Outsourcing is very popular today! It has been generating news and controversies at the same time. Honestly, I have little idea, I only know that they are call center agents and nothing more, and I never really dwelt on thinking what it really means. Years before, I only know that a call center agent accepts calls from customers/clients in behalf of a company that cannot anymore handle queries or complaints regarding a product or service and that’s it. Now It really expanded from handling complaints to doing complicated functions for an organization. Why so popular today, of course, the benefits to businesses seeking to outsource their IT services operation can be numerous. Outsourcing helps to reduce IT service costs of firms. By cutting cost you can improve the organizations efficiency/effectiveness in delivering products and services, thus they can give utmost attention on their core competencies. The time wasted dealing with service issues and the like can now be invested into concentrating on value added activities.
While enjoying the benefits of outsourcing, it is not far that they can have set backs or problems. For one, organizations may lose control over customer service issues. No matter what you opt to outsource, you are some in way giving up control over that function. Moreover, it involves telling another organization what information you use and how you use such information. Thus, increasing vulnerability of sensitive and strategic informations. Another is, contracting certain functions to a third party may make it difficult to cancel if they fall short of what they are expected halfway through a contract. It could really affect the organizations operations whereby unsatisfied customers can put you in a shaky position in the market. Most importantly, outsourcing introduce new security threats to sensitive data from a scamp employee of the provider or the provider themselves. The more access to data is given to a third party, the greater the probability of a security breach that might expose sensitive client and organizations data to hackers or criminals or competitors.
Much more with outsourcing IT security, it’s like giving them the key to your house, permitting them to use your phone, computers, kitchen and enter your bedroom without you knowing it and stealing things. As what I’ve read, one example of security area that is outsource is intrusion detection (ID) like the firewall and virtual private network (VPN). But before deciding on outsourcing IT security, you should first compare variable in-house cost with fixed outsourcing costs. comparing them could help in the decisions. Deciding to outsource you should conduct a risk assessment and evaluate multiple vendor quotes for security, reliability and problem resolution. In choosing a good vendor, choose the vendor that requires top-secret clearance. And do background checks, research the company and other companies experience, so that you have an idea of what companies are the best in their field. Deciding to outsource, from risk assessment one should have a risk management plan. Here, you identify the risks involve in outsourcing your IT security. And then develop an analysis of risks. Lastly, you make or create a mitigation plan or a solution of risks using the resources that are available. Furthermore, one should continually and periodically conduct security audits, wherein you measure how well it conforms to a set of established criteria. And to further protect one’s organization, there is what you call cyberinsurance wherein it covers areas not normally spelled out in traditional insurance policies and can even cover insider attacks in security. Having this safety nets could save you from further threats.
With all these, I could say that, there are a lot of things to consider in outsourcing IT security. But the question here is, are you willing to take all the risks attached to it. How much would you risk? Would it be worth it? If yes, then you should be ready of the consequences that could happen, may it be positive or negative, successful or not!
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life. Muhammad Ali
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