Organizations both in India and globally have been taking greater care to ensure hacker-proof networks. With employees being increasingly mobile, organizations are today being pressurized to ensure the safety of networks.

At the same time, organizations have to deal with restricted IT budgets, a very small percentage of which is used for security. "Investment in security is typically only 3-4% of an overall corporate IT budget. Internationally this figure would be dose to 15-20%-in fact it can be higher in certain cases where the dependence on e-biz is more," Mr Rajat Mohanty, CEO of Paladion Networks says.

In an effort to ensure leak proof of networks, organizations are increasingly turning to managed security service providers (MSSP). MSSPs are third party firms which monitor a company's network and try and ensure they remain immune to attacks.

According to Mr Joy Nandi, CEO of Net ProActive Services, MSSPs examine company networks minutely to find any trace of security policy infringement. MSSPs usually take control of an organization's network remotely, says Mr Nandi.

The main advantage of utilizing third party MSSPs, according to Mr Swapan Johri, head of the security at HCL Comnet, is cost, where a managed security provider has scale advantage over in-house. Also, the professionals in managed services firm will have higher experience in dealing with security, he adds.

Mr Thandava Murthy, chief executive, services, at Wipro lnfotech said security was not a core competency of regular IT administration group.

By outsourcing, corporates can focus on their core business areas, he added. "Significant costs are incurred in establishing and retaining experienced staff on a 24x7 basis," Mr Murthy said. Indian firms have today matured and are beginning to utilize MSSPs services.

However, corporates do not see security as an integral part of their IT investment, said Mr Mohanty. MSSPs are most challenged by internal vulnerabilities, he said.

Similar to the cost efficiencies associated with the software services industry, more global businesses are likely to look at India as art ideal managed security destination, says Mr Johri. The US market for managed security services was approximately $720 million in 2000 according to a recent report from IDC.

This article had appeared in Economics Time on Aug 1, 2002