What is managed cyber security? A comprehensive guide

Cyber security is a familiar part of everyday life for us all, from the individual to the global enterprise. Software providers spend billions of pounds a year on keeping ahead of cyber criminals. But for the businesses relying on these tools, it’s a constant battle, requiring vigilance across multiple fronts.

For small and medium-sized businesses, finding the time, skills or budget to defend against cyber threats can feel difficult. Large enterprises with a whole IT department may have a team dedicated to managing threats around the clock. At an SME, however, there may only be a single person responsible for IT. It may even fall to the finance or ops lead, or the owner.

When balancing cost versus risk, many end up taking their chances, exposing themselves to the risk of an attack that could be catastrophic.

Managed cyber security services are designed specifically to help those businesses that are unable to take care of this themselves. In this guide, we’ll explain what managed cyber security is, how it will benefit you, what services are available, and what to look for in a provider.

Defining managed cyber security

If cyber security is the practice of reducing your risk of cyber attacks, then managed cyber security is the outsourcing of some or all of this to a third-party to take care of on an ongoing basis.

Typically, managed cyber security services are entrusted to one of the following types of organisations:

• A Managed Services Provider (MSP): at a provider of this type, a broad range of IT services are offered, from managing infrastructure and hosting to the platforms and applications your people use to do their jobs. Many MSPs offer managed cyber security services as part of their services, though they will vary in the level of expertise they bring.
• A Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP): this type of provider is wholly focused on cyber security. As a specialist practice, the level of expertise here is likely to be the very highest – this makes them a great partner for those organisations who have well-resourced, mature IT capabilities but need the next level of security.

Which type of provider you choose depends on your needs – and, of course, not all are created equal. For the specific types of protection you might need, see Key services offered in managed cyber security. For what to look for in a provider, scroll down to the How to choose the right managed cyber security provider section.

Benefits of managed cyber security

In a smaller organisation with limited IT skills in the team, the benefits of managed cyber security are fundamental – and increasingly so.

Cyber attacks are becoming more common – in the UK, for example, the government reports that 50% of small businesses and 70% of medium enterprises have experienced a cyber security breach or attack in the last 12 months.

What’s more, the threats are becoming more complex and sophisticated. Phishing is the most common tactic, followed by impersonation and malware. DDoS, ransomware, advanced persistent threat attacks, botnets – even insider threats from careless employees or third-party vendors – give countless reasons to lose sleep.

In fairness, the majority of SMEs acknowledge that cyber security is a high priority for senior management – but it can be difficult to resource. In the UK, only 22% of small businesses have a formal incident response plan, and only 43% have cyber security insurance.

For businesses of this size, the UK government reports the average cost of a disruptive breach is £1,205 – in leaner times, an unexpected cost like this could impact the ability to pay people, suppliers or overheads. Of course, a severe breach could be even more costly. Research by Sky found that SMEs that had been taken offline for four days reported a loss of £123,984.

It’s enough to give you nightmares – which is why many SMEs opt to entrust their defences to a managed cyber security services provider. Having an expert covering your back will give you peace of mind and allow you and your team to stay focused on business success.

Here are a few of the key benefits of managed cyber security.

Continuous 24/7 monitoring

Cyber criminals don’t work 9-5. The reality is, vigilance against cyber threats is a 24/7, year-round job. It’s common for attacks take place outside of working hours as this is when even the most well-resourced teams are off duty.

If you’ve outsourced your monitoring, then threats will be detected more quickly, and should the worst occur, incident response can click into gear immediately. You’ll be able to enjoy round-the-clock vigilance, giving you and your teams peace of mind.

Expert cybersecurity professionals on hand

Staying on top of the latest developments in cyber security – what are the emerging threats and what tools are required to mitigate them – is a full-time task.

Outsourcing to an MSP or MSSP will mean your defences are in the hands of people who understand how threats evolve and have quicker access to the technical knowledge and solutions you may need.

Cost savings compared to in-house teams

We are living in an age when more and more of our personal and professional lives are spent online. Criminals have spotted the opportunity; as a result, the demand for cyber security professionals is growing every year.

Globally, there is an increasing skills gap – ISC2 calculates that the size of the workforce required to meet demand has grown by 8% compared to last year, with the workforce gap growing by 19%.

Outsourcing your cyber security can work out as a more cost-effective option than recruiting and retaining expert staffs in this competitive landscape.

Ability to scale

One of the best things about working with an MSP or MSSP is the flexibility this affords you, allowing you to scale services up or down as your business grows.

Adding a new office to your operations? Merging with another company? Employing a remote team? All of these scenarios would previously have needed investment in new hardware, cloud infrastructure and software licensing. But if your cyber security is outsourced, then all that complexity is managed for you.

