to call you click
here and they will do so at the time you specify.
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