EY to fight cybercrime with $20m

 

Ernst and Young says its high-end and bespoke Managed Security Operations Centre services are designed to meet the unique cybersecurity needs of clients by predicting advanced future cyber threats using advanced analytics.

To ensure that this effort achieves the desired result, the Ernst and Young said it was set to commit over $20m over the next five years to strengthening the centre, increasing its Managed SOC cybersecurity professionals’ six-fold to upwards of 1,200 by 2020.

Ernst and Young’s Global Information Security Survey 2014 stated that over half (56 per cent) of organisations were unlikely to detect a sophisticated cyberattack and a similar number (53 ) lacked the skilled resources to handle them. The Managed SOC would offer EY clients onsite (utilising local skilled resources) and offsite skills to help predict and prevent these cyberattacks outlined in the survey.

It said, “Local and Onsite, the skilled monitoring analysts will work closely with clients’ IT staff during business hours. These resources will be regionally located on the client’s premises (located anywhere in the world) and will come from EY’s Advanced Security Centre, a team that has been delivering a range of cybersecurity services to clients for the last 15 years.

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“The onsite resources will be complemented by a team of remote analysts that provide service 24 hours a day and seven days a week,and 365 days a year from a dedicated new facility in Trivandrum, India.”

Ernst and Young’s IT Advisory Leader (West Africa), Yemi Saka, a cybersecurity thought leader and practitioner, said, “We have entered an era of targeted cyberattacks (globally and in Nigeria). Globally and closer to home, threats and attacks have increased in number and sophistication to the point that they have heightened awareness.”

Saka, who is a cybersecurity thought leader and practitioner, also said, “It is important that organisations not only maintain traditional security controls, but also continue to evolve their ability to rapidly detect and respond to threats.”

He added, “Across business and sectors in Nigeria, organisations need to evolve from being reactive to proactive; and become predictive to stay ahead of cyberattacks. Through the Managed SOC, our mission is to provide organisations with a highly mature detection and response capability, tailored specifically for their businesses and designed to militate against threats from advanced, interactive attackers that put their critical business assets at risk.”

Additionally, Ernst and Young’s Managed SOC service will also offer integration of commercial off-the-shelf tools to provide deep insight into a wide range of technologies within the clients’ networks and advanced security analytics platform with a client portal to help ensure its team has full visibility of the operation of the Managed SOC.

The Ernst and Young Global Risk Leader, Paul van Kessel, said, “The question is not if your company will be breached, or even when. More than likely, it has already happened. The real question is: How well are you protected for the future. More often than not, our clients do not actually have the necessary skills or capacity to investigate the cyberattack further in an efficient manner.

“Our hybrid model of remote monitoring from India with onsite guidance will allow us to work closely with the client0 and more deeply investigate incidents; protecting them now and helping them anticipate attacks well into the future.”