Integrated security appliances — conditions are perfect
The recent economic news is a bit depressing, isn’t it? With the unravelling of the global financial system in 2008, pundits are advising that the real economy will experience a significant recession in 2009 and beyond. As suppliers to a ‘real’ market, it has to be suspected that the IT industry will not be immune to a poor trading environment over an indefinite period. Fortunately, there are sectors of IT that are well insulated from, and may even prosper because of, the economic downturn. Security—in particular, integrated security appliances—stands a very good chance of being one of these insulated sectors.
When told that minding the pennies is more than just a good idea, purchasing managers often follow a few fairly well-known practices. First of all, any programme under consideration must be critical to the ongoing operation of the organisation. Even when this is shown to be the case, if the proposed project is hugely expensive or disruptive, requiring mammoth budget, resources or time to complete, the proposer is likely to be told to think up a better, cheaper, easier plan. Finally, any project that contains the risk of an outcome anything other than a triumph or where the benefits will be slow to appear is likely to be crossed off the list.
It’s easy to prove that up-to-date information security is non-negotiable for businesses. Any organisation that tries to do without will find its IT services out of action very quickly. As a result, spend directed at securing IT infrastructure is likely to be one area that a company will maintain, even in times of constrained finances. However, there is more than one way to implement IT security. Some approaches are less costly to deploy and can be managed more efficiently than others so stand a better chance of achieving sign-off.
A traditional security infrastructure includes multiple individual point solutions, each taking care of protecting an organisation from a specific threat category. The organisation, first of all, has to go to the trouble and expense of selecting and buying multiple solutions, often from different vendors, and then has to manage their ongoing licensing arrangements. The IT team has to design a network architecture that can accommodate multiple solutions and manage the architecture over the long-term. When a new threat appears, as it will, a new solution must be deployed, adding to this complexity. This approach is typically resource intensive, as learning how to administer and successfully integrate solutions from multiple vendors presents a significant challenge. Over time, this approach inevitably results in a high total cost of security.
This underlines the value of integrated security appliances in a time when the cost of security will be coming under heightened scrutiny. This approach to security utilises just one appliance, which integrates the solutions needed to provide robust protection against all individual security risk categories within it. It guarantees that all protection mechanisms work well together, straight out of the box, and there is only one administrative interface for the IT team to learn. Architecting a network to accommodate a single security appliance is that much simpler than for multiple solutions. When a new threat appears, the vendor of the integrated appliance will work to ensure that protection is rapidly incorporated as a software upgrade, avoiding any disruption to the network and allowing IT to become accustomed to the new protection in a familiar environment. The bottom line is that consolidation onto one appliance, simplification of the network and the ease of management of an integrated security appliance greatly reduce the total cost of security.
No organisation can afford to compromise on security, but, in this business climate, no organisation can be complacent in how much security is costing them. For this reason, conditions are perfect for resellers to take integrated security appliances to their customers and actually win additional business, rather than join in with the collective economic doom.