Key services offered in managed cyber security

Cyber security is like any other type of security – there’s a wide range of activities that you could consider as part of your defences.

One of the benefits of managed cyber security is that you won’t need to get your head around countless technologies and methodologies – your provider will work with you to understand your requirements and develop a security posture that suits your organisation.

Here’s a selection of the types of service you may need to consider – with an explanation of what each provides.

Firewall management

Your firewall is fundamental to your business security. It’s what keeps threats out and your data within, and is a necessary requirement for compliance with many regulations. But any wall needs maintenance to ensure its integrity. And if your business is growing, with more data to protect, then you’ll need to scale up your defences.

A managed firewall ensures that this critical part of your infrastructure is constantly monitored and kept up to date. And as your organisation’s needs evolve, your MSP will ensure your firewall is configured to meet them.

Vulnerability assessments

Sadly, for many organisations, the first time they’ll realise that there was a chink in their armour is when it’s been exploited. If they’d known they’d had a weakness in advance, then they’d have had an opportunity to strengthen and avoid a breach.

Vulnerability assessments allow you to test how robust your systems are so you can understand where the risks may lie. A service provider will use its tools and expertise to get under the bonnet of your defences and put them to the test. At the end, you should have a detailed report and clear recommendations on what to do to remedy any issues.

Endpoint protection

It’s easy to think of data as something that sits at the heart of your organisation, but in practice there are many ways that your people are accessing and interacting with it. As flexible and dispersed working practices have emerged, and more people log on from a variety of locations and devices, the surface area has grown for cyber threats.

For any organisation that works in this way, endpoint protection is important to consider. It ensures you have full control of your devices, applications and files, and gives you a clear view of user behaviour. Supported by your MSP, you’ll have proactive protection against threats across your touchpoints.

Compliance management

Cyber security isn’t only about protecting your business – it’s also about protecting your customers. Many organisations will be subject to stringent regulations that may include cyber guardrails – and data protection is enshrined by laws such as the GDPR in the UK and EU, and PIPEDA in Canada.

It can seem overwhelming figuring out where to start – but this is where an MSP can help. As many business systems will have inbuilt capabilities that enable you to stay on the right side of legislation, your provider can help you ensure you’ve got the right configurations in place, as well as taking care of any additional protection that you both agree are required.

Real-time threat monitoring

You may be familiar with the old idiom: prevention is better than cure. That’s certainly true when it comes to cyber security. It’s much better if you can evade threats than tackle them as they occur.

The bad news: the rate at which cyber threats are evolving requires a level of vigilance that is beyond the capacity of many in-house teams.

The good news: real-time threat monitoring gives you a round-the-clock view of risks that you just wouldn’t be able to achieve otherwise. It’s a modern approach to cyber security that taps into a variety of services – from your network monitoring to your endpoint protection – and increasingly leans into machine learning and AI to quickly recognise new types of threats.

Incident response

We’ve mainly been speaking here about prevention – but what if the worst-case scenario happens and you actually suffer a breach? In such a situation, speed is critical: you’ll need the threat contained, data secured and systems back up and running asap to avoid costly loss of service.

Managed cyber security providers can provide incident response services for dealing with such emergencies. As attacks can be spotted more quickly, remedial work can happen in those crucial early stages, meaning you can get back to business far more quickly than if they are given time to take root.

How to choose the right managed cyber security provider

As we discussed earlier, there are different types of partner you could choose for your managed cyber security. There are few things you should consider.

If you’re speaking to, or are already working with, an MSP, don’t assume that they will be responsible for your cyber security. An MSP is the best sort of partner for a broad level of support – and that may include some inbuilt security – but you should be clear from the outset that you’re looking for cyber security services to ensure that you get the level of protection you need.

If you’re considering working with an MSSP, then you can be assured of sophisticated support of the level demanded by larger businesses – but that will come at a premium. Furthermore, this type of provider specialises in cyber, but is unlikely to give you that holistic view of your business systems that an MSP can.

We’d also recommend that you ask the provider for information on its customer successes, its accreditations and the satisfaction of its customers. And be sure to get a sense of whether the provider is the right cultural fit for your organisation – this is likely to be a long-term relationship, where these experts are an extension of your team. It’s important that you have a good basis for open, collaborative working.

What Thinc can offer for your managed cyber security

At Thinc, we’ve worked with small and medium-sized enterprises for more than 30 years to help them achieve their goals with technology – so we understand the challenges they face. We’re here to make life easier for your people.

We can support you with a full complement of managed cyber security services, working with industry-leading solutions from CrowdStrike and SonicWall. We can also help you undertake and gain fundamental IT security benchmarks such as Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus.

If you’d like to discuss your cyber security needs, get in touch below.