SWOT Analysis of Verizon Business Security Monitoring/Management
Strengths
• Compliance Reporting is fairly comprehensive
• Verizon has a great deal of experience in monitoring for security events at many large corporations
• Verizon portal provides richer user experience than alternative leading competitors
• Extensive devices included in Verizon monitoring will provide more actionable data to corporations
• Verizon is known to have best of breed monitoring against its competitors
• Corporate SOX controls can be adopted to leverage this to satisfy a company’s daily review lowering management review times
Weaknesses
• Increased time to troubleshooting with existing limited personnel regardless of SLA (If managed device option selected)
• Reduced flexibility to respond to organizational needs with regards to tool configuration (If managed device option selected)
• Coordination of Rule/Security event tuning issues will persist with any external vendor selected
• Although Verizon is known as best of breed for monitoring, this mostly reflects monitoring and not tools management
• Net Increase of workload to coordinate administration of the tools under management (If Managed device option selected)
Opportunities
• Verizon seems willing to include McAfee or other product countermeasure awareness in their overall solution (future)
• Firewall rule management can reduce workload of existing Network Engineering resources (If Managed device option selected and offered)
Threats
• Verizon may not be able to meet SLA’s
• Tools Verizon supports may not be what your comapany wishes to select or invest in while lower cost options may be available
• Increase in alerts prior to tuning will at least initially increase the workload of existing resource utilization
• Many companies have negative experiences with outsourced management using other MSSP’s which can indicate potential pitfalls of outsourced tool management using yet another MSSP external management option.
Summary
Given the extensive negative experiences that many companies have had with regard to externally managed devices via managed services, it is my opinion that selecting Verizon for their Security Monitoring Only solution will provide the best net value gain for a company’s IT Security and Network Engineering functions and provide a corporation the greatest enhancement towards its ongoing security/compliance goals. Selecting the monitoring option in conjunction with the tools management option I believe will cause a net increase in complexity and communications overhead which can result in further constraints on existing IT Security and Network Engineering resources and should be considered carefully.
My Recommendation
Deploy Verizon Business Services Security Monitoring in a monitoring/reporting mode only and maintain system ownership, configuration and administration functions in house as opposed to externally.
• Compliance Reporting is fairly comprehensive
• Verizon has a great deal of experience in monitoring for security events at many large corporations
• Verizon portal provides richer user experience than alternative leading competitors
• Extensive devices included in Verizon monitoring will provide more actionable data to corporations
• Verizon is known to have best of breed monitoring against its competitors
• Corporate SOX controls can be adopted to leverage this to satisfy a company’s daily review lowering management review times
Weaknesses
• Increased time to troubleshooting with existing limited personnel regardless of SLA (If managed device option selected)
• Reduced flexibility to respond to organizational needs with regards to tool configuration (If managed device option selected)
• Coordination of Rule/Security event tuning issues will persist with any external vendor selected
• Although Verizon is known as best of breed for monitoring, this mostly reflects monitoring and not tools management
• Net Increase of workload to coordinate administration of the tools under management (If Managed device option selected)
Opportunities
• Verizon seems willing to include McAfee or other product countermeasure awareness in their overall solution (future)
• Firewall rule management can reduce workload of existing Network Engineering resources (If Managed device option selected and offered)
Threats
• Verizon may not be able to meet SLA’s
• Tools Verizon supports may not be what your comapany wishes to select or invest in while lower cost options may be available
• Increase in alerts prior to tuning will at least initially increase the workload of existing resource utilization
• Many companies have negative experiences with outsourced management using other MSSP’s which can indicate potential pitfalls of outsourced tool management using yet another MSSP external management option.
Summary:
Given the extensive negative experiences that many companies have had with regard to externally managed devices via managed services, it is my opinion that selecting Verizon for their Security Monitoring Only solution will provide the best net value gain for a company’s IT Security and Network Engineering functions and provide a corporation the greatest enhancement towards its ongoing security/compliance goals. Selecting the monitoring option in conjunction with the tools management option I believe will cause a net increase in complexity and communications overhead which can result in further constraints on existing IT Security and Network Engineering resources and should be considered carefully.
My Recommendation:
Deploy Verizon Business Services Security Monitoring in a monitoring/reporting mode only and maintain system ownership, configuration and administration functions in house as opposed to externally.
