Telcos are changing the face of cyber security

The UAE is a target of some five per cent of global cyber attacks.

In this day and age, a cyber-attack can disrupt business operations, result in fiscal losses, create loss of customer confidence and do lasting damage to a brand.

As the landscape is constantly evolving and encompassing more digital aspects, we as businesses have to evolve with it. Progressive governments and enterprise entities have to approach the threat of cyber-attacks with a 'when it happens' attitude, as opposed to an 'if it happens' one. With the UAE a target of some five per cent of global cyber-attacks, cyber security is no longer an afterthought incumbent on the IT department or person within an organisation - it is something that should be imperative to the entire business itself.

The role of telecoms in providing cyber security solutions is increasingly being recognised, and we are seeing the expansive rollout of managed services with the dual role of improving network security posture and lowering security costs.

Consider the growth of smartphones and the Internet of Things - which has the potential to include all the 'things' around us, including our cars, our medical devices and our wearables - and you come to the realisation that even when you're not online, all your personal information is, and it's vulnerable.

According to IDC, the international market intelligence company, the IoT market will be valued at $7.2 trillion dollars by 2025, with 34 billion connected devices by 2020.

While there are many positive outcomes from this growth, it also opens many doors for hackers and other cyber criminals to penetrate a myriad of connected devices and steal or modify data.

Larger UAE enterprises and government entities have for some time invested heavily into solutions such as vulnerability management systems, intrusion protection software and IT applications that will monitor for unsanctioned data leakage across the company firewalls. Despite these investments, IT security teams in a good many organisations actually only become aware of a specific security vulnerability once the consequences of the breach become visible.

So, although business is investing ever-increasing amounts of time and money on information security operations, organisations find they can be ineffective in the fight against cyber threats.

Historically, the answer to these issues has always been 'block and protect' - which is designed to keep hackers out completely. However, now is the time to consider comprehensive solutions. As a means of developing a more proactive stance towards cyber threats, contracting with a managed security services provider is proving popular. As an alternative to the in-house DIY operations of the information security team, a managed security service provider offers several hard and soft business benefits.

The costs involved in on premise self-administered security do not scale with the size of the organisation - SMEs pay significantly more for IT security per employee than their enterprise counterparts: hence the popularity of managed security solutions in the SME segment.

Experts agree that provision of a 24-hour managed service improves network security posture and lowers security costs. It is worth exploring the costs of running a traditional set-up, where information security is monitored and managed on premise by an organisation's own IT security staffs, and comparing this with the innovative managed security solution model of an external specialist service provider.

As such, telcos bring a holistic approach to security, as it is already embedded in the company culture, and it has become a part of everybody's business. Now telcos must take the lead in the space by diversifying even further to build cyber security into products themselves, so that it becomes an imperative to connectivity for every business, no matter its size.

The writer is vice-president of security operations at du. Views expressed are his own and do not reflect the newspaper's policy.