The challenges of buying and selling high-quality security solutions

The real price of Security

Critical Future was engaged by the British Security Industry Association, in a report sponsored by Securitas, to investigate the Real Price of Security.

Professor Terence Tse, PhD from Cambridge University, led the project, and examined how purchasing in B2B transactions is most effective.

Key findings were that buyers should not focus on cost as cheap solutions are likely to have higher whole-life costs, be they the consequence of underutilization or sheer incompetence in dealing with incidents that can lead to legal, financial, and reputational damages. Going low cost at all cost is thus rarely a good idea. Managing security issues is business- critical and neither just a nice add-on service nor a box-ticking exercise.

Just selecting high-quality, more expensive solutions, however, is not the answer either. This paper asserts that it matters far more if solutions can capably overcome the security-related challenges that companies face. To pick the suitable solutions, it is paramount for end users to figure out as much as possible the purposes that they seek to serve. Failure to do so only leads to inappropriate investments.

End users will also find that working closely with vendors helps both parties a great deal in understanding the problems to be solved, as well as in creating solutions to them. Moreover, it would be far more beneficial for the end users to view security not just as a protector of assets but as a business enabler for the entire organisation.