Hosted Security
IT Manager’s Guide
Hosted security, such as MessageLabs (now Symantec Hosted Services),
provides companies with protection against email, web and IM malware,
plus spam and content filtering, email archiving and continuity.
Rather than use on-site servers and software, hosted security is ‘software
as a service’ delivered over the Internet from a service provider’s data
centres. Advantages of hosted security include increased protection, lower
total cost with simplified administration, service level agreements and
complimentary 24/7 support.
Budgets. Growing companies don’t have unlimited
budgets for IT security. In-house security solutions can require significant upfront investment and have unpredictable ongoing costs. Moreover, they require in-house expertise to keep up to date. This one-two punch of capital expense and running costs can significantly increase the total cost of running comprehensive security.
Common
Security
Concerns
Unlimited threats. Criminals and
hackers don’t take pity on the unprepared, the poorly protected, the ignorant or the too busy. In fact, smaller businesses suffer disproportionately. According to the government’s 2008 Information Security Breaches Survey, 72 percent of British companies with 50-500 staff suffered an average of 15 incidents a year2.
Bandwidth. Your internet connection is for
business, not for spam, malware and time-wasters. But if 90.4 percent of all emails are unwanted and one in 317 contains a virus1, criminals are hijacking your
bandwidth and your server capacity.
Employee time and skills. Besides budget,
Symantec research identified two other significant barriers to proper security: employee skills (41 percent) and time (28 percent). How many small or medium-sized companies can afford a full-time security expert or the time to keep perishable IT skills current, let alone maintain a rack-full of security hardware in-house?
Hardware. In-house systems such as
anti-malware scanners, content control filters and email archives run on hardware that needs regular maintenance. And if you want high availability, you need two of everything. Worse still: every few years it all needs replacing at additional expense.
Protection. Symantec research shows
that the vast majority of small and medium-sized companies are concerned about viruses (79 percent), protecting their critical data (97 percent) and ensuring they have a backup (95 percent) and disaster recovery plan (94 percent) in place. It can be difficult to provide the protection, continuity and reassurance that the company needs when relying purely on in-house solutions and expertise.
1MessageLabs Intelligence as of 15 June 2009 2Security Breaches Survey: www.security-survey.gov.uk
Why Hosted Security?
24/7 support.
• Hosted security services typically offer robust service level agreements around availability and performance. In addition, hosted services are usually backed by 24/7 telephone and email support.
No hardware.
• Because hosted security is delivered over the internet, there is no hardware to buy, manage and update. You get a malware-free, spam-filtered connection to email, instant messaging and websites.
Minimal maintenance.
• A hosted security provider will take care of updating your protection and managing the hardware that does it in their own data centres. Hosted security services are mostly ‘set and forget’, freeing up your time to focus on other IT projects.
Accurate protection.
• The companies offering hosted security focus on protecting their customers and see billions of website requests and emails every day. This means that they are able to stay ahead of current threats. The very nature of hosted security means that customers don’t need to update it with anti-virus signatures or version updates – it stays up to date automatically.
Predictable costs.
• You pay a fixed fee per user per year. That’s it. No hardware to upgrade. No extra licences to buy. No need to buy extra kit ‘just in case’. Just a single, predictable cost.
More bandwidth.
• Hosted security removes malware and filters spam and web traffic before it reaches your company. This means that your internet connection doesn’t have to carry all that dross. Your internet connection will be faster and more responsive as a result.
In-house Security Hosted Security
Capital costs for hardware: archiving storage, continuity, security & URL filtering
£ Included
Provision for hardware
refresh £ Included
Power, cooling and space
for servers £ Included
Software licensing costs: anti-malware, archiving, continuity etc. £ Included 24/7 support £ Included Managing updates, patches £ Included
Security expertise £ Included
Total Cost £ £
Cost per user = Total cost /
number of users
= per-user fee
How Symantec Hosted Services works
Traffic routed through MessageLabs data centres •
MessageLabs detects threats and applies policy •
Clean traffic delivered to customer •
Web portal for admin and reporting •
Symantec Hosted Services:
Symantec Hosted Services replace a patchwork of point solutions for email and web anti-malware, content filtering, email continuity and archiving with a unified, coherent and easy-to manage service.
Expertise.
• MessageLabs is now part of Symantec, one of the world’s largest software companies. With 17,500 employees 3, Symantec is dedicated to
helping customers secure and manage their data. Our proprietary Skeptic™ technology has been in development since 1999 and we have some 19 patents granted or pending.
Accuracy.
• As part of Symantec, MessageLabs puts the highest priority on accurate protection from malware including viruses, spyware and targeted trojans. Thanks to its proprietary and patent-protected Skeptic technology, Symantec Hosted Services offers a 100 percent service level agreement against known and unknown email viruses.
Customer support.
• Our services are backed by 24/7 telephone and email support as well as online support through our ClientNet management portal. At MessageLabs we recognise the special requirements of hosted services and have built the whole organisation to deliver the best user experience.
Simple set-up.
• It’s easy to deploy Symantec Hosted Services. Our technical support experts help at every step. It’s usually a case of changing MX records and integrating with your Active Directory service or uploading a list of users. You can set up and fine-tune filters and policy settings using the ClientNet portal. We even offer a free trial so that you can see how easy it is to set up the services and also to give you an insight into the risks we will help you avoid.
3http://www.symantec.com/about/profile/index.jsp 4The Accuracy Project, December 2008
Sign up for a free trial: www.messagelabs.co.uk/pugh
For more information about Symantec hosted services: www.pugh.co.uk/hosted-security
Speak to a product specialist: call +44 (0) 800 917 7733 Email your questions and comments to [email protected]
Web Security Whitepapers – in-depth articles about our key technologies, legal issues and other hot topics:
www.messagelabs.co.uk/resources
MessageLabs Intelligence – stay one step ahead of the game and subscribe to our free monthly intelligence report:
www.messagelabs.co.uk/intelligence
Webinars - Free on-line events covering the latest security issues. www.messagelabs.co.uk/resources/events