Managed Security Services: Getting It Right

According to IDC, over the next five years the global market for managed security services will grow four times faster than the market for security products. No surprise that managed services and its cousin, dynamic provisioning, were hot topics at Ignite. As security has bubbled up to the top of the list of CIO concerns, enterprises are looking to managed services as an important part of the solution to some overarching problems:

• There are staff and expertise shortages. Enterprises are finding it hard to find qualified security professionals.
• Staffs are overwhelmed by too much firefighting and alerts, by new initiatives (BYOD, Cloud) and by compliance/regulatory burdens.
• Processes for change control and incident response are inefficient. It takes too long to do simple tasks like a firewall rule change.
• In spite of higher spending on security, the risk of data breach keeps going up.

Each of these items can be visualized as an arrow going in the wrong direction. Managed security services providers (MSSP) are in a great position to turn those arrows around – but only if they take a comprehensive approach. What are the ingredients?

• A sound technology foundation. Managing a dog's breakfast of point products is problem shifting, not problem solving.
• Automated provisioning. Minimize the truck rolls, the hardware installs and the number of manual steps and processes needed to turn up a new customer or add services to an existing customer.
• Streamlined change control with fewer errors.
• Automated threat response. The world of hacking is automated – that is why WildFire sees thousands of new pieces of malware every day. Without an automated response system, automated malware will win every time.
• Security and compliance working together. Spending on compliance has too often come at the expense of real security. Positive security controls, integrated reporting and full visibility is how to get security and compliance back into alignment.

The world’s leading MSSPs have adopted the Palo Alto Networks Enterprise Security Platform as their foundation for managed services offerings. Here is how Palo Alto Networks works with and supports our MSSP partners as they deploy and deliver managed services that are a win-win for them and their customers.

Leverage: Our Multitenant Platform supports multiple customers.

Each instance replaces multiple point products at each customer

Software Subscription Enabled Security Services: Faster and cheaper provisioning, pay as you grow model.

Automated Provisioning: API, Tools and Support.

The Next Generation Platform is fully REST API enabled – in fact the CLI and GUI are built from the API. Add to that, we offer tools, support and software libraries to fully integrate the platform into provisioning, billing and ticketing systems. We also have a webservices SDK enabling MSSPs to provide custom portals for their customers. Check out the tools and libraries on our development online community. We offer tons of training as well.

Automation is not just about provisioning. Threat response and change control have to be as automated and “closed loop” as possible. Those are key elements of our security platform value and why MSSPs as well as enterprises that manage their own security are having such great success with our solution.

Interested in learning more?

We recently initiated a Fuel User Group dedicated to MSSP concerns and interests. We encourage you to join and participate: