Security Vendor Fatigue and the Death of Transactional Relationships
I’ve been hearing a lot more lately about the challenge of ‘vendor fatigue’ from IT leaders.
Following the release of the 2019 Cyber Scape graph (see above) it’s easy to see why. With more and more vendors than ever, IT leaders are seeking fewer but deeper relationships with their most trusted suppliers. Especially for larger organisations that have a broader attack surface to protect. Having a myriad of different disparate technologies or services that don’t interoperate with one another is a nightmare.
Unfortunately for vendors that ship licenses and deliver an invoice, their days are numbered. By ‘vendor’ I refer to any supplier of product or service in this space. Be it software/hardware vendor, SaaS vendor, managed service provider, consulting firm or so on.
With every new relationship comes a level of overhead that creates complexity, so it’s essential that suppliers deliver value and expertise alongside the technology or service to help elevate an organisations’ insights and return on investment.
Human error played a part in an alarming 93% of data breaches, according to OAIC notifiable data breach reports, so when it comes to protecting your environment simplicity is KING!
Many of the large security vendors spruik their platform “single pane of glass” concept as the nirvana state to drive operational efficiencies and simplified management oversight. But in reality, many of the underlying technologies were recently acquired before being rebundled together under common naming conventions… but the few that are getting this right have a very compelling offering as IT Leaders seek to consolidate.
It’s a better option to forgo a feature or two for improved integration and simplification.
The other way to drive simplified security management is to partner with an organisation that delivers SaaS – Security as a Service. IT Leaders have long demanded outcomes over features – but in recent times with more and more technology available on the market, environments are more and more complex.
Back in 2008, MessageLabs made a name for itself being one of the first security firms to provide contracted performance SLA’s alongside its email filtering service.
- 100% detection of known and unknown viruses
- 100% availability
- Delivery of 100% of email within 60 seconds
- 99% spam detection
All backed by a contracted penalty.
Bold claims for a security vendor perhaps, but it gave IT leaders the confidence to get on board with a vendor that backed themselves!
Managed Services – nay, Managed Outcomes are the future to simplifying complex security management challenges that exist, especially in areas that have criticality or complexity, such as SIEM Monitoring and Alerting, Incident Response and Security Governance, Risk and Compliance.
That’s why in 2019, InfoTrust is focusing on delivering Managed Services in 4 areas:
- Secure Email Ecosystem as a Service
- Managed Endpoint Detection & Response
- Analytics as a Service
- CISO as a Service – GRC, Assurance, Awareness, Management.
Would love to hear about examples of Managed Services delivered really well, and perhaps a few bad examples too?
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Related resources
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