How to select an MSSP
As information security risks escalate and the cost of compliance mounts, more companies are looking for expert help from Managed Security Services Providers (MSSPs). The Yankee Group estimates that enterprises will outsource 90% of their security solutions by 2010. (Yankee Group, 2004.) Choosing a partner to trust with the "keys to your kingdom" requires careful consideration and due diligence.
Gartner Group report, Criteria for Selecting an MSSP recommends that you begin an evaluation by setting specific requirements for the managed services you intend to outsource, and compare your requirements to different service options with consideration for existing or planned outsourcing contracts. The report recommends that when evaluating managed security service providers (MSSPs), begin with a clear set of requirements for device monitoring and management, vulnerability assessments, scanning, and incident management and reporting. Compare your requirements with customer premises equipment (CPE) product-based services and in-the-cloud (ITC) services. Consider current or pending IT or network outsourcing arrangements, and evaluate MSSPs from all aspects against your requirements.
Execution Capabilities
Earthwave is a privately held company with a strong financial position. Our MSS business has grown faster than the industry average for the past three years to make earthwave one of the largest MSSPs in Australia with thousands of customer devices under management. Our MSS management team is globally recognised for their experience and maturity.
Earthwave currently boasts over 40 medium to enterprise channel partners including carriers and security integrators.
Vision and Strategy
Earthwave maintains market leadership by reinvesting significant portions of annual MSS revenue into research and development. Earthport - MSS Client Portal and the earthwave security information and event management architecture, leads the industry in scalability and performance to quickly and accurately correlate security events and forward them for additional analysis by information security analysts in our Security Operations Centres (SOCs). Leveraging intelligence from our Threat Intelligence team, thousands of devices under management, and our unique position in the Australian marketplace with over 200 MSS clients, our highly trained analysts are able to more quickly identify evolving threats and provide more detailed and actionable data to our customers.
Earthwave supports the largest portfolio of commercial and open-source security products with our vendor-neutral device management and monitoring, alerting and reporting via Earthport. Our security analysts use proven processes and best-of-breed technologies to provide lifecycle management and device monitoring for enterprise security. Our Security Device Agent (SDA) acts as an intrusion detection sensor and vulnerability scanner, normalising, prioritising and de-duplicating data before sending it from the customers premises to our SOC analysts.
An important element of the SDA is data aggregation strategy which is a complete, 100% capture of the status, alarms and alerts from the various firewalls, intrusion detection systems and other relevant sources that are being monitored, no matter what topology of agents and centralised collectors is used. This means that every field from every event is available for real time correlation, display, investigation and reporting.
In addition to doing the raw data collection, the earthwave SDA normalises every alarm and alert into a common security schema, filters out unwanted traffic, sets severity according to a common taxonomy and intelligently manages bandwidth to minimise network traffic.
Earthwave's breadth of services are unmatched in the industry with over 20 Managed Security Services, Security Consulting, Secure Internet Gateway and Secure Hosting providing all the services necessary to meet your security needs.
