Battle versus cyber crimes

Fortifying web security is like running an arms race against spammers and malware authors. It needs to receive budgetary priority regardless of the prevailing economic conditions or risk losing out to the so-called shadow economy.

Boosted by tens of thousands of technical experts collaborating with perpetrators of cyber crimes, the shadow internet economy reached over $105 billion in 2008 and is poised for significant growth in 2009.

The challenge is for companies to stay one step ahead of the cybercriminals while responding to the management’s operational cost-cutting initiatives. To deliver against both of these challenges the use of hosted security services addresses the usual burdens such as spending a disproportionate amount of time wrangling emails and web security systems and using a patchwork of point solutions.

“Aside from low prices, cash flow and up-front loading of risk and money of traditional, on-premise projects will drive more buyers towards hosted security services. Companies can take what was a capital expense and turn it into an operational cost,” said Mr. Bjorn Englehardt, Vice President of Symantec’s Saas Group for Asia Pacific. “Therefore, the hallmarks of hosted security services are hard to ignore, especially amidst an economic downturn.”

Learning first-hand what it was like to be a target of spam and virus attacks, Singapore American School’s pursuit of an effective and very efficient way to secure their email system from external threats led it to outsource their email and web security to MessageLabs, now part of Symantec.

“Initially, we tried installing different solutions in order to resolve this issue in-house, but it became impossible to update the IT infrastructure quickly enough to keep up with the latest viruses and threats.

Furthermore, it took up valuable time just to keep all these short-term solutions up-to-date,” explains Mr. Edward Gilbreath, Director of Technology, Singapore American School.

“In the end, MessageLabs was a logical choice given that they already help hundreds of educational organisations, eliminating new threats faster than any other service provider,” says Gilbreath.

MessageLabs does away with the expense and hassle of hardware, software or maintenance and is simple to set up and configure, allowing IT personnel to
focus on core activities. That in effect is one battle won over cyber crimes.