HelpSystems to Acquire Alert Logic to Gain MDR Service
HelpSystems has agreed to acquire Alert Logic to gain control over a set of managed detection and response (MDR) services.
John Grancarich, vice president of product strategy for HelpSystems, said managed services are a core element of the company’s ongoing effort to converge security technologies in a way that makes them simpler for organizations to employ. HelpSystems has now acquired 10 companies, including Digital Guardian, Beyond Security, PhishLabs and Agari, in the past 15 months to achieve that objective.
Alert Logic today services more than 4,000 customers that chose to rely on a set of MDR services rather than deploy a platform themselves. Given the chronic shortage of cybersecurity professionals, the overall percentage of organizations consuming managed security services is only going to increase, noted Grancarich.
The overarching goal of an MDR service is to detect vulnerabilities, configuration issues and breaches in a way that ultimately limits their impact on the organization. In some instances, organizations rely completely on outsourced cybersecurity services while others employ a mix of internal and external resources. In either case, the distinction between what is consumed via a platform versus via a service is continuing to blur as the delivery of more security functions becomes automated via the cloud, added Grancarich.
Alert Logic, for example, already built a security operations center (SOC) through which its cybersecurity teams apply machine learning algorithms to aggregated data collected from thousands of customers to identify security issues. In fact, the rise of machine learning algorithms and other forms of AI may force more organizations to rely on cybersecurity services simply because the expertise required to build and maintain an AI model is beyond the capability of an internal cybersecurity team. The Alert Logic platform analyzes more than 140 billion log messages per day.
Through these acquisitions, HelpSystems is moving to reduce the number of cybersecurity vendors an organization might need to engage, said Grancarich. Most organizations today have a limited number of resources to apply against a constantly growing number of cybersecurity threats. It’s not uncommon for larger organizations to employ as many as 75 different cybersecurity tools, each of which requires dedicated resources to integrate, he noted. The total cost of security only increases with each new tool an organization acquires from disparate vendors, added Grancarich.
It’s not clear at what rate organizations are moving to consolidate cybersecurity vendors, but the percentage of IT budgets being consumed by cybersecurity has grown significantly as the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks has increased. Many organizations are, at the very least, reevaluating their approach to cybersecurity as attacks show no signs of slowing down.
At the same time, the smaller the organization the more likely it is that consuming security-as-a-service makes economic sense. After all, if the total amount of spending on cybersecurity can be contained, there should be more money available to fund other initiatives. The challenge, of course, is determining what level of spending is right based on the actual level of risk.
