infoTECH Feature

April 26, 2017

Study: Mid-Tier Businesses Need Security Services

Mid-tier businesses are spending a large and growing amount of their budgets on security – especially network security, according to a new study conducted by 451 Research (News - Alert). And the study, which was commissioned by security-as-a-service provider OPAQ Networks, suggests that the majority of these companies want and need security as a service to help them manage this financial burden.

“The security challenge for mid-tier businesses is multi-dimensional,” said Daniel Cummins of 451 Research, which talked to 301 IT security professionals at U.S. businesses with 500 to 2,500 employees to get the results. “For these businesses, everything seems to be increasing – attack frequency, compliance requirements, complexity, costs, and the number of security products that need to be managed. Cloud-based security as a service offers potentially significant advantages in terms of simplicity and access to security that may prove to be less complex and expensive than traditional approaches.”

Almost 40 percent of those surveyed said their security workload is handled by contractors, managed security service providers, and part-time employees. But, according to 451 Research, 72 percent said they would prefer to use a security-as-a-service solution as opposed to an MSSP or on-premises solution.

So what are these businesses most concerned about as it relates to security?

According to the study, data loss prevention, network access control, encryption, threat management, application control, SSL decryption, and URL filtering are the most sought-after security capabilities by this group of mid-tier businesses. It goes on to say that threat management, branch office enablement and optimization, MPLS displacement, MSSP displacement, on-demand security, and securing SaaS (News - Alert) applications are the top cloud-based security use cases.

Here are a few other data points from the study:

  • Eight-two percent of those surveyed said they spend 20 to 60 hours of in-house staff time a week on security.
  • Almost 75 percent have three to five dedicated security employees.
  • On average, they spend $178,000 annually for network security.
  • That represents 39 percent of their IT security budgets.
  • Forty percent expect their network security spend to increase 10 to 20 percent in the next 12 months.



Edited by Alicia Young
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