My last blog post explained how D3’s virtual Security Operations Center (vSOC) can reduce field security personnel costs.  While that post illustrated a 15% field staff reduction, most firms can cover the entire cost of a D3 vSOC platform with only a 3-4% staff reduction.

In my second post of a three-part cost reduction series, I’ll explore two ways that D3’s vSOC can reduce costs among all personnel by optimizing processes.

Going Green

A surprising number of organizations continue to use paper-based processes for Security Incident Reports and Daily Activity Reports.  Any paper-based process will naturally incur the following costs

• Production costs; the paper itself, printers & printing materials, etc
• Storage costs; filing cabinets, office space, cataloging etc
• Access costs; time involved in locating and accessing data

Some organizations are able to keep production costs low through buying power efficiencies.  Most organizations experience increasing storage costs over time, since the amount of data requiring storage generally increases over time.  But access costs are usually the primary motivator for an organization to move to an electronic system, since a system like D3’s vSOC can reduce days or even weeks of research time to just a few minutes.  Thanks to its flexibility, the D3 vSOC solution can be configured to replace all paper-based security operations processes.

Replacing IT Support

Organizations that have made the transition from paper to electronic systems have traditionally done so by procuring servers and other infrastructure to host that system and housing them within their own data center.  Support, training, and administration resources from the organization’s IT department are then assigned responsibility for that system.  Often times, these IT costs are charged back to the department that “owns” the system (in this case, Security).

On-premises management of IT systems is being rapidly replaced by software delivered as a service (SaaS).  With SaaS, the costs for infrastructure, administration, and support are outsourced to the solution provider and delivered to the customer as a service.  The SaaS model generally saves firms approximately 40-60% on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as compared to the on-premises model.

D3’s SaaS model is part of D3’s broader Managed Services offering; which includes Hosting, Managed Support, Managed Training, Project Management, and more. Organizations can realize staggering cost savings by not dedicating time, personnel, and other resources to these tasks.

My next post will explore cost reduction through systems integration and optimization, via D3’s integrated modules and between D3’s vSOC and other third-party systems.