The growth of our online lives has brought with it an array of new opportunities, new capabilities, and in general, new potential for humanity. With that growth has come new opportunities for cybercriminals as well, and that in turn leaves us to defend ourselves against them. CenturyLink, meanwhile, recently launched its new Managed Security Services Suite, a revamped version designed to put more force on the field and help protect against cyberattacks.
Now available in the United States—either as a service operating on its own or as an addition to customers who buy other CenturyLink services like hosting or collocation—CenturyLink's new services provide several new options for users looking to gain ground in defense against cybercriminals.
One big new option is monitoring for security logs. Backed by security analysts running under GAIC principles, the monitoring service allows for correlation and monitoring of several different servers' data, allowing for a more effective defense. Data analysis is also involved, bringing in historical perspective on log data, allowing a better understanding of changes in threats over the long term.
Should there be incidents in security, an incident management service is also in place to respond to possible attacks, and managed protection services allow for monitoring and next-generation firewall systems in defense. Risk monitoring systems even allow for some protection before the fact, checking for possible incoming threats and taking care of them before they can become full-fledged threats or actual attacks.
The system includes a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) back-end system designed to provide real-time insight on threat activity, as well as better compliance options for regulatory requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) platform.
Breaches will happen, notes IDC security services program director Christina Richmond. Calling it “no longer a matter of if, but when”, Richmond noted that many organizations still don't have the right tools to properly protect against attacks, particularly small businesses.
When it comes to security, everyone wants to be protected. No one really wants to endure the aftermath of a security breach, and the impact to not only current but future operations that comes with it. It damages customer trust in a firm's ability to protect information, and thus often hurts sales to go along with it. That combination can be disastrous for just about any company—even major firms like Sony can take months, or even years, to recover lost trust after a data breach—and so doing everything possible to protect against data breach is just what companies need.
Businesses that take security seriously generally fare better with customers than those who don't, and CenturyLink may have just the package that businesses need to keep security as top-notch as possible. That's going to pay dividends in the long run, as customers feel valued, safer, and more ready to part with cash to obtain a certain business' goods and services over another business'.
Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
