The biggest roadblock in cloud adoption for enterprises is security. Concerns about security makes businesses till unsure about whether it is in their best interest to embrace cloud computing technologies. There has been a lot of progress in this field in the recent times and this happened in the light of the fact that the legacy security tools which had been reconfigured for usage within the cloud failed to yield desired results. The main reasons why these perhaps failed to work are workload agility and dynamic networking which are characteristics of cloud environments.
What is the SECaaS?
The main solutions which were therefore introduced in order to address security concerns in the cloud were specific security tools which were designed to target the cloud and development of what is called Security as a Service or SECaaS. For both these solutions, many players have now entered the competition and this includes both cloud hosting platform developers and legacy security tool manufacturers.
The SECaaS is nothing but a business model wherein the provider will integrate security solutions into corporate infrastructures according to a subscription based model. This turns out to be more cost-effective than what corporations and individuals can arrange on their own.
Earlier, the SECaaS had been a concept in its infancy and it was more of a “blackbox” or a cyber security service which was set up in a network and which “others” would watch and monitor. This service would include the participation of the IT staff only when needed. But, today, the situation has changed dramatically and businesses, both large and small, use the SECaaS to install their security arrangements and also to guarantee 24×7 monitoring along with intrusion-detection and prevention solutions which are absolutely essential in the modern day cyber security system. Reports suggest that the global IT SECaaS market will grow by nearly 20%, to about $8 billion, between 2016 and 2020.
Why is the SECaaS necessary and beneficial?
- The SECaaS is found to be far more cost-effective compared to buying your own security hardware. However, in spite of there being firewalls and highly-advanced next gen firewalls, hacking could not be eliminated for good. So, it probably makes more sense to use the high-end hardware which reputed network security providers deploy for their own security.
- With the sudden growth of web traffic in the past few years it has become all the more necessary to have advanced security tools to keep hackers away. There is the growing demand for skilled responders who can tackle security threats.
- Cyber crimes have become so common today that Ransomware as a Service or RaaS and DDoS as a Service are solutions which are now affordable for most enterprises.
- Moreover, the number of skilled workers in tackling cyber crimes is strikingly low and these cloud security services will allow them to respond to threats better. Reports suggest that cyber security is getting more and more complex by the day and it is only expected to get more complicated going ahead. So, it is definitely preferable if there is a SECaaS device which can minimize security incidents. With the SECaaS installed, the alerts which a company will get will be actionable and real time alerts that can be evaluated by trained and experienced staff of the SECaaS provider. This means that all responses can be carried out in a timely and appropriate fashion.
With the growing numbers of interconnected devices getting wired into a critical infrastructure these days and being produced by the IoT or Internet of Things, network traffic will only become worse day by day. IoT will definitely make our lives easier and better but it will make incident responders’ lives more hectic. So, the time is right for the SECaaS to make its entry now. Businesses do not have the kind of manpower required to man their cyber security forts any more. The time is right to give SECaaS solutions the chance to respond to alters and protect a company’s valuable assets.
As far as the tooling aspect is concerned, many security tools are now reconfigured as cloud security appliances, which include firewalls; identity management tools and anti-virus tools. Besides these, new tools are also being launched like the web application firewall, compliance checking and network segmentation. The main advantage of using cloud security tools is the power to control your environment and also use tools which are conceptually very similar to the legacy tools, but only function differently. For instance, a re-born legacy tool like a virtual firewall today will look or feel much like the earlier physical firewall in a data center.
A further benefit of using SECaaS solution is metered licensing. Like the public clouds, payments here will be according to usage. Most of the providers of SECaaS solutions will be concerned more on specific aspects of security like the IAM, anti-virus, encryption etc. Adoption of the SECaaS will also pose some challenges just like businesses face when adopting the cloud. Security continues to be the most important concern when deploying any computing environment. Whether you use SECaaS or tooling methods, the main idea is to plan for a security solution or a set of many solutions which are best suited for an enterprise.
