IBM Managed Security: Overview and Analysis

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Company Description

Founded in 1911, IBM is one of the biggest names in information technology, offering a wide range of products and services, including the IBM Security integrated portfolio of enterprise security services. Supported by IBM X-Force research, IBM Security enables organizations to manage risk and defend against emerging threats.

Service Description

From strategic advisory consulting, incident response, design and deploy services to cloud and managed security services, IBM offers a range of services to stay ahead of cybercriminals. These security services enable enterprises to activate global intelligence and reduce risk. They include:

  • Network protection
  • Firewall management
  • Vulnerability scanning
  • Information event management
  • Intelligent log management in the cloud
  • Intrusion detection and prevention services (IDPS)
  • Data protection services from Guardium
  • Security intelligence analysis
  • Web gateway management
  • Unified threat management
  • Secure SD-WAN
  • Adaptive security for hybrid cloud
  • Endpoint security
  • Amazon GuardDuty services
  • Markets and Use Cases

IBM has high visibility for managed security services in all geographic regions thanks to its five 24/7 security operations centers (SOCs): in the U.S.; San Jose, Costa Rica; Hortolandia, Brazil; Tokyo; and Wroclaw, Poland. IBM has three additional non-24/7 SOCs in India, Belgium and the U.S. The company focuses on large enterprises.

Metrics

IBM monitors 35 billion security events per day in more than 130 countries, and has been granted more than 3,000 security patents worldwide.

Delivery

IBM uses its QRadar SIEM solution to deliver unified monitoring across MSS, regardless of the location of the QRadar platform — shared multitenant, on-premises or as a service.

Intelligence

IBM’s analytics and targeted attack detection capabilities for the network and hosts include support for customer-deployed products, IBM XGS IDPS and QRadar, and partner solutions such as Carbon Black for IBM Security’s Managed Detection and Response service. Threat intelligence and incident response services are available under a new organization called IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS).

Pricing

No pricing details available.

Analyst View

IBM is in the Leader’s Quadrant of the latest Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) Magic Quadrant. Gartner said IBM has strong security service delivery capabilities and high market visibility. But the analyst firm questioned the company’s responsiveness in the midmarket. As IBM is transitioning customers to its new QRadar platform, it may face issues with migration paths to that platform. That said, IBM’s “QRadar Anywhere” approach is said to be good for those requiring managed SIEM options.

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