Concerning the Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Security

In this ever evolving technical world, the threat for some sort of malicious action increases every day.  And to staunch that threat, a business owner may find herself weighing the options of hiring or training staff to act as a security department, or at the very least an incident response team, in case of a hack, or data breach.  When considering the hefty salary of a new employee, or the efficiency lost at training an existing employee in incident handling, and the expense of equipment and the bill from the SANS institute for the training itself, outsourcing security can look like a pretty appealing option.  

At face value, it makes sense.  The cost of renting an incident response team, in the unlikely instance of an attack or catastrophe is fractions of the cost of maintaining a trained member of your staff, but there is a downside to the convenience and lack of hassle.  They won’t constantly keep you compliant.  If there is a breach of data or leak of personally identifiable information that wasn’t the result of a malicious attack, it could have been prevented.  And though the incident response team won’t cost as much as a trained member of your staff, the regulatory fines very well could be.  

Leave a Comment