Maximizing Security: The Role of Managed IT Services in Cybersecurity

Aside from improving cybersecurity, managed services providers can help ensure compliance with industry regulations. For example, companies dealing with personal health information must follow HIPAA guidelines.

Data backup is another important aspect of business security. Regular backups protect against accidental deletion or hardware failure and reduce downtime caused by disaster.

Automation

Increasingly, companies realize that automation can free their employees to focus on more valuable tasks. This is why increasingly more businesses are turning to fully managed IT services like Managed IT Services Durham to get the most out of their technology.

Managed service providers can monitor and address issues remotely, preventing them from arising in the first place. In addition, they can save organizations money by implementing a fixed monthly subscription price that includes the cost of all managed services.

Basic or task automation involves using technology to digitize and perform manual, pre-defined, or repetitive work without human intervention. This includes everything from a household thermostat controlling a boiler to a complex industrial control system involving thousands of input measurements and output control signals.

Detection and Response

Your network is constantly up and running at peak performance in a perfect world. But in reality, your system is susceptible to cyber-attacks and requires constant maintenance and monitoring.

Threats range from opportunistic ransomware that can compromise a device and access sensitive data to highly sophisticated attacks that hide within your infrastructure. Attacks can result in reputational, financial, and operational damage.

A 24/7 security operations center (SOC) is essential to minimize attackers’ dwell time on your systems and reduce the risk of a data breach or other costly incident. However, building an in-house team with the competence, skills, and infrastructure to maintain this capability is a significant investment. Managed detection and response services offer a cost-effective alternative. These solutions provide resource augmentation, continuous coverage, and expert guidance to enable a faster mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR). This includes threat hunting, forensics, incident response, and guided remediation.

Monitoring

The goal of cybersecurity monitoring is to identify and prevent unauthorized activity by using a variety of security tools. This includes analyzing logs to detect potential threats and incidents. It also involves alerting internal teams or a managed security service provider to a threat so it can be investigated and resolved.

Monitoring reduces both mean time to detection (MTTD) and mean time to response (MTTR), thereby reducing the damage caused by data breaches or other types of cyber attacks. It also helps minimize downtime and disruption to operations.

In a world of ever-evolving cyber threats, it can be challenging to promote comprehensive security capabilities when working with limited budgets. Fortunately, there are practical steps that organizations can take to optimize their security posture over time without sacrificing budget constraints. Examples include investing in employee education and utilizing multi-factor authentication tools.

Network Security

A network’s security controls and tools help ensure data and objects’ confidentiality, integrity, and availability. It also prevents unauthorized access and attacks by controlling physical and technical levels of accessibility. This includes limiting access through Active Directory groups, database and server folder restrictions, device controls, access credentials, and more.

Cyberattacks aren’t just about stealing data from your company; they can throw a digital wrench into operations, causing delays and eroding customer confidence. Protecting your internal infrastructure against such disruptions is essential for business growth and success.

Maximizing security doesn’t have to break the bank, even for small businesses. Creative approaches like utilizing multi-factor authentication, implementing a holistic security assessment, and using open-source software and free tools can help organizations optimize their cybersecurity posture over time without sacrificing budgets.

Data Backup

As organizations continue to generate massive amounts of data, putting effective systems in place for backup and recovery is critical. These systems are necessary for any issues that result in data loss.

Whether the cause is hardware failure, a natural disaster like a hurricane, or a human-caused issue such as a ransomware attack, backup copies allow an organization to restore data from earlier. Backups are often made to multiple media, such as a physical USB stick, disk storage system, or cloud storage container. Best practices suggest a “3-2-1” rule where at least three backup copies are stored in different media, and one copy is offsite or in the cloud.

Working with a managed service provider is an excellent way to help organizations maximize security posture and counter threats without breaking the bank. The right solution will provide scalable solutions tailored to each client’s needs and fit within budgetary constraints.