The anti-virus market which started off slowly, has seen a remarkable growth in the past few years and gave rise to new technologies, to cater to the ever changing user needs. It has transformed into a multi-billion dollar industry with hundreds of companies making the foray into this market, and creating all types of anti-virus products.
The reason for this huge growth is the new threats and malware that keep cropping up on an almost daily basis. An anti-virus product of today may prove to be inefficient tomorrow, creating a new demand. In fact, most vendors find it difficult to keep up with the different viruses that keep surfacing.
This is very clear from the fact that in spite of the numerous anti-virus products out there, there still are so many security incidents that take place, including high-profile ones. The Identity Theft Resource Center, an organization that tracks incidents where confidential information has been compromised, recorded that these incidents have doubled in the first quarter of 2008.
It is also seen that the market that is most affected by these security issues is the small and medium business sector. The problem with these businesses is their small budgets. They cannot afford to have the resources needed to implement and manage a high-security environment, with intricate anti-virus systems in place.
Now, with the technological advances, there seems to be a hope for them, in the form of Security-as-a-Service (SaaS). SaaS is nothing more than outsourcing of security.
The new concept of offering security services similar to how software services are offered, by hosting them “in the cloud” and providing businesses a web interface for interaction with the applications, is being seen as a great security solution. Earlier, anti-virus software had to be installed on the systems inside the company and either managed from within or remotely controlled by a service provider.
Subscribers to the SaaS system can now take advantage of content provided continuously, which helps companies manage their anti-virus systems much more efficiently and easily than ever before. Companies no longer have to waste their time trying to keep track of the new anti-virus products out there or spending huge amounts of money on the latest systems.
The SaaS model delivers end-point security in a wonderful way and the focus in the future is going to be on anti-virus, prevention of data leakage, end-point encryption etc. Companies, both small businesses and large ones, that start using the SaaS security alternative will be at a huge advantage and experience the highest levels of security that their companies look for.
Detecting and preventing targeted attacks is the main danger faced by most companies. All these risk factors are alleviated with the use of SaaS. No longer do they need to worry about upgrades that take time to implement and leave a gap in the security with a high probability of getting infected, and they do not need to put in the effort to detect new malware.
SaaS is being looked at as a complete end-point, web, email and network protection solution, leveraging the power of cloud computing, that saves time, effort and cost for companies; both small and big. It blocks all hacker attacks, viruses, spyware, and also identifies thieves from the servers. Anti-virus could be a thing of the past very soon.
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While one of the arguments against SaaS is security concerns, it actually saves end users from installing, running, updating and managing security systems like anti viruses. SaaS vendors develop expertise in managing security, so can do a lot better than you.