Time to consolidate security to control operational costs

Integration is key to keeping both capital and operational expenditure down, writes David Ellis

Keeping operational outlay down is fundamental to any company’s success. Many organisations have adopted an embryonic approach to security, beginning with a firewall at the perimeter and progressing to an intrusion detection system (IDS) and some form of internal content protection, such as URL filtering. This ‘multi-box’ method of adding new hardware as needs arise can cause operational costs to increase.

Consolidating multiple security applications onto a central managed appliance not only reduces the number of hardware and licences required, but also provides better control of operational costs.

For example, the capital expenditure associated with an IDS deployment would be somewhere in the region of £7,000. In addition, the ongoing operational expenditure associated with supporting, managing and manipulating the data can easily escalate to 10 times the capital outlay. Most enterprises have several IDS systems deployed at once, not to mention their firewalls, antivirus and URL filtering systems, so it is easy to see how operational expenditure can become difficult to manage.

Security solutions should be managed centrally to reduce staffing costs and the volume of rack and server space required, which also contributes to the operational expenditure. In terms of efficiency, the use of un-audited hardware can lead to duplication of tasks and redundancy.

There are a number of ways to reduce the operational costs of security, including the creation of virtual taps for IDS sensors and using switching to cut the number of firewall licences. In addition, the technology is now available for hot-swappable, self-healing architecture, which reduces mean time to repair.

Keeping up to date with the changing face of the security market is vital for companies looking to cut their capital and operational expenditure, and the creation of a centrally managed security solution will allow them to achieve this aim.