Security issues always keep IT administration on their toes. They are mandatory irrespective of the organizational size.
Ironically, data security threats are more prominent in case of smaller organizations like SMBs or SMEs. Converse to the amount of data that is processed in the bigger organizations security threats are still low as they have all the right kind of security tools and IT infrastructure.
Need for Security
In this article, we have tried to put in some ideas that can help smaller organizations and in particular to those which are connected to the web round the clock to safeguard them from risks like viruses, worms, zombies or rootkits. Such business operations have risk involved with them that can potentially be exploited.
To wall their boundaries and make their data safe, the smaller organizations are spending more on an average, but the catch here is “Does that investment fruitful?” According to a white paper by the Aberdeen’s Benchmark research, the efforts are more or less futile and in an average the security and compliance was found below the average.
Here, the average means that these organizations are not able to predict at the grass root level that what is going wrong. Even after spending so readily and hefty, these are not able to identify the threat. These organizations have been susceptible targets for hackers and have lost data to them.
The most optimal solution for a key vendor is in protecting the IT infrastructure from ever increasing data threats. As a whole, it presses the need that in an organization, the perfect mix of three elements namely “people, process and technology” can help them to achieve the results in the most effective manner. Solutions that can help to fight the problem at the lowest level have the tangible benefits to glue with.
Right Approach
The Small enterprises can make large gains in effectiveness but needs to be more focused in their approach.
1. Benchmarking the needs can really help SMBs or SMEs in meeting their security needs. The Aberdeen study states that these organizations work at the lowest level of security in terms of implementing and achieving it. They are inclined to protect and maintain their IT infrastructure rather than looking into the deep details of compliance and data protection.
2. The IT administrators rather than being expertise in their field are found to be jack of all trades with these organizations which is a concern. The lack of expertise with inclination to go all alone makes it clear that that small enterprise are doing less with less rather than making it fatter.
3. The smaller companies are more concerned with TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) while purchasing any security solutions. The TCO includes total cost of acquisition, total cost of deployment and total cost of ongoing management.
Conclusion
At the end of discussion, the points that small enterprises should take care of can be concluded as following:
a) Make endpoint security mandatory and a priority
b) Make the optimal use of all limited resources
c) Think for the options available with vendors others than the established ones answering your key security requirements.
The security at end points cannot be ignored, regardless of the size of the organization. The smaller organizations, especially in tougher times should think for some out of the box alternatives.
