Letting go of your security worries
Published: 26 May 2005 13:35 BST
Some CIOs have said they are worried that handing over large volumes of critical corporate data to outside providers could open the information up to being stolen, intercepted, corrupted or lost. Recent data breaches at LexisNexis and other companies, though a different kind of information exposure, have underlined the risks.
One of the reasons why executives are warming to hosted security, Radicati said, is the growing success of companies that market other kinds of online applications, such as CRM provider Salesforce.com.
SOX appeal
Regulatory compliance demands, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the United States, could also help jumpstart the hosted security market, Kolodgy said. Qualys recently launched a service aimed at helping companies meet such requirements, and AlertSite offers hosted compliance tools as well.
Philippe Courtot, Qualys' chairman, said that such compliance needs are perfectly tailored to services such as those sold by his company. That's because the guidelines are pushing smaller businesses, with limited budgets and IT staffs, to put relatively complex security systems into place.
"The beauty of this timing is that these small companies can have the same sort of security performance as a larger enterprise because we devote every bit as much attention to protecting their operations as a large IT division could," Courtot said. "It's the same idea as Salesforce.com taking customers away from Siebel because they have moved faster and cost less. That's what we're trying to bring to hosted security."
Courtot conceded that some companies will always view hosted security as too risky. But he believes that as time passes, the arguments against sending such work out might lose some force if Qualys and its rivals grow.
Hoff said that WesCorp's IT department is fairly forward-thinking, so he didn't have to go to great lengths to get the hosted model adopted. But Hoff said he understands why some companies might still take a cautious approach to the tools. And although WesCorp might consider other outsourced security applications, for operations such as maintaining the company's firewall, Hoff is not ready to give up the keys.
"Outsourcing everything in your security infrastructure in terms of management — we haven't done that and don't plan to," Hoff said. "But in this case, it made good business sense and turning it on quickly was a very big lever for us. When it comes to other security services, we'll see what happens down the road."
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