What happens after the alert

Among companies considering a managed security provider, 58% of respondents said they could secure compromised accounts and restore operations within a day. The figure was 66% among existing customers in research Barracuda released November 4. That eight-point gap concerns a business outcome a provider may only partly control. A security team can disable a stolen credential quickly while a customer still waits to regain access to its work.

Who answered the question

Arlington Research conducted the survey for Barracuda, polling 2,000 mid- to senior-level IT and security decision-makers at employers with 100 to 2,000 staff across several regions. The comparison reflects what respondents said their organizations could do. The survey did not time recoveries, and it cannot establish how the same company would perform with and without a provider.

A smaller employer’s buying decision

The smallest employer group reported separately, those with 100 to 500 employees, showed greater interest in outsourcing than the sample as a whole. Some 36% were considering providers, compared with 29% overall. For a business near the lower end of that range, the distinction between investigation and restoration has a practical consequence. Someone must be available to authorize account changes and tell staff when they can resume work. The survey does not cover businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

What a service agreement can show

For managed service firms, that division of labor affects what they can promise. A provider that measures its response from the first alert to an analyst’s decision can meet its own deadline while the customer is still offline. An account of an actual recovery can show when the provider acted, which decisions belonged to the customer and when work resumed. Those timestamps give the parties a common basis for discussing the delay their next contract is meant to shorten.

Sources & further reading

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