Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) should be universal, but who provides it?

Security-as-a-Service or SECaaS is a service whose time has come. The burden of security on enterprises and businesses of all sizes is simply too big to manage independently. New vulnerabilities are reported every day while at the same time, the responsibilities and punishments for companies who do not get it right, means that investments in security are just too steep.

Oddly, when you think about SECaaS (those ‘ordinary’ software guys already took SaaS), you tend to think about third-party companies specialise in specific sectors and applications. Cloud security, email security, web security are considered separately, and there are the top vendors in each category.

Surely, though, companies – anyone in fact – need one vendor, for an end-to-end solution.

And just as surely, operators are the logical companies that should supply that solution.

Yet if they are providing that level of SECaaS, they are keeping pretty quiet about it.

One operator that is providing this service, and has been for many years, is Vodafone UK. It has been providing SECaaS since 1989 but has just launched a portfolio of security services for businesses. According to Vodafone, its security is ‘military-grade’.

Obviously, this is good news for businesses and good news for Vodafone as it provides a compelling reason to switch to their services.

Of course, as often happens with security, as soon as you catch up, criminals will already be ahead of you, evaluating the next vulnerability.

And, of course, remote working is a huge opportunity for cybercriminals.

If the workforce is remote, the vulnerabilities are greater. This is made worse by the boundaries between work and leisure, becoming increasingly blurred.

It is good news that SECaaS is becoming ‘a thing’ in the corporate world and, as Ann Sheehan, Business Director with Vodafone points out, ‘everyone needs connectivity, so everyone needs to secure that connectivity’.

When you consider the problem of security for consumers, you have to ask who is best placed to provide SECaaS for consumers. And while an obvious candidate is the connectivity provider, we are now moving into the age of ecosystems and partnerships, and SECaaS should be a central part of that ecosystem.