Verizon Business Extends Proactive Security Program To Mid-Sized Companies

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., April 20. Medium-sized businesses can now better assess and manage their security risks associated with protecting sensitive company, employee and customer information by tapping into a new, comprehensive security assessment and certification program from Verizon.

Verizon's Security Management Program (SMP) Business proactively protects businesses from security threats by leveraging a set of best practices to evaluate a company's security posture. It recommends ways to cost-effectively improve security and ease compliance with industry regulations. "Mid-sized businesses face the same security risks as large enterprises, but often have far fewer resources to devote to security," said Carrie Gray, executive director of medium business marketing for Verizon Business. "As one of the most mature security programs in the industry, Verizon SMP offers the expertise and the tools needed to enhance a customer's security posture. This new service leverages the know-how from Verizon's long-standing SMP practices and tailors it specifically to meet the needs of medium-sized businesses." According to industry experts, poor security can result in lost data, customers and money. In fact, the 2009 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that mid-sized businesses are highly vulnerable to attack, with more than 50 percent of breaches occurring in organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees. Additionally, one-third of breaches studied came from companies with fewer than 100 employees.

Verizon's SMP Business is available in two offerings: SMP Business Onsite and SMP Business Remote. Through the Business Onsite service, Verizon security experts analyze critical security controls (including wireless assessment, physical inspection and internal risk assessment) at the customer's location while remotely validating additional controls (process and procedure validation, policy review, desktop assessment, payment card industry vulnerability scans and e-mail filter checks). Via the SMP Business Remote service, Verizon security experts cost-effectively perform many of the same basic security activities as those offered by SMP Onsite, performed remotely.

SMP Business Onsite customers can also pursue an SMP Certification, which must be either maintained or renewed annually. The rigorous certification validates that an organization's information-security controls, policies and procedures have been examined, measured and validated against key controls of the internationally recognized and publicly vetted ISO 27002 information security standard. SMP Business comes complete with an easy-to-use Web portal that lets businesses view, manage and report on key aspects of their security program including their task and compliance status.

Over the past 13 years, thousands of large businesses and government agencies have relied on the Security Management Program to help them systematically reduce risk. Through its proactive, ongoing approach to security, the program addresses a broad range of security needs from network and system analysis to security-policy inspection.