How Managed Security Presents a Golden Opportunity for MSPs

Everybody needs security. This is a pretty obvious statement, but it hasn’t always been taken as seriously as it should be. If it had, we might not have experienced the many breaches we’ve seen during the last few years. The good news is that while breaches continue, there now seems to be a higher level of awareness from companies of all sizes about the need for security. This translates to increased budget dedicated to cybersecurity investments, as executives in large and small businesses recognize that the threat landscape is a vast, diverse and increasingly dangerous beast.

When small and midsize businesses are attacked, they feel the impact more than large companies that have deep pockets. It’s easy to understand that an attack that costs millions of dollars to remediate is a bigger problem for a small company than for a large enterprise. In fact, some small and midsize companies never recover from an attack and end up closing up shop.

In today’s challenging landscape, we’ve seen ransomware occur across all landscapes–enterprise, government, small business. However, small businesses are most susceptible because it’s harder for them to overcome the ransomware, as well as the costs associated with correcting the IT infrastructure and bolstering the security posture that needs to occur in these environments.

So, what does this mean for MSPs?

There Is No Better Time to Become an MSSP

There are market drivers at play that, combined, make now the perfect time to become an MSSP.

One of the biggest drivers is the cyber skills shortage. The security industry currently has a hard time turning out enough professionals to handle the threat landscape. The cyber skill shortage is one of the most challenging issues today—not only in terms of finding talent but also in retaining it. Often when you find experts and hire them and onboard them–then train and enable them around the infrastructure–they end up being poached by OEMs and manufacturers, as well as by competitors. The future doesn’t look any better when it comes to retaining talent for the long term. In fact, it’s going to take years to address the cyber skills gap.

MSSPs can fill an acute market need if they position themselves as having the knowledge and resources to address that need. By doing so, MSSPs can position themselves to generate revenue streams and expand the customer base.

In addition to the cyber skills shortage, there are hundreds of thousands of malware variants introduced every day. Those malware variants include ransomware, which has become a kind of plague. Attackers are going after bigger targets and extorting from victims. We are no longer seeing demands in the hundreds of dollars; attackers are demanding hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

Another market driver is ransomware that is often delivered through phishing. Phishing remains a big challenge. To solve the phishing problem, companies have to address it with technology and user training–two things that MSSPs can easily provide.

And, finally, there is the growing complexity of security implementation. