As cybercrime increasing becomes a major threat to the sustainability of businesses and organisations across the globe, EY has announced the launch of first-of-its kind Managed Security Operations Centre (SOC) services. The high-end and bespoke service is designed to meet the unique cybersecurity needs of clients by predicting advanced future cyber threats by using advanced analytics. To ensure that this spirited effort achieves the desired result, EY is set to commit about US$20 million over the next five years to strengthen the centre by increasing its Managed SOC cybersecurity professionals’ six-fold to upwards of 1,200 by 2020. EY’s Global Information Security Survey 2014 revealed that over half (56 percent) of organisations are unlikely to detect a sophisticated cyberattack and a similar number (53 percent) lack the skilled resources to handle them.
The Managed SOC will offer EY clients onsite (utilising local skilled resources) and offsite skills to help predict and prevent these cyberattacks outlined in the survey. Local and Onsite, the skilled monitoring analysts will work closely with clients’ IT staff during business hours. These resources will be regionally located at the client’s premises (located anywhere in the world) and will come from EY’s Advanced Security Center (ASC), a team that has been delivering a range of cybersecurity services to clients for the last 15 years. The onsite resources will however be complemented by a team of remote analysts that provide service 24/7 and 365 days a year from a dedicated new facility in Trivandrum, India. According to Yemi Saka, EY’s IT advisory leader for West Africa, a Cyber Security Thought Leader & Practitioner, “we have entered an era of targeted cyber-attacks (globally and in Nigeria).
“Globally and closer to home, threats and attacks have increased in number and sophistication to the point that they have heightened awareness. It is important that organizations not only maintain traditional security controls, but continue to evolve their ability to rapidly detect and respond to threats. “Across business and sectors in Nigeria, organisation need to evolve from being reactive to proactive; and become predictive to stay ahead of cyber-attacks. Through the Managed SOC, our mission is to provide organisation with a highly mature detection and response capability, tailored specifically for their businesses and designed to mitigate against threats from advanced, interactive attackers that put their critical business assets at risk,” Saka added.
Additionally, EY’s Managed SOC service will also offer: A unique integration of commercial off-the-shelf tools to provide deep insight to a wide range of technologies within the clients’ networks.
It will also provide an advanced security analytics platform with a client portal to help ensure its team has full visibility of the operation of the Managed SOC
Also speaking, Paul van Kessel, EY global risk leader, said : “The question is not if your company will be breached, or even when. More than likely it has already happened.
The real question is: How well are you protected for the future? More often than not, our clients do not actually have the necessary skills or capacity to investigate the cyber-attack further in an efficient manner. Our hybrid model of remote monitoring from India with onsite guidance will allow us to work closely with the client and more deeply investigate incidents; protecting them now and helping them anticipate attacks well into the future.”
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