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COMMISSIONED BY: The ROS of FireMon’s Security Manager IANS RETURN ON SECURITY (ROS) February 2016

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COMMISSIONED BY:

The ROS of FireMon’s Security Manager IANS RETURN ON SECURITY (ROS)

February 2016

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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Contents

Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 2

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 3

Project Overview ............................................................................................................................. 5

Methodology ................................................................................................................................ 5

The ROS Method .................................................................................................................. 6 Research Findings ....................................................................................................................... 7

Results .......................................................................................................................................... 15 About IANS ................................................................................................................................ 15

About FireMon ........................................................................................................................... 15

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

Executive Summary On behalf of FireMon, IANS conducted a Return on Security (ROS) analysis of FireMon’s Security Manager. To facilitate this study, IANS interviewed personnel from two FireMon customers, all of whom have direct responsibility for network security management across the enterprise and who have used FireMon’s solution over an extensive period of time. In addition, IANS used average customer deployment data.

Prior to the interview of FireMon customers, IANS received an in-­depth demonstration of Security Manager to ensure our interview questions and responses were in line with the product overview and matched product datasheets. In addition, it is worth noting that IANS has had insight into FireMon and solutions that compete in this space through the years.

The interviews took place across customers spanning verticals ranging from heavily regulated healthcare to managed security service providers (MSSPs). In addition to the interview, IANS also drew from its existing enterprise client interaction via one-­on-­one Ask an Expert (AAE) calls, roundtable Forums across cities nationwide, independent consulting, client interaction, and practitioner experiences.

The data yielded from the interviews allowed IANS to create quantified estimates of the total costs and benefits. This in turn enabled IANS to draw the conclusions below relating to the value of FireMon's Security Manager, making reasonable estimates of the net benefits over the years.

It is important to note that ROS for Security Manager is relatively simple to justify based on its usefulness and the ability to reduce manual tasks. The total return numbers can vary greatly based on the size of the network in which Security Manager is deployed.

This study shows FireMon’s ability to provide value to smaller organizations with a few firewalls, an MSSP managing 11,000 devices, as well as an average customer. Given the vast differences in each customer’s business model, the healthcare provider’s numbers and an average customer deployment are used in the total return calculations for this report as they are more in line with an average regulated company.

The purpose for including an average deployment is to outline a typical customer environment and expected return on security investment alongside the diverse customers interviewed with a small and extremely large deployment.

On average, a typical FireMon customer has 45 devices under management. However, the MSSP interview shows the scalability of Security Manager where an MSSP can leverage the solution to manage literally thousands of more devices than an average customer, or greater than 225 times more than average. As such, there are MSSP examples referenced to call attention to FireMon’s ability to support enormous networks.

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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The total return is the sum of the objective, infrastructure, risk, and agility returns added together. Because risk is difficult to quantify, the calculations are conservative to avoid extreme financial differences.

Based on the above assumptions, the following indicates a conservative estimate of total return over a three-­year period for a healthcare provider and average customer:

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE TOTAL RETURN: +$103,520

ESTIMATED AVERAGE TOTAL RETURN: +$892,240

The above numbers represent a positive three-­year return on security for FireMon, including the cost of both acquiring and deploying the system. The acquisition of the product achieved its objective at a lower cost in terms of employee time and also produced better reporting and data

as a result of having highly accurate network visibility.

Security Manager as a solution provides the ability to offload manual, repetitive tasks, which would otherwise require hundreds or thousands of employee hours that would also be error prone. This is likely a key driver of adopting a solution in this space such as Security Manager.

Customers interviewed were loyal, including one interviewee who lobbied for Security Manager shortly after accepting an offer letter to lead the security practice. Overall, customers reported that the FireMon Security Manager solution makes the entire infrastructure and security teams more effective in managing perimeter devices.

…the MSSP interview shows the scalability of Security Manager where an MSSP can leverage the solution to manage literally thousands more devices than an average customer, or greater than 225 times more than average. As such, there are MSSP examples referenced to call attention to FireMon’s ability to support enormous networks.

The ROS for Security Manager is relatively simple to justify based on its usefulness and the ability to reduce manual tasks. The total return numbers can vary greatly based on the size of the network in which

Security Manager is deployed.

