Question

Assume that senior management in your organization has put in charge of assessing whether or not to outsource the Incident Response Team (IRT) and the Security Operations Center?

What criteria will you use to guide management in this essential decision to ensure that risk is kept at an acceptable level? Justify your answer

Answer 1

The following criteria can be used to guide management in this decision:

Time-consuming:

Managing IRT and the Security Operations center is a very time-consuming task. Many businesses lack time due to other tasks at hand. Outsourcing these services to a Third-party can help save a lot of time as well as money. Many third-party centers offer 24/7 monitoring, and hence organization doesn't need to be worried about it. They provide data logs, reports, etc. to be presented before management. This provides accountability too.

Staff selection:

In many organizations to build up a full IR team and SOC, new staff needs to be hired. This is time-consuming as well as expensive. Outsourcing solves this problem too. With outsourcing, hiring cost and hence training cost is reduced. Outsourcing from a genuine source ensures that data is being managed by experts. Outsourcing SOC and IRT benefits an organization with a dedicated staff of cybersecurity specialists who have extensive experience in monitoring.

Purchasing new tools:

Outsourcing removes the need for purchasing new tools. Outsourcing services implies that all tools will be ready to go and in place as soon as the contract is signed. The outsourcing team works with the management to customize or tailor the tools as per business needs. Outsourcing companies keep robust tech tools in place. These tools help in analyzing the incidents, aggregate, analyze, correlate data, and analyze response processes.

Cost:

This is another of the most important benefit of Outsourcing. With outsourcing, the organization doesn't have to pay salaries to full-time employees with other benefits. The organization only needs to pay a contract fee to the outsourcing company. In-house Incident Response Team also requires insurance which is eliminated when the services are outsourced. The companies offering outsourcing services are licensed and insured.

Rate of failure:

The rate of failure is likely to reduce with outsourcing. The outsourcing companies guarantee a specific success rate. They are wired to immediately respond to the incidents or mitigate threats. If a failure occurs, they may owe the organization some money. Outsourcing companies also rely largely on customer's reviews to keep their business going. This also means that they do their best to offer top-notch services.