Watching the latest Black Friday frenzy this year made me wonder what really is a good deal? We ask this question frequently. There is an abundance of reports available with price comparison charts to help consumers determine if they are getting a fair price. In the world of IT, however, there is much more than price to consider when determining if you got a good deal.
When determining whether or not you got a good deal, there are far too many dependencies and factors to consider. Some of the factors can be influenced by corporate strategy, such as if the organization is going through a cost transformation, cloud migration, or digital transformation. There are many ways organizations can optimize their IT cost to navigate budget constraints. To achieve those cost savings, IT dealmakers must switch from chasing a price to pursuing leverage. It’s not the price but rather building and managing leverage that makes you successful in making a good deal.
When it comes to investing in security, organizations seeking the best deal need to ask themselves the following: Is this aligned to our cloud or digital transformation strategy? Can it be consistently applied everywhere? Will it help consolidate IT management? Can IT support the needs of a remote workforce today and tomorrow?
Leading organizations get the right answers when they invest in cloud-delivered security. The flexibility and agility of cloud-delivered security services are key reasons for its adoption. When security is delivered from the cloud, it can be applied everywhere when needed. The concept of “everywhere” and the elasticity that the cloud provides is what makes a cloud-delivered service so suitable to the needs of both organizations trying to consume a new security service and managed security service providers (MSSPs) trying to build a managed security practice.
How Can MSSPs Benefit from Cloud-Delivered Security?
For a managed security service provider, cloud-delivered security like Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access comes with many advantages:
- A turnkey service with a short time to market: MSSPs spend long cycles bringing a new service to market. Hardware or hybrid using private cloud and virtualization-based models are complex to build and manage. A cloud-delivered security platform enables service providers to focus on delivering customized value-added services with higher profit margins.
- Highly scalable to satisfy any market demand: When supporting either planned or unplanned customer demands, a cloud-delivered service takes advantage of the cloud’s elasticity to provide the required scalability to support today’s rapidly changing businesses.
- Best-of-breed security, always up to date: A cloud-delivered service is a self-updating security platform supported by global threat intelligence, like Unit 42 and the Cyber Threat Alliance, that leverages machine learning and AI and always stays up to date to stop any attack in real time.
- Rapid deployments, onboarding of new customers: A flexible and fully automated cloud-delivered security platform enables MSSPs to rapidly improve the security posture of small, medium, and large businesses without incurring the high operational cost.
How Can Organizations Benefit from a Cloud-Delivered Managed Security Service?
Organizations can truly benefit from a cloud-delivered managed security service. In a recent blog, I identified the 5 reasons why an organization should consider a cloud-delivered managed security solution. Here is a summary:
- Reduced cost for cybersecurity labor and tools: A managed service eliminates massive initial investments and dramatically reduces management and operations overhead.
- Extensive cybersecurity knowledge and experience: An MSSP cybersecurity workforce compensates for organizations' lack of high-skilled security professionals to handle challenging environments.
- Faster deployment and issues resolution: MSSPs have in-depth experience and knowledge of common network security issues that make them adaptable and flexible. As a result, deployments can be faster and more cost-effective.
- Complementary network managed services and expertise: Organizations can benefit from solutions and expertise in other areas, such as transport and network, that complement the cloud-delivered security offering.
- Custom, cloud-delivered security solution: MSSPs can customize the cloud-delivered security offering to an enterprise’s needs and define the required security policies that best fit.
The Best Security Deal for Both Organizations and MSSPs
Today's consumers want to feel as if they have spent their money in the smartest way possible, and not necessarily on the lowest-priced item. Much like consumers looking for the best value in their purchase, organizations and MSSPs should look to invest in the right security platform aligned to their business strategy.
The dramatic reduction of initial investments and management costs, along with best-of-breed, scalable security, are some of the compelling reasons for organizations to move away from traditional premises-based security to adopting a cloud-delivered managed security solution. Similarly, MSSPs benefit from the same compelling reasons to drive new revenue opportunities from a security practice built on a cloud-delivered security platform.
To learn more about how MSSPs and organizations benefit from a cloud-delivered security solution, access the Securing Remote Workforces At Scale With Cloud-Delivered Managed Security on-demand webinar.
This post is part of a series on MSSP partners.