White Paper: Cloud Security Services

At the end of 2019 TNC looked back and analysed some of its customers buying trends over the past year. Alongside increased adoption of SD-WAN, UCaaS, and CCaaS, one of the other very interesting trends is an increased adoption of cloud security services, either as point solution to enforce security, compliance, and governance policies for cloud applications, or as full cloud security stacks.

In this white paper TNC explores what a Cloud Security Service is, how it fits in today, and what is changing to make it become even more relevant in the future. 

As both applications and users become more mobile, managing the security of end points, networks and data is becoming increasingly complex, whilst the range of solutions available in the market is broad, and the skills in the market are relatively sparse.

The challenge many organisations experience is that traditional on-premise solutions only addresses a subset of an organisation’s security requirements, and therefore a combination of solutions is required to provide a secure environment.

On one hand, customers may be hesitant to consider elevating all security-related services to the cloud because of the sensitivity, risk, and potential liability associated with security and data breaches. However, as many organisations have already started moving data to the cloud, some form of cloud security must be implemented to secure the transmission, storage and access to that data.

Cloud Security solutions generally offer an “out of the box”, subscription-based security service which can be tailored and scaled to an organisation’s individual needs. Capabilities include end point security, secure internet gateways, NGFW, IPS/IDS, CASB, and Advanced Threat Protection, many of which can be sourced and managed through a single intuitive platform.

This presents an attractive proposition for many organisations as it aligns well to the “cloud first” IT strategy - it’s very agile, it can in some cases be more cost effective, and it frees up expensive resources to focus on proactive prevention. 

There are three main areas to analyse when considering a cloud security service;

1.  Solution Capabilities

• Does the solution provide equivalent or improved controls over and above your on-prem solutions?
• Does the solution meet all your technical, regulatory and compliance requirements?
• Does the solution support a range of APIs?
• Does the solution support “out of the box” integration with your cloud providers?
• Will the solution fully interoperate with any existing security controls or security management tools?
• Does the solution provide a pre-defined on-prem to cloud migration process?

• Does the solution provider have experience in your industry?
• Does the solution provider have security experts from which you can learn?
• Does the solution provider offer any complementary services such as PS, managed services, monitoring etc.?

3.  Commercials

• Is the solution provided as a subscription-based service?
• What level of flexibility will the contract have to flex up and down?
• Will the solution enable costs savings? 

Based on our own trend analysis and industry market research, TNC expects the uptake of cloud security services will continue to steadily increase over the coming year. However, TNC believes a new approach which closely combines cloud security capabilities with inherent security controls built in to SD-WAN will inject further interest into the market. This new approach, known as SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), will enable organisations to augment and control network access and data security between users and data whether they are on-net or off-net, enterprise hosted or residing in the cloud.

TNC is already seeing some of the well-known cloud security providers marketing their SASE capabilities. Although this feels a little premature, it is likely to shake up the market and potentially open up other opportunities outside of their natural marketplace.

It is unclear how SASE will mature over the next year or so, but one thing that is for sure is that we will be watching and analysing the market and keeping our customers informed and enlightened whenever and wherever possible. 

TNC has a proven strategy development framework which we use to help organisations understand their detailed network and security requirements and develop a comprehensive go to market strategy. Upon agreement of the overall sourcing strategy, TNC can provide a complete managed sourcing service to help your organisation secure the best possible technical, operational, commercial and contractual outcomes from a network and security service contract. 

Other than matters relating to The Network Collective, this research is based on current public information that we consider reliable. Opinions expressed may change without notice and may differ from views set out in other documents created by The Network Collective. The above information is provided for informational purposes only and without any obligation, whether contractual or otherwise. No warranty or representation is made as to the correctness, completeness and accuracy of the information given or the assessments made.

This research does not constitute a personal recommendation or take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situations, or needs of individual clients. Clients should consider whether any advice or recommendation in this research is suitable for their particular circumstances and, if appropriate, seek professional advice.

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