6 Roles of Great Cloud Security Managed Services
Is your IT team over-burdened? Do they have no time to work on internal initiatives because they’re so busy putting out fires? Have you had to delay redesigning or refreshing your technology, just because they haven’t been available to help?
Cloud security managed services can help. With a cloud managed service, you get all the security support your IT department needs. Your IT team can work on everything else.
But what exactly does a cloud security managed service do for you? It actually depends. Cloud security managed services are frequently tailored to your needs. You tell them what you want them to do—and then they find the perfect way to orchestrate that for you.
Let’s take a look at the major roles of great cloud security managed services.
1. Futureproofing
Do you often feel as though your organization is constantly lagging behind the newest threat? Many companies do. New threats are released every single day. Most companies can’t keep up with them. After all, your company isn’t about IT security; it’s about doing business. Your organization can’t be constantly shoring up its IT infrastructure against new threats.
Or can it? Part of a managed cloud service is identifying and engaging with new potential threats and ensuring that your network is protected—before it becomes a significant problem. That includes continuously updating and patching your system, investigating new technologies and monitoring for potential threats as they are deployed.
2. Requisitions and Deployment
Organizations running old, on-premises, legacy systems are simply not going to find it possible to secure their networks in the modern era. But many companies feel like they just don’t have the time and people necessary to deploy new technology. It’s a disruptive assignment unless someone else can step in.
A managed service can spend all its time identifying the right software and hardware for your organization, including the cloud systems and the end-user devices that are most likely to be effective. When the time is right, these systems can be deployed as non-disruptively to your personnel as possible—and the process will be supported by the managed service provider’s IT team.
3. Backups
Backups are essential to the health of a modern organization. If your data is lost or overwritten, would you be able to re-deploy your data without disruption? A cloud security managed service takes on the role of not only managing, maintaining and monitoring your backups, but also deploying them when necessary and (most importantly) validating them.
Too often, companies go to restore their backups after an attack and discover that the backups just aren’t there or aren’t anywhere close to current. A cloud security service will ensure that the backups have been validated, so you never lose your data. Apart from that, the cloud is simply the best place for your backups to be.
4. Monitoring
Can you achieve 24/7 monitoring with your current team? Probably, but it’s expensive. You need to pay someone to monitor the network and you need a response team at the ready if an incident does occur. But your cloud security managed service will provide all the monitoring for you—so you don’t need to worry about it.
Just having someone else in the monitoring role can free up your company’s budget significantly. You don’t need to worry whether or not critical systems will go down; you have someone protecting and controlling your system. An MSP will be able to reduce the amount you spend on security while still providing better security options.
5. Help-Desk Ticketing
If you want, your cloud security MSP can also help you with your ticketing. Ticketing is a part of security. In fact, employees form the foundation of the greatest security risk. Whether it’s employees who are asking for additional permissions to files or employees who have lost their passwords, these tickets frequently need to be addressed by security professionals.
By offloading your help-desk ticketing, you can make sure your IT team stays on task. And you can even reduce your internal IT team and focus on other things.
6. IT Project Management
Do you have large security infrastructure shifts that you’re interested in? Do you want to be able to improve your security, but fear that you don’t have the employee hours? A security MSP can also help your organization through its project management skills. They can create an entire IT roadmap for your organization to improve upon and optimize its security solutions… while remaining as non-disruptive as possible.
And this ensures that you aren’t always putting off large IT projects. With the right IT management, you can rest assured that your system is kept up to security standards and that you aren’t missing anything or letting things fall through the cracks.
What is the Role of Cloud Security?
Cloud security providers can wear many hats. Some security services are almost entirely disengaged, simply monitoring your systems and networks and letting you know (and responding) to threats. Other security services work as intimate partners, ensuring that every aspect of your network is secured, including mobile device management.
What Are the Four Areas of Cloud Security?
Every company has its own methodology, but the four areas of cloud security are fairly clear: visibility, compute-based security, network protections and identity access. A security MSP will be able to improve all four of these pillars of security, to better ensure the security of your network, your end-user devices and your data.
Get the Security and Protection You Need with a Cloud MSP
In short, engaging with managed cloud security services gives you access to an entire team of specialized IT professionals—and frees up your team to do more in the same amount of time. A cloud MSP will be able to provide you with identity-as-a-service solutions, better management for backups and improved controls over your network and your devices. Even better, they’ll be able to provide these roles to your organization at a demonstrably lower price than engaging with individual employees.
Are you ready to find out more about what managed cloud security services can do for you? That’s great; it’s time. Contact Red River today to find out more about how cloud managed services can help your organization thrive.
