Security as a Service: Business Decision Factors
This paper reviews the business value of IT security, illustrates the business case for SaaS over “do it yourself” premise-based solutions, and outlines what to look for in SaaS solutions you can adopt with confidence and count on as you grow.
In a companion paper, we show how Security as a Service (SaaS) protects small and midsize businesses from an unprecedented storm of malicious code, while escaping the tradeoff among security, performance, and cost that premise-based security forces on them. This paper looks at the business issues in SaaS: the value it unlocks, the costs—direct and indirect—it avoids, and the corollary benefits like efficiency and agility it supports.
Business Experience
A Webroot study showed that compared with all firms, small and midsize businesses experienced higher rates of every major class of email and Web attack:
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- Virus or worm: 86%, vs. 50% for all firms
- Spyware, including Trojan, keylogger, system monitor, rootkit: 78% vs. 50%
- Hacker attack: 53% vs. 20%
- Phishing attack: 72% vs. 35%
