What is Security as a Service (SECaaS)

Security as a Service is a unique field that is rapidly growing and in unlimited patterns. Regardless of your organization’s size or complexity, a solid cybersecurity infrastructure is key to protecting your network and data.

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But common problems also prevail, such as a constant alert priority for IT staff to monitor or manage potential threats, messy information that is difficult to collect, and lack of time, tools, or resources to effectively protect your organization.

To alleviate these burdens, Security as a Service (SECaaS) vendors emerged as cloud-based security as a service that can collect, analyze, and correlate your information from various systems and applications, transforming legacy headaches into actionable information security intelligence.

What is Security as a Service (SECaaS)?

Security as a Service (SECaaS) is a cloud-based model for outsourcing cybersecurity services. SECaaS, like Software as a Service, is a subscription-based security service hosted by cloud providers.

For enterprise infrastructures, Security as a Service solutions have increased in popularity as a way to simplify the roles of the in-house security team; scale security needs as the company expands, and avoid the costs and maintenance of on-premises alternatives.

What Are the Benefits of Security as a Service?

Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) recognize the importance of keeping on top of security issues. Still, IT teams may not have the time or the appropriate resources to keep up with all the changes. When it comes to the maintenance of IT infrastructure, nothing is more important than good security.

See Also: Best Practices for Cloud Security

Today, thanks to the cloud, it is possible for all types of businesses, organizations, and individuals to benefit from remote security services. The cloud can also be used to protect IT infrastructures in a variety of ways. For a number of purposes, hiring a company to provide protection as a service has many benefits.

• Financial Savings: One of the most significant benefits of the Security as a Service model is that it saves money for the business. A service delivered over the cloud usually consists of subscription tiers with various upgrade options. That’s why a company only pays for the features and capacity they need when they need it. Cloud-based security also eliminates the need for expertise.
• The Latest Security Tools and Updates: When you implement SECaaS, you start working with the latest security tools and resources. For anti-virus and other security tools to be effective, they must be kept up to date with the latest patches and virus definitions. When you implement cloud-based security across your organization, these updates are managed for you on every server, computer, and mobile device.
• Expertise: When people use security as a service, they reach the best security professionals. These professionals use the best security tools available. The thing that makes using cloud security as a service so attractive has professional service—accessing the latest technology may or may not be possible for most companies.
• Scalable Infrastructure: Cloud security as a service provides faster scalability. Everything happens on-demand, which means businesses can grow or shrink their cloud security provision depending on their needs and requirements. Companies should have as much control over scalability as possible. Scalability is much easier to achieve when using security as a service.
• Faster Procurement and Greater Agility: One of the best things about solutions as a service is that your users can be given instant access to these tools. Security as a Service (SECaaS) solutions can be scaled or downscaled as needed and delivered on-demand where and when you need it. Since everything is managed for you by your cloud-based security services (SECaaS) provider and is visible to you via a web-enabled dashboard, there will be no uncertainty when it comes to deployment or updates.
• Free Resources: When security provisions are managed externally, your IT teams can focus on your organization’s matters. Security as a Service (SECaaS) frees resources. It gives you complete visibility through management dashboards and gives you the confidence that your IT security is competently managed by a team of outsourced security experts. You can choose and manage all policy and system changes via a web interface. This way, your IT teams take control of their security processes.
• Security Insights: If your IT team is responsible for corporate security, it needs information to make informed decisions. Cloud-based security services (SECaaS) software provides this information. The software also highlights areas of vulnerability. For example, it has definitions for updating or removing endpoints with outdated applications.
• Reduced Complexity: Security as a Service simplifies the relationship between internal IT and security teams and secures the environment. Neither internal IT nor security analyst staff are responsible for installing, configuration, maintenance, patching, updating, and managing security solutions and the underlying infrastructure. Reduced complexity allows internal teams to focus solely on more strategic business initiatives.
• Automation Usage: Depending on the security solutions used and the existing integration, most Security as a Service offerings leverage automation to address as many aspects of the services provided as possible. Automation helps security analysts and internal teams focus on other strategic initiatives while responding faster and more accurately to cyberattacks and emerging threats, from detecting vulnerabilities and threats to alerting and reporting to remediation.

What Are Examples of Cloud-Based Security (SECaaS) Services?

The range of Cloud-based security (SECaaS) services currently available is vast and offers the most detailed protection level. Some examples include:

• Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Data loss, when it occurs, can cause significant disruptions to businesses and organizations of all sizes. Data loss prevention often involves installing software and creating an agreed set of rules to protect data and prevent potential problems from arising. Furthermore, data protection will be continuously monitored, checked, and secured.
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BC/DR): Cloud-based BC / DR leverages the cloud’s flexibility to minimize cost and maximize benefits.
• E-mail Security: Large amounts of data are coming in and out of your business through cloud-based e-mail servers. With a focus on e-mail security, SECaaS providers can protect you from threats and risks that are an essential part of the e-mail, such as malicious advertising, targeted attacks, phishing, and data breaches.
• Antivirus Management: Laptops, mobile phones, servers, and other computing devices used by your business are collectively called endpoints. They are often the target of cyberattacks because they harbor many weak spots that a criminal can exploit. This reality makes endpoint security software a must, and Anti-virus use is the most common form of endpoint protection. Robust SECaaS security extends beyond anti-virus to services such as endpoint detection and response (EDR).
• Spam Filtering: Spam can be taken under control by creating corporate-level acceptable usage policies.
• Identity and Access Management (IAM): Cloud access security agents (CASB) with on-premises or cloud-based software located between cloud service users and cloud applications monitor all activities and enforce security policies.
• Intrusion Protection: Cloud environments pose a particular challenge in using intrusion detection techniques, so relying on experts’ knowledge is vital. Technology that identifies and recognizes patterns is essential to the intrusion detection process. There is a clear risk of intrusion for many businesses these days. Therefore, steps must be taken to prevent unauthorized access.  When unusual events occur, security as a service provider will detect them immediately, using the right tools and technology.
• Security Assessment: Auditing cloud services can highlight potential security flaws that can be addressed later. As a service delivery model, security can use tools that monitor and execute security assessments. This provides invaluable information for your company and provides long-term security benefits.
• Network Security: Network security offers a wide range of services to satisfy each client’s unique network requirements. Security as a service ensures that these unique needs are met appropriately. When using cloud technology, network security can be provided by physical and virtual devices. Cloud-based network security applications allow your organization to track traffic entering and exiting its servers and to identify and prevent threats before they occur. You may already be using a hardware-based firewall. Still, because of the infinite variety of threats spreading to the internet today, it’s a good idea to have multiple layers of security.
• Security Information and Event Management (SIEM): Within the scope of Security as a Service (SecaaS), SIEM collects log, event, and flow information from devices, performs information security analysis and correlation, and supports incident response activities. Providing flexible, real-time access to SIEM information allows the party to use the SIEM service to identify threats acting against their environment, clouds, or others. This definition then allows appropriate action and intervention to be taken to protect or reduce the threat.
• Web Security: By redirecting traffic to a cloud provider, software and devices can be set up in the cloud to provide an extra layer of web security protection.
• Vulnerability Scanning: Beyond protecting your data and infrastructure when using cloud-based applications, you also need to protect the applications and digital property you own and manage, such as your website. Traditional endpoint and firewall security will leave you vulnerable to attacks and breaches in this area as well. This type of tools and services are usually intended to find and fix bugs in your websites, web apps, or internal portals and intranets.
• Encryption: Clients do not want their personal data or information to be breached in any way, so encryption is used to secure it. Cloud encryption as a service will ensure that all relevant information and messages are properly encrypted.
• Cloud Access Security Broker: Cloud access security brokers (CASBs) are integrated packages of the cloud-based security services (SECaaS) world. CASB vendors typically offer a range of services designed to help your company protect its cloud infrastructure and data no matter what. CASBs are software that enforces security, enforcement, and governance policies for cloud applications and are hosted on-premises or in the cloud between cloud service users and cloud service providers. These tools monitor all a company’s cloud applications and act as security for them.
• Single Sign-On: Single sign-on (SSO) services allow users to access all corporate cloud applications with single sign-on credentials. SSO also provides IT and network administrators with a better ability to monitor access and accounts.
• Security Analysis: Security professionals audit your organization’s security status against industry standards to identify weaknesses, misconfigurations, and risks.
• Incident Response: When threats are detected, security analysts can use automation or connect with internal teams to respond to and remediate incidents.
• Compliance: Network configurations, policies, and procedures are monitored and reviewed to ensure compliance with data security standards within specific compliance regulations.

How to Choose Security as a Service Provider?

Cloud-based security services are an evolving field, and no single vendor is covering all IT security areas. Some excel at IDaaS, others at endpoint security. To get a comprehensive SECaaS solution, you need to identify your company’s IT security needs and then add the appropriate security software to your SECaaS package. In doing so, make sure your SECaaS choices support interoperability between different software.

See Also: Cloud Security Checklist

Transferring the security of your most critical and sensitive business assets is a significant undertaking. Choosing cloud-based security (SECaaS) provider requires careful consideration and analysis. Some of the essential points to consider when selecting a provider are:

• Availability – Your network and SECaaS provider must also be available 24 hours a day. Review the vendor’s SLA to ensure they can provide the uptime your business needs and know-how outages are handled.
• Fast Response Times – Fast response times are as important as availability. Search for providers that offer guaranteed response times for incidents, queries, and system updates.
• Disaster Recovery Planning – Your provider should work closely with you to understand your infrastructure’s vulnerabilities and the external threats most likely to cause the most damage. From vandalism to weather disasters, your provider must ensure your business can recover quickly from these catastrophic events.
• Vendor Partnerships – A SECaaS provider is always as good as vendors that have partnered. Look for providers who work with best-in-class security solution vendors and also have the expertise to support these solutions.
• Expertise – See the expertise your cloud-based security service brings to the table. Are you just using a service or a service that people contribute to?
• Security – The security of application program interfaces (APIs) that connect data and applications in the cloud is also critical.
• Pricing – According to volume-based cloud service pricing programs, companies may not know their actual volumes, so high costs are likely to be encountered.
• Cloud Service Agreements – Review cloud service agreements (CSAs) and know what you want from the relationship to ensure you get the value you need from the service.

