SC Magazine released the results of a research survey focused on the rising acceptance of SIEM-as-a-Service for the small and medium sized enterprise.

The survey, conducted in April 2016, found that SMEs and companies with $1 billion or more in revenue or 5,000-plus employees faced similar challenges:

• 64 percent of respondents agreed that they “lack the time to manage all the security activities.”
• 49 percent reported a lack of internal staff to address IT security challenges
• 48 percent said they lacked the IT security budget needed to meet those challenges

This come as no surprise to us. We’ve been seeing these trends rise over the past several years. Gartner reports that by 2019, total enterprise spending on security outsourcing services will be 75 percent of the spending on security software and hardware products, and that by 2020, 40 percent of all security technology acquisitions will be directly influenced by managed security service provider (MSSP) and on-premises security outsourcing providers, up from less than 15% today.

It used to be that firewalls and antivirus were sufficient enough stop gaps; but in today’s complex threatscape, the cyber criminals are more sophisticated. The weak point of any security approach is usually the unwitting victim of a phishing scam or the person who plugs in the infected USB; but “securing the human” requires the expertise of other humans, trained staff with the certification and expertise to monitor the network and analyze the anomalies. An already busy IT staff can become even more overburdened; identifying, training and keeping security expertise is hard. So is keeping up with the alerts that come in on a daily basis, and being current on the SIEM technology.

Thus, the increasing movement towards a co-managed SIEM which allows the enterprise to have access to the expertise and resources they need to run an effective security program without ceding control. SIEM-as-a-Service: saving time and money.