How Secure is SaaS now?
Over the years SaaS has been revolutionizing the software industry and the advantages are well documented. One of the main deterrents of this fastest growing deployment model is regarding the security the SaaS applications have to offer. While more efficiency in terms of private clouds and on demand solutions are looked at by companies mostly due to the significant reduction in maintenance costs and other associated benefits, the single most important deciding factor in these IT initiatives continues to be the security of the deployed systems.
According to a survey, 43% of the CIOs have said that their company will invest in security related IT projects followed by 28% in virtualization and 27% in data center efficiency and 26% in SaaS, followed by other IT projects. The trend is clear. One can understand that IT companies are trying to make best use of their existing infrastructure by going for virtualization and data efficiency. They can even think about cutting costs through the SaaS model, but the foremost concern for them is security.
The arrival of PaaS and providers of Cloud based services was seen as competition to the pure play SaaS providers. But what SaaS had gained through these new arrivals is very significant. The dawn of cloud based services has in turn bolstered the managed security solutions market. There are various security solutions for cloud based services, and SaaS being the first fully fledged service offered over the cloud, has enjoyed the improvement in technologies that the security solutions had to offer.
With people starting to spend more time on the Internet, there have been advances in email security, and companies have offered solutions which are much more effective in controlling the virus traffic on the net. McAfee, ScanSafe and Qualys are the leaders in Saas security market. With more and more developments in security technology combined with the cost based advantage of the on demand model, SaaS may well be lapped up by companies to place them in a stronger position during the economic upturn. This is also confirmed by research firm Infonetics which predicts that the managed security marked is projected to grow at 78% over the next 5 years. SaaS is becoming more attractive than ever!