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

Project Overview The project began with FireMon representatives providing an in-­depth demo of Security Manager and highlighting why their customers choose FireMon. The demo illustrates how security analysts and infrastructure operations professionals are able to support many multiple firewalls from a single pane of glass. Next, IANS conducted interviews consisting of 25 questions, including cost of procurement, time and cost savings, customer service, and reasons why FireMon was selected over the competition. The questions asked of customers were created by IANS and were not influenced by FireMon.

Methodology A security project, whether it be purchasing a new technical solution, conducting a risk assessment, or enhancing a policy, will likely produce value in the form of benefits that outweigh costs. Getting a handle on those costs and benefits can help an executive make better, more informed decisions about the allocation of resources. In the last decade or so, security executives have experimented with a variety of cost-­‐‑benefit analyses to try and justify the expense and showcase the value to the business in the wake of high-­profile breaches. The IANS ROS methodology aims to emphasize cost-­‐‑benefit analyses and produce a metric that is helpful for security leaders in their financial analysis, not just a focus on technical benefits.

In theory, calculating the value of the security product, project, or procedure should be no different from valuing anything else – to phrase it simply: add up benefits and subtract all costs, and if appropriate, adjust for the timing of the benefits and the costs. The difference in the security realm is that both benefits and costs are more complex to analyze, more difficult to precisely identify, and have complex relationships with each other.

There are also more potential sources of uncertainty than with other investments, especially as it relates to the value of the benefits. An important point is that the value of security projects or products can vary based on the dynamic threat landscape, compliance requirements, staff skills, and the evolving change of pace with the business.

Furthermore, there are often cases in which a somewhat improved level of security offers the opportunity to pursue an entirely new business opportunity that might be otherwise impractical. In this case, the value of whichever products or projects are necessary to achieve that level of security could arguably be the entire value of the business opportunity, net of other costs. If alternatives are available, however, the appropriate value for the business decision is based on the difference in value between the various alternatives.

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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The ROS Method In the case of a security project, the benefits include:

• Objective Value. The achievement of some business goal. Example: Conduct periodic firewall policy reviews to adhere to internal and compliance requirements.

• Risk Value. The reduction of risk. Example: The risk of opening too many ports on the firewall when in reality only one is needed for the application.

• Infrastructure Value. The improvement of prior investments. Example: By installing Security Manager, security and infrastructure teams are able to quickly and accurately enable network access to match business needs.

• Agility Value. The enabling of new business or enhancement to current business processes. Example: The business is able to gain a competitive advantage while being the first to market with its application.

The costs of a security project include:

• Objective Cost. The price of purchasing, deploying, and maintaining the solution. Example: $100,000 license fee + 20% annual maintenance + 1.5 man months of labor.

• Infrastructure Cost. The degradation of prior investments. Example: By installing Security Manager, firewalls run optimally with their rule set and therefore don’t require additional hardware to support the demand.

• Agility Cost. The inhibition of business. Example: The business is able to see firsthand the applications employees access that violate corporate policy.

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

Research Findings Evaluation and Analysis of Results

Objective Return – What are the costs and benefits of simply achieving the objective the clients set out to accomplish over three years?

Customers, regardless of size, have a network of firewalls to maintain and must be able to scale their deployments to support the business. While some firewalls may be internal to segment various areas of the business, others are external-­facing or may be positioned between third parties. Regardless, management of these devices is crucial and complexity can quickly lead to misconfigurations. Organizations seeking FireMon’s Security Manager come to them with criteria, such as being able to maintain accurate configurations, identify changes, assess device risk and security posture, and reduce manual resource drain from reviewing configurations.

A primary benefit FireMon provides customers is a centrally-­managed solution whereby infrastructure and security teams have great visibility into their network. Whether the customer has deployed Check Point, Cisco, Fortinet, Juniper, or Palo Alto, they can be confident in their ability to maintain configurations that match policies.

Furthermore, FireMon customers have become trusted advisors to the business’ applications, something security leaders often seek. This is due to FireMon’s ability to unmistakably prove to the business what access is and is not needed to not only secure, but enable the business. One FireMon customer was able to give a third-­party application provider detailed information about the functionality of the application.

The third-­party in turn used the results from FireMon to update its own documentation which is used by its customer base. This is FireMon telling a third-­party vendor what its application does and doesn’t need. Of the customers interviewed, it was very apparent that without Security Manager, the ability to manage complex networks would be error prone and full of manual processes that would be very time consuming.

