Beating the Cybersecurity Staffing Shortage:
3 Advantages to Using a MSSP

By Steve Cobb, CISO, One Source

The talent gap in the cybersecurity industry has been an issue long before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the mad rush to enable remote workers has put even more strain on cybersecurity professionals who were already stretched thin. As organizations transitioned to remote working many cybersecurity professionals found themselves being assigned IT support tasks in addition to their security duties. According to a recent survey conducted by ISSA, 70% of organizations are impacted by the worker shortage and, since the onset of the pandemic, professionals have seen a 63% increase in cyberattacks.

The combination of the staffing shortage and the massive impact security has on an organization and its customers has made cybersecurity professionals hot commodities in recent years. The average salary is around $90,000, higher if the professional holds security certifications. Additionally, new hires require extensive training in pricey security tools. The time and the money required to successful integrate a cybersecurity professional as a part of your staff requires resources many organizations cannot afford. An alternative to hiring a security professional is to outsource the position to a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). MSSP’s employ highly qualified and skilled security talent who can manage and protect an organizations data without the massive expenditure of onboarding a cybersecurity professional internally.

Below are 3 ways a MSSP can solve for the cybersecurity staffing shortage:

1. No turnover — Finding, recruiting, hiring and training a cybersecurity professional is time consuming and expensive. These professionals can command incredible salaries and often implement extravagant security tools that require extensive training to utilize successfully. Due to the high demand of these professionals, they are constantly being recruited and can leave your organization high and dry for a better offer leading to a massive loss investment for an organization. Outsourcing to a MSSP, who already has access to top of the line security tools and employs staff that know how to use them, saves time and money. Because an MSSP will not leave you for a “better offer”, their solutions are easily scalable to grow with your organizations needs.
2. Up-to-date intelligence — Threats evolve quickly and the capabilities to protect and defend fall behind even quicker. The landscape is constantly changing, and best practices and technologies are continually revamped to address new threats. Internal IT teams can struggle to keep pace, not because of a lack of knowledge, but because their time is stretched between several projects and training staff in new technologies and set ups. Outsourcing security to a MSSP frees up bandwidth for an organizations internal IT team so they can focus on other projects instead monitoring for security alerts. MSSP’s work proactively and can even address threats before a client knows it is happening. This leads to an MSSP becoming a competitive advantage for organizations, who can tote to their customers that their data is being protected with the most up-to-date technologies and practices.
3. Diverse expertise equals greater protection — A MSSP can cover all the security bases for a company: firewalls, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention solutions, security event and incident management, managed vulnerability and identity management solutions, and first-level incident response. It can be difficult with the severe talent shortage and with limited resources to find a professional that can secure each vulnerable area in your organization. Additionally, the complexity in toolsets becomes an issue for organizations handling security internally. There can be several tools for each threat vector. If an organization finds a cybersecurity professional to hire, they then need to train that person in separate technologies which takes time. By the time the person is trained in all the toolsets, the threats could have all changed or toolsets might not be compatible with one another. This creates a complexity that becomes a problem for IT teams. A MSSP employs professionals who are experts in each core security area, allowing an organization to be protected in all aspects of their environment with access to essentially an “on-demand” security team. Moreover, many MSSP’s bring top tier security tools as part of their service offering. This gives customers the ability to utilize best of breed tools without having to worry about buying, maintaining, and supporting them.

In conclusion, an MSSP can help an organization overcome the cybersecurity staffing shortage by enabling internal IT teams to have more bandwidth to support remote workers, increasing efficiency and protecting client and customer data with superior resources. Organizations can save time and money while revolutionizing their security practices and strategies.