The National Cyber Security Show brings together thousands of IT and security professionals, vendors and decision-makers at the NEC Birmingham every year. Over three days, every conversation the industry is currently having, is happening more or less at once.
This year, we attended with our Programme Director, Kevin Price, presenting on stage in the Cyber Solutions Theatre, ‘Why IT and Security Need to Stop Being Two Separate Conversations’. We met wonderful people, had great conversations and spread the word on closing the gap between IT and Security. From these conversations, here is what we found about the current state of AI-Managed IT & Security.
The IT Teams Holding it All Together (Just About)
The picture that emerged was pretty consistent. We found that IT teams, even small ones, were being handed security responsibility on top of everything else, sometimes managing technology for an organisation ten times the size you’d expect. Unfortunately, that meant that with no dedicated resource for it, they were essentially hoping for the best while keeping everything else running. What was striking wasn’t the frustration, but for how long most of them had been in that position. This wasn’t a new problem they were describing, it was just the way things had always worked.
The Gap Nobody Owns
The MSP model, which most of them were using for their managed IT, doesn’t touch security. The security tool that works separately doesn’t know anything about their IT environment. Nobody is accountable for the gap between them, and that gap is exactly where problems live.
When we explained what ThreatSpike actually does – fully managed IT and security as one platform, run by the same people, for a single fixed monthly price – the reaction was almost always the same and then the conversation started flowing.
‘Just how unlimited is unlimited?’ was one question we heard several times, because when you’ve been with an MSP that charges per ticket, per project – basically per anything that falls slightly outside the original scope – the idea that there’s genuinely no meter running is hard to take at face value. When it landed that we meant it, that there’s no small print to find; the conversation changed.
The Need Is There, So Is The Appetite
It’s clear that there is an appetite for a different model here and more importantly, there is a clear need for one.
If you were there and caught Kevin’s presentation, his point that treating IT and security as two separate conversations isn’t just inefficient, it’s where the risk actually comes from. The people we met last week weren’t just nodding along, they were describing the same problem from their own experience.
If you want to hear more about the AI-managed IT & Security department that brings both capabilities together in one platform, get in touch with one of our expert consultants.
