FREE Hosted Security IT Manager’s Guide: Get to grips with hosted security

Hosted security, such as MessageLabs, provides Hosted Security companies with protection against email and web malware plus spam and content filtering, email IT Manager's Guide archive and continuity.
Rather than use on-site servers and software, hosted security is 'software as a service' delivered over the internet from a service provider's data centres. Compared with in-house solutions, hosted security offers enhanced security, service level agreements, 24/7 support and a predictable per-user fee structure.Bandwidth. Your internet connection is for business, not for spam, malware and time-wasters. But if 90.4 percent of all emails are unwanted and one in 317 Unlimited threats. Criminals and hackers 1 Employee time and skills. Besides budget, contains a virus , criminals are hijacking don't take pity on the unprepared, the Symantec research identified two other your bandwidth and your server capacity.poorly protected, the ignorant or the too significant barriers to proper security: busy. In fact, smaller businesses suffer employee skills (41 percent) and time (28 disproportionately. According to the percent). How many small or medium-sized government's 2008 Information Security companies can afford a full-time security Breaches Survey, 72 percent of British expert or the time to keep perishable IT skills companies with 50-500 staff suffered an current, let alone maintain a rack-full of 2average of 15 incidents a year . security hardware in-house?
Problems with
in-house security Budgets. Growing companies don't have unlimited Protection. Symantec research shows that budgets for IT security. In-house security solutions the vast majority of small and medium- solutions require a significant upfront investment and have sized companies are concerned about unpredictable ongoing costs. Moreover, they require viruses (79 percent), protecting their critical in-house expertise to keep up to date. This one-two data (97 percent) and ensuring they have a punch of capital expense and running costs makes backup (95 percent) and disaster recovery comprehensive in-house security unaffordable for plan (94 percent) in place. These concerns many smaller businesses.are proper, but in-house systems often don't provide the protection, continuity and reassurance that the company needs. Hardware. In-house systems such as anti-malware scanners, content control filters and email archives run on expensive hardware that needs regular maintenance. And if you want high availability, you need two of everything. Worse: every few years it all needs replacing at vast 1MessageLabs Intelligence as of 15 June 20092expense. Security Breaches Survey: www.security-survey.gov.ukWhy Hosted Security? Do Your Own Total Cost Calculation
. 24/7 support. Hosted security services typically offer robust service level agreements around availability and performance. In addition, hosted services are In-house Hosted Securityusually backed by 24/7 telephone and email support. Capital costs for hardware: . No hardware. Because hosted security is delivered over the internet, there is anti-malware, spam £ Includedno hardware to buy, manage and update. You get a malware-free, spam-filtered filtering, content control, connection to email, instant messaging and websites. archiving, continuity etc.
Provision for hardware . Minimal maintenance. A hosted security provider will take care of updating your £ Includedrefreshprotection and managing the hardware that does it in their own datacentres. Hosted security services are mostly 'set and forget', freeing up your time to focus Power, cooling and space £ Includedon other IT projects. for servers
. Accurate protection. The companies offering hosted security focus on protecting Software licensing costs: their customers and see billions of website requests and emails every day. This anti-malware, archiving, £ Includedmeans that they are able to stay ahead of current threats. The very nature of continuity etc.hosted security means that customers don't need to update it with anti-virus signatures or version updates - it stays up to date automatically. 24/7 support £ Included
. Predictable costs. You pay a fixed fee per user per year. That's it. No hardware to Managing updates, patches £ Includedupgrade. No extra licences to buy. No need to buy extra kit 'just in case'. Just a single, predictable cost. Security expertise £ Included
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