BLACKCSI Protects Customers with Security Optimization Center

As regulations proliferate and data security continues to be scrutinized more each day, virtually every company has some form of cyber security prevention plan in place. “It is now the rule, rather than the exception,” asserts Ruthann Black, President of BlackCSI. The typical SMB understands the severe penalties and fines that are looming if the organization acts negligently and in most cases, they have taken some sort of initial first step to protect their customers’ data and keep their organization’s sensitive documents out of the hands of cybercriminals. “Most organizations recognize that this is an area of business that can no longer be ignored and typically they have some form of threat detection in place. Whether it’s one internal IT employee or a few software programs, most businesses are making some effort to detect threats as they occur. However, the problem with this approach is that after a while, the threats continue to pour in and the detection software becomes inundated with alerts and business owners feel overwhelmed and they don’t actually do anything about it. This leaves them wondering, ‘What do I actually need to do with all of these reports? How do I read them? What are they actually telling us to do? What actions do we have to take? If I have one internal IT expert on staff, isn’t that enough?”

The short answer is “no,” and ignorance has become more and more costly, which is exactly why many companies are utilizing Security Operations Centers (SOCs) to handle this new facet of the modern business. SOCs not only provide 24/7 monitoring and detection services, but they also help optimize infrastructure security on a constant basis by prioritizing risks and ensuring compliance with current regulations. In layman’s terms, an enterprise-level SOC, not only offers information, reports and charts, but it proactively resolves threats, oftentimes before the business owner has realized there has been a security concern. It accomplishes the ultimate objective that any security program should aspire to achieve, which is that it enables the business owner to get back to focusing on growing her business, instead of having to think about what to do with regards to cybersecurity day-in and day-out.

“The most important element about working with a SOC is transparency. Business owners need to sit down with whoever is managing their network on a monthly basis to find out a few key pieces of information, including: 1) What threats were detected? 2) How have they been managed? 3) What have we learned and how will we optimize to enhance our security?”

Most business owners are grappling with this new challenge and finding solutions to the ongoing issue of cybersecurity compliance. SOCs are likely the ideal solution for growing organizations.