Customer Security Environment: Understanding customers' views on security

Based on several research projects and close co-operation with leading security providers and their customers, we have identified some gaps between security providers' and customers' views on security. Currently, security providers seek to offer more and more comprehensive security solutions, whereas customers are not automatically willing to commit themselves to one security provider. For a service provider, it seems to be a challenge to understand specific customer needs and benefits related to security services. Marketing of security solutions is mainly based on negative arguments, i.e. risks, threats etc., whereas customers would welcome more positive outcomes, i.e. promises of good functionality and financial benefits. How the customer sees the security and what the salesman talks about are often two different things. In this paper, we provide a new framework of Customer Security Environment as a solution that helps security providers to promote more customer-dominant logic in their business. This paper answers the following research question: How can security services better promote and provide benefits to the customers' business