Are tight budgets crimping your ability to provide adequate web security to your organization? Can you afford $30/month per user instead? Don't lament if you can't afford a shiny new Bluecoat ProxyAV, you may be able to get the same level of service in a subscription based model.Nothing is sacred anymore. Banner ads have always been annoying, but at least they used to be safe. Not anymore. Remember when PDF's were considered safest type of attachment to open due to their static nature? HA! Staying on top of today's web based threats is impossible to do without the help of a top notch web security appliance. Unfortunately, those appliances can be costly, especially for small to medium sized enterprises. An even bigger problem for SME's comes in the way of management. Do you have the resources to manage and troubleshoot problems with a caching and web security gateway?

If affordability and lack of resources are getting in the way of providing adequate web security for your organization, don't just throw your hands up in the air, you might want to consider a SaaS based web security service. For all of the reasons that SaaS has been embraced in the enterprise applications space, web security as a service is offering similar cost and management benefits for organizations struggling with the economics of web security.

Web security in the cloud may not be for everyone, so test it carefully in your environment to see if it's the right fit both economically and technically. Many of the biggest players in the web security space are already offering, or are close to offering, their technology in a subscription based model. So if you can't afford a Bluecoat, a Websense or a Finjan box this year, then perhaps you can find a SaaS Web Security vendor that offers that technology as a service now for short dollars periodically instead of all at once.

Are you using a SaaS web security vendor now? Share your experience with me, and our readers. I'm particularly interested in hear about what sort of additional internet latency you've realized as a result of shipping all of your outbound web traffic to a 3rd party.