Outsourcing IT Security

 IT systems have brought lots of benefits to the world of business especially now that the pandemic has made major changes in their operations.  IT systems enable the organization to produce real time data crucial to decision making, facilitate operational efficiencies and cost reduction and help better communication and customer services among others.  But organizations cannot just sit tight with these benefits because IT has its own vulnerabilities and has been subject to security breaches and cyber threats.  So companies has to ensure that IT security is among their priorities because these malicious threats may far greater affect their businesses than the value they get from IT. 

IT Security is a set of cyber security strategies that prevents unauthorized access to organizational assets such as computers, networks and data (CISCO(n.d), What is IT Security retrieved from https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/security/what-is-it-security.html). 

As technology advances so do IT systems and cyber criminals so IT must be handled by experts and periodically reviewed and updated to ensure that it is steps ahead of cyber threats.  So I believe that IT security should be outsourced by organizations especially those that lack the structure and competency to handle IT security.

Outsourcing however has its challenges also.  Issues on quality of IT security, cost of outsourcing, legal issues that may arise during the contract implementation and breach of IT security by service providers themselves accompany outsourcing of services.

These issues can be mitigated if the organization will craft a plan/strategy that will effectively address this outsourcing project to include risk management.  Careful evaluation of the capacity and integrity of the service providers and the provisions of the contract is crucial to making the outsourcing project a success.  Routine performance evaluation and monitoring of the IT security and service providers are also  activities that the organization need to ensure that risks associated with outsourcing are limited or avoided.

note:  guns used in the picture are toys(for presentation purposes only)