The approach you select will most likely be influenced by the size of your IT environment and the applications you currently use. Using security as a service can be a cost-effective and practical solution to monitor your network and information as your organization’s needs change.

Managed services like SECaaS can empower your defenses, improve your bottom line to save money, increase efficiency, and protect your infrastructure from the latest security threats, bringing great value to your organization.

Why Do You Need Security as a Service?

From small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the largest multinational companies, the use of cloud computing infrastructure and services is growing exponentially. Businesses need enterprise-grade, cloud-based security for public, private, and hybrid cloud migrations and assets. However, while cloud technology and applications are critical to today’s businesses, it poses a unique set of cybersecurity challenges.

See Also: What are the Security Impacts of Public Cloud?

See Also: What are the Security Impacts of Private Cloud?

Security as a service is a solution. This trust vote in the cloud may be partly due to the Security Service (SECaaS) trust because cloud-based security solutions (SECaaS) are being considered in many cloud migrations.

Not all businesses are ready to move everything to a cloud or Enterprise as a Service (EaaS), but cloud assets still need enterprise-level, cloud-based security.

The widespread popularity of cloud computing has led to cloud security platforms and providers known as security-as-a-service or SECaaS. On the one hand, SECaaS solutions that increase the intelligence of IT staff and enable analysts and engineers to be more productive, on the other hand, reach the maturity to replace human analysts and engineers.

As more and more companies discover, SECaaS services are precious, if not critical. Because many organizations have plunged into cloud computing without sufficient information and resources to ensure their security, they relied on vendors to take care of everything behind the scenes. Still, they did not consider the consequences of an entire cloud infrastructure with a dozen or more applications sharing data and credentials.

Protecting corporate data and systems is very complex and challenging while all your applications, storage, and infrastructure are running on remote servers hosted over the web.

Because the following dangers are substantial in the cloud environment:

• Data loss
• Compliance with the legislation
• Compromised credentials
• DoS and DDoS attacks
• Hacked APIs
• Advanced persistent threats (APTs)
• Compromised accounts or traffic
• Without consuming your own IT resources or paying an unreasonable amount for a serv

er-based solution, the right SECaaS provider will help you solve these and other vulnerabilities. Most will integrate their services with your current infrastructure, and some will also run in hybrid environments if you combine cloud and on-premises resources.

Best Practices When Using SECaaS

The ability to control your IT environment is crucial to effective SECaaS implementation and security. Below you can find best practices for ensuring the integrity and resilience of your IT systems.

• Frequent evaluations – When you first implement a SECaaS solution, it is natural to assess to strengthen your organization’s security. However, evaluations should be made regularly and continuously. An outdated application creates a security vulnerability. Cybercriminals can discover a vulnerability before an application releases a fix. A SECaaS solution can automatically perform these evaluations and provide recommendations. It can also offer threat intelligence solutions to learn about new threats quickly and assess whether your IT systems are at risk.
• Data policies – Data protection is an essential component of SECaaS solutions. Part of this includes determining your data policies. Do you need to make data backups daily or more often? Where do you keep the copies? Who can access this data? Is the data encrypted? What is your data retention policy? Identify a data strategy with your SECaaS partner to ensure your sensitive information is protected and quickly recovered from an attack.
• Security policies – Part of setting up a SECaaS solution includes defining security policies for accessing and using your organization’s IT assets and resources. Security policies are not something you set and forget once. Security policies should be updated over time. Integrating the SeCaaS solution into your systems may require changes to strengthen existing policies, or you may find that some policies hinder business productivity and require adjustments. SECaaS software should provide flexibility in your security policies.
• Identity and access management – Who can use your IT systems? What level of access do they gain to sensitive systems and data? Address identity and access management (IAM) issues as part of your SECaaS platform. IDaaS, a subset of IAM, solves users’ unique challenges who need access to different software and manage various passwords for each. As part of a complete SECaaS solution, the best identity management software helps solve IAM needs.
• Disaster recovery – A plan for recovery from an attack or other IT disaster is essential. Sooner or later, you run into a problem that causes a massive disruption to your IT systems. SECaaS solutions must include a disaster recovery component. Disaster recovery provides data backups, storage, and the ability to return the software to the state before the disaster.
• Reporting and alerts – Reporting is essential for any software platform, and SECaaS is no exception. Some of the reports provided by SECaaS solutions include at-a-glance viewing of your current security posture and analysis of system vulnerabilities. Alerting is also crucial for your security. You need to know about a potential attack in real-time, and alerts provide that awareness.

Security as a Service can help businesses of all sizes have a comprehensive IT security solution at a fixed price. It simplifies the complex and rapidly changing world of IT security.

Helps reduce the workload of the organization’s IT department and prepare the organization for security compliance audits. It will help provide better visibility of security efforts within an organization and increase employee productivity by maximizing computer uptime.