The companies said earlier this week that Dimension Data will start to use VeriSign’s security device monitoring and management services in its own managed services offering.
The company already sells a set of managed security services that includes management and device monitoring of Cisco PIX and CheckPoint and other popular firewall systems, managed intrusion detection and protection based around network and host-based Cisco Secure IDS, ISS RealSecure and Snort, some customized vulnerability alerting services and managed content and URL filtering.
On the back of this arrangement with Verisign we are able to add intrusion detection protection services, under a single service level agreement with Dimension Data, Tsingos Vangelis VP Southern Europe, Dimension Data said.
Vangelis claims the company is in a market-leading position in the provision of managed network security services and, against closest rival Ubizen BV, is chasing a business demand that is forecast will grow at a rate of 20% a year between 2002 and 2007.
Most of the current demand is coming from large enterprises in the pharmaceuticals and automotive sectors, he said, but opportunities are emerging in the small and mid-sized business sectors.
Analyst groups agree that organizations are shifting away from buying multiple security and threat detection systems and toward integrated solutions and threat prevention, and that this is driving market demand for managed security services.
The sector is expected to become a fast growing one. According to the Yankee Group, managed security services revenues look set to grow from a total of $1.5bn in 2002 to levels touching $3.7bn in 2008.
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A big draw of a managed security service is the provision of an effective early-warning systems and Dimension Data said its ties with VeriSign helps it understand the shifting demographics of attacks and vulnerabilities drawing on its handling of 14 billion Domain Name System (DNS) queries each day for the .com and .net top-level domains.