A customer interviewed reported that the FireMon Security Manager met or exceeded expectations in managing their network. Or in the case of the MSSP, managing their customers’ firewalls. This is particularly important as an MSSP, in many cases, has been given a significant level of firewall access as part of the service contract. What’s unique is that the MSSP is navigating from network to network and does not have a familiar network like many enterprise administrators managing their own. Thus, Security Manager provides to MSSP customers the confidence that their managed services will adhere to service-­level agreements.

FireMon customers have become trusted advisors to the business’ applications, something security leaders often seek. This is due to

FireMon’s ability to unmistakably prove to the business what access is and is not needed to not only secure, but enable the business.

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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In the case of enterprise organizations that are heavily regulated, such as the healthcare provider interviewed, the customer stated, “Security Manager provides us with precise information to make decisions right the first time. Furthermore, the business now views us as trusted advisors.”

In the day and age of outsourcing and third-­party managed services for organizations, there is risk to the business, particularly if an unauthorized change is made. The healthcare provider interviewed was able to prove an unauthorized network change and alert so the security team could investigate. “We were alerted the change was made and we were able to prove what happened, and when.” It is for reasons such as these that organizations undergo independent firewall reviews and audits.

For example, PCI DSS requirement 1.1.7 is to review the firewall and router rule sets at least every six months. The Council’s guidance suggests organizations with a high volume of changes may wish to consider performing reviews more frequently to ensure the rule sets match business needs.

As indicated by a healthcare customer, Security Manager allows them to constantly know and validate the state of their firewall rule sets and find that their security employees are able to focus on more strategic initiatives to the business. Furthermore, in the case of the customer, they have dramatically reduced the need for external reviews, which is saving on average upwards of $50,000 (cost of preparation and cost of engagement) annually if reviews are done as frequently as best practices suggest.

In the case of the MSSP, which has 11 security operations centers (SOCs), Security Manager is used to manage 11,000 firewalls. During the interview, the leader of the SOC indicated that Security Manager is saving analysts’ time on an average of 75-­80%. This is largely due to when customers require or have ad-­hoc requests for firewall reviews and connectivity investigations. Once staged, an analyst is only spending an hour pulling together the necessary customer requirements. The SOC manager indicated that prior to Security Manager, the amount of time an analyst spent staging the report was five hours.

The MSSP also noted that Security Manager returns additional value that is two-­fold;; to the MSSP and the client. For example, Security Manager helps with root cause analysis (RCA) events (similar to the healthcare provider above), and also when the MSSP provides to the

During the interview, the leader of the SOC indicated that Security

Manager is saving analysts’ time on an average of 75-­80%.

What’s unique is that the MSSP is navigating from network to network and does not have a familiar network like many enterprise administrators

managing their own. Thus, Security Manager provides to MSSP customers the confidence that their managed services will adhere to

service-­level agreements.

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

customer consultative recommendations based on their policies. Often times, the customer may have had legacy access controls in place that are no longer required. This presents an opportunity to tell the customer where they can tighten up their policies to be more restrictive and not run the risk of harming the business.

The initial cost for the FireMon Security Manager, annual maintenance, and professional services support fell within the budgeted allotment for each client. Defining policies, creating alerts, and reporting are easily grasped by a security analyst. In the case of the healthcare customer, they were live in as little as two weeks from the initial setup and administrator training.

The MSSP customer took a couple weeks longer, but this was largely due to working their own internal process into the operations for customers’ tickets and workflow. An average customer should be able to deploy Security Manager and achieve immediate value and network insight in well under a month. If the organization prioritizes their roll-­out, they will get quick visibility and will be able to achieve value across the enterprise.

As stated in the executive summary, every customer’s use of FireMon Security Manager will vary, but initial spend varies significantly based on the amount of licenses required to manage the enterprise. Once implemented, it’s a matter of the security team determining what they wish to get out of the solution. Hence, a company has purchased the ability to go as far and wide as they wish, and will get out of it what they put into it.

The customers interviewed varied in terms of the number of devices licensed, but the following should provide a point of reference when budgeting. There is a dramatic difference in costs, but it is all relative. Furthermore, it illustrates Security Manager’s ability to support very small networks and MSSPs with thousands of devices under management.

