As cybersecurity threats emerge and evolve, organisations continuously invest in protecting their systems, services, data and devices. The industry calls the third parties that provide operational, technical and tactical security support to organisations' managed security services providers. As part of a managed security service, the third party can fully or partially handle an organisation’s security requirements. Managed security includes, but is not limited to, intrusion detection, anti-virus, security operations centres, malware detection, penetration testing, threat intelligence and vulnerability management.

Fully managed security services offer end-to-end protection. This saves organisations the cost of maintaining system and device security themselves, as well as the additional cost of attracting and retaining talent, security monitoring infrastructure, tooling and training. The MSSP  owns the security tools, infrastructure, and software required to ensure the organisation retains a good security posture.

Partially managed security services operate on a shared responsibility basis, where the organisation may wish to retain some control of security management but might find it more economical to outsource resource-intensive aspects, such as continuous security monitoring and assessment. An outsourced security operations centre (SOC) is the most common example of a partially managed security service.

If your organisation is concerned with ransomware, zero-trust security, 24x7x365 security monitoring and alerting, or managed threat intelligence, BlueVoyant is a firm that offers managed security services.