Outsourcing IT security

Data security is becoming ever more complex. SMEs can outsource their security issues to experts who can come up with solutions to suit their budget.

Advancing technology is a double-edged sword. On the one hand you have more sophisticated tools for doing business and you can operate globally with relative ease. On the flip side, you have the cream of the world’s cyber criminals circling your doorstop looking for opportunities to do what they do best and that's not good news for you or your customers. The security issues faced by SMEs are changing and even if you think you're immune from most of them, circumstances may conspire to determine otherwise.

While a good spam filter and some antivirus software might have sufficed as a security solution a few years ago, this is no longer the case. The threats your business is likely to face in future are morphing from noisy nuisance viruses which, like drunken revellers, make their presence immediately known, to thieves operating with stealth, their aim being to get in under your defences, snag their prey and leave without triggering an alarm. There is money to be made in stolen data and the price your business will pay for not adequately protecting it can be very high.

Security is a complex issue for SMEs. Stephen Sims, head of marketing at Brennan IT, an IT and telecommunications solutions provider suggests, "In the SME market, many businesses are at significant risk because they don’t have the funds that enterprise players have and they're taking it for granted that some of their providers are managing their security for them without actually confirming that they are." Another concern Sims has is in the solutions being used. "Price and convenience tempt some SMEs into using consumer-type products in the belief they'll be okay for them. At the lower end maybe they will be, but at the top end they’re not robust enough to support multiple users and the high levels of security that some of those players want," he explains.

Protection Services

What concerns James Turner, adviser at Intelligent Business Research Services, is the expectation that SMEs have the knowledge to manage something as complex as security within their organisation. "The vast majority of business people aren’t technology specialists and most IT people aren't security experts. So it’s spectacularly unreasonable to expect them to put their security hat on for half an hour every week and make sure everything is running well. They simply can't do it with any degree of effectiveness." His suggested solution is for SMEs to identify all the low value tasks that are highly “commodified”, such as email filtering, and outsource them. "There are plenty of organisations that will let you redirect your web data through their servers, and they’ll clean out the spam and ensure you don’t get viruses coming through your email systems. It's something that really should be done externally."

If an organisation has a justifiable preference for keeping some level of control, such as the need to enforce its own security procedures, there are vendors that will supply a hardware box which can be remotely managed and which will perform the same filtering process. The benefit of a hosted solution however, is that someone else takes care of the setup and ongoing maintenance. Using a virtual private network, an SME's internet data can be routed through the filtering company’s servers and the SME’s own network can operate securely behind that protective layer. Some providers offer this level of protection for networks located in physical offices and others offer solutions that extend to mobile users allowing them to connect securely to the corporate network bypassing the internet. Some solutions on offer have coverage within Australia and New Zealand and others extend into South East Asia to cover businesses with presences there.