The healthcare customer licensed two devices under management with an initial spend of $40,000 (with $8,000 annually for maintenance). The MSSP had 11,000 devices under management with 450 portal licenses and an initial spend of $4,000,000. The costs will vary based on additional licenses for add-­ons such as Policy Manager, Policy Optimizer, and Risk Analyzer.

To calculate the objective return, the information used from the interviewees includes the initial acquisition and deployment cost. The annual staff usage is crucial because of the goal of recouping labor costs or independent reviews that are expensive and prone to error. Using interview information from customers, these numbers are compared to the typical estimated cost of manually maintaining or reviewing firewalls on a regular basis. Changes in large organizations can be several times per week while reviews, such as PCI-­DSS, can occur bi-­annually (at a

An average customer should be able to deploy Security Manager and achieve immediate value and network insight in well under a month. If the organization prioritizes their roll-­out, they will get quick visibility and

will be able to achieve value across the enterprise.

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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minimum). It should be noted that there is inherent value in identifying and removing unnecessary rules.

The figures below compare the cost of licensing Security Manager and conservatively including semi-­annual independent firewall reviews. The estimated independent consultant cost to review each firewall is $10,000 per device. With two firewalls each independently reviewed twice a year, this equates to $40,000 annually. Below is a snapshot of the healthcare provider who purchased Security Manager with a small number of licenses due to their network needs for three years. The objective return is as follows:

Healthcare Provider

Initial acquisition and deployment cost: -­$40,000

Annual maintenance fee (3 years @ $8,000): -­$24,000

TOTAL COST: -­$64,000

Cost for external firewall reviews (3 years @ $40,000) $120,000

Combining these figures produces:

ESTIMATED 3-­YR NET OBJECTIVE RETURN: $56,000

The figures below compare the cost of licensing Security Manager within an average customer network and conservatively including annual independent firewall reviews, which, depending on the purpose of the device, could easily require more than one review annually.

The scenario assumes an average company reviews just half of their firewalls annually (e.g. 20) and hires an independent consultant with a cost to review based on volume at $7,500 per device. These figures add up to $150,000 annually. Below is a snapshot of an average customer who purchased Security Manager and exercised its features to reduce the excessive costs of outsourced independent firewall reviews.

The objective return is as follows:

Average Customer Deployment

Initial acquisition and deployment cost: -­$80,000

Annual maintenance fee (3 years @ $16,000): -­$48,000

TOTAL COST: -­$128,000

Cost for external firewall reviews (3 years @ $150,000) $450,000

Combining these figures produces:

ESTIMATED 3-­YR NET OBJECTIVE RETURN: $322,000

Infrastructure Return – How are pre-­existing systems made more efficient or effective as a result over three years?

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

Deploying FireMon Security Manager positions the business to be able to tame some of the sprawling complexity that comes with a vast amount of change and corporate growth. Business competition is fierce and getting to market first as well as being able to nimbly move as the business needs, is crucial.

A phenomenal example is the above mentioned healthcare company informing the third-­party vendor that its documentation is not correct and that various ports are in fact not needed for the application work. As a result, Security Manager provides security leaders with the confidence they need to know that their firewalls are adequately provisioned and optimally configured.

The ideal configuration means that not only are access lists accurate, but devices are not spending processing cycles on unused access-­lists and policies that take up CPU and memory with no use. When hundreds of rules are in the wrong hierarchical placement, this adds up and can negatively impact the network. In other words, it’s not the number of rules, but the location of the rule that affects performance. FireMon helps identify and recommend rule changes to ensure there is not degradation to CPU and backs up an academic study1 outlining complexity and system impact when administrators don’t optimize the configuration. The following figure is a representation of the impact on CPU when rules are not optimally configured.

Figure 1: Impact on CPU When Rules Are Not Optimized Source: https://www.firemon.com/wp-­content/uploads/2014/10/firemon_case_study_performance_impacts_of_complexity.pdf

A quantifiable example of infrastructure effectiveness and efficiency comes from the healthcare provider and the need to add business applications without spending countless hours debugging and questioning rule placement.

For example, take the above labor cost estimates at around $80 per hour (including salary, healthcare, employer taxes and investment matching). An analyst who spends on average 10

1 https://www.cse.msu.edu/~alexliu/publications/ChangeImpact/ChangeImpact_TOIT.pdf

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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hours working with the business to implement the application will add up to $800 per application. At just one new application per month, conservatively it adds up to $9,600 annually for just one analyst’s time.

This number obviously magnifies with larger organizations and more changes. For example, using the above calculations if an average size customer were to make change to 25% of their devices, or roughly 12 nodes, it equates to $115,200 annually. FireMon is able to provide better data from the start without the need to implement unnecessary changes which put the business at risk and take away from processing power.

Lastly, take for example using the above calculations for the MSSP and assuming a mere 1% have a request per month (110), it equates to $1,056,000 annually. The 3-­year figures are below:

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE INFASTRUCTURE RETURN: +$28,800

ESTIMATED AVERAGE INFASTRUCTURE RETURN: +$345,600

ESTIMATED MSSP INFASTRUCTURE RETURN: +$3,168,000

Risk Return – What are the costs and benefits to the security and risk management posture of the organization?

IANS defines the security risk as the risk of damage to the customer due to unauthorized access to sensitive information, financial fraud, and similar intentional malicious acts. Oftentimes the threats are thought of as external, but internal threats are significant and cannot be ignored. Let us not forget misconfigurations that are easy to overlook;; thus the reason why so many regulations call for regular firewall reviews.

Security risk is one of the most difficult returns to value. The probability of an incident varies widely from one customer to another. Similarly, the range of potential costs extends from a few thousand dollars to many millions. HIPAA is one area where there are some well-­documented examples2.

In fact, there was one HIPAA case3 which was directly tied to disabled firewall rules which led to exposure of the information of 17,500 patients for 10 months. The end result was a fine of

$400,000 as a result of this incident.

Looking back over the above referenced (footnote 2) 28 examples, it is worthwhile to explore the minimum, median, and maximum fines handed down under HIPAA regulations. The maximum, which is at the far end of the spectrum within the examples documented, is $4.8 million.

2 http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/examples/ 3 http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/enforcement/examples/isu-­agreement-­press-­release.html.html

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

As a result of the higher figure and to focus on calculations the business will typically find more reasonable, two estimates are provided. One example is for a median scenario to represent the return on an average customer, and one for a very conservative minimum return scenario, intended to capture the minimum benefit a customer in the target market might expect.

The average scenario is for a customer who, in the absence of FireMon Security Manager, experiences one firewall-­related incident similar to the above, which leads to record compromise. The average fine using the above-­mentioned example is $1,125,000. Security Manager would be able to identify and alert on a firewall rule being disabled, which is why the below figure of $400,000 is used since other figures could relate to breaches with Web attacks or insider mishaps.

A similar firewall incident would alert and allow analysts to edit the access-­list before there is unauthorized access. Obviously identification and alerting does not guarantee the change will be reverted, but the assumption is the security organization will resolve this as opposed to allowing 10 months to pass while exposing sensitive information.

It should be noted that estimating a similar figure for the MSSP is not applicable due to the differing verticals. It could be argued that the MSSP using FireMon in their own environment protects against the below, whereby an attacker pierces the MSSP’s network to gain access to their operation. Therefore, the most reasonable example is that of the healthcare provider and their potential fines if a similar firewall rule incident occurs.)

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE AVERAGE RISK RETURN: +$400,000 *Using figure from fine imposed by improperly configured firewall

The minimum scenario is for a customer who, in the absence of FireMon Security Manager, faces a chance of a single firewall-­related incident leading to unauthorized access. The minimum fine from previous examples was $35,000.

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE MINIMUM RISK RETURN: +$35,000

Agility Return – What are the costs and benefits to the security team to resolve connection issue requests more quickly?

Blaming the firewall for a connectivity issue is not uncommon. Whether it is an egress port not allowed, a source that may or may not be permitted, or complaints of latency;; security teams receive tickets to investigate.

All customers interviewed commented on the need to move quickly to support the business, which means there’s a need to identify the root cause of whatever incident is suspected. Security teams need to identify the issue and rule the firewall in or out. Regardless of where the issue is, the security team needs to be an enabler to ensure core business applications are not negatively impacted.

In conversation with the MSSP, it was evident that without FireMon, there would be several more FTEs in order to support their customers. The MSSP must complete ticket requests for general changes and investigations. Likewise, the healthcare provider consistently praised Security Manager for enabling their team with accurate data to make better, faster decisions.

© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon, Inc. For more information, write to [email protected].

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For the MSSP and healthcare provider, the most effective way to quantify the agility return is to examine root-­cause analysis (RCA) investigations. For example, the business opens a ticket indicating the Accounts Payable department is not able to complete a wire transfer over the VPN to their receiving bank. As such, the security team must spend time simulating the issue, capturing packets, and reviewing logs. It’s not uncommon for the external third party to claim innocent, which means the business must be able to prove, with data, why it is not their problem either. The proverbial finger-­pointing battle ensues.

If there is a conservative, one-­ticket request per week for analysis, this could consume an average of two hours that the analyst works the ticket (includes ticket opening processing, customer communication, real-­time analysis, troubleshooting, and case documentation closure). If this is true for the MSSP and their 450 customers, then it equates to 23,400 tickets per year.

Assuming the average analyst’s compensation is $80 per hour and they spend two hours on each ticket, the cost per ticket is $160. With 23,400 tickets per year, it will cost the MSSP $3,744,000. Over the course of three years, this is $11,232,000 if every customer issues just one ticket investigation per week.

Security Manager provides the data to answer ticket questions faster and on average reduce the time spent by 75% (minutes versus two hours) according to the MSSP. A 75% reduction over the three-­year period is a savings of $8,424,000, or $2,808,000 annually.

The same holds true for the healthcare provider. Using the same financial numbers of $80 per hour and two hours per ticket, if there is one ticket request by the business each week it will cost the company $8,320 per year, or $24,960 over the course of three years.

Assuming a 75% reduction in time spent as well, the company can expect a savings of $18,720 over three years. Likewise, for an average customer with tickets across 25% of their devices (12), the above numbers equate to $99,840 per year, or $299,520 over three years.

Assuming a 75% reduction in time spent, an average company would save nearly $225,000 over 3-­years.

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE NET AGILITY RETURN: +$18,720

ESTIMATED AVERAGE NET AGILITY RETURN: +$224,640

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© 2016 IANS. All rights reserved. Commissioned by FireMon. For more information, write to [email protected].

Results The total return is the sum of the objective, infrastructure, risk, and agility returns added together. Based on the above assumptions, the below indicates an average estimate based on the above data. Organizations should expect the numbers to differ based on their risk tolerance, enterprise business, and any compliance obligations that may increase or decrease the anticipated total return. Having said this, the total return for the healthcare provider and MSSP are called out below:

ESTIMATED HEALTHCARE NET TOTAL RETURN: +$103,520

ESTIMATED AVERAGE COMPANY NET TOTAL RETURN: +$892,240

Both of those scenarios produce a positive three-­year return on security for the FireMon Security Manager, including the entire cost of both acquiring and deploying the system.

It is notable that the objective return alone is positive and larger than the cost of acquisition and deployment. In other words, even if there were no risk or agility return, the overall return from FireMon Security Manager is very positive.

In addition, the product provided other benefits to the customers interviewed. Overall, Security Manager creates a more efficient and focused security team, allowing the team to be more effective in its mission, at a cost substantially less than the benefits derived.

For all of the interviewed customers, the security staff is very happy with the performance of the FireMon Security Manager. Customers affirm that Security Manager met or exceeded all expectations and delivers recognizable benefits to the organizations by identifying and alerting on infections and attacks that no other system can see. Additionally, this is delivered for a cost, both initial and ongoing, that the organizations find creates a true and reasonable return on security.

About IANS IANS is the leading provider of in-­depth security insights and decision support delivered through research, community, and consulting. Fueled by interactions among IANS Faculty and information security practitioners, IANS’ experience-­driven advice helps IT security, risk management, and compliance executives make better, faster technical and managerial decisions.

About FireMon FireMon is an enterprise security management company headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. Founded in 2004, we help organizations find, correct and ultimately avoid gaps in their existing network security infrastructure. The FireMon Proactive Security Intelligence Platform gives security decision makers key management and operations data to reduce risk and provide appropriate levels of access. FireMon Security Manager provides the framework for making intelligent, informed decisions to implement security countermeasures in real time, so you can protect your organization’s network and keep business operations running smoothly.