Outsourcing and the Increased Dangers of 'Dial Up' Access

IT outsourcing is becoming increasingly popular. The recent Holway Report into the UK IT services industry found spending on outsourcing last year grew by 15% compared with 5% the previous year. Also the value of outsourcing deal s doubled between 1999 and 2000 from #713 million to #1.8 billion. The main advantages of outsourcing are clear. Firstly, it allows a business to fix the price of supporting its IT, and secondly it alleviates the requirement to employ and maintain a large body of IT support staff in house. However from an IT security perspective an outsourced environment can create many issues. Identifying such issues and maintaining the security of an organizations IT infrastructure has to be considered along with outsourcing, and not after it. All too often this is not the case, and the objective this paper is to highlight how the current trend of outsourcing support services can dangerously augment the already well-known issues surrounding dial up access to a corporate network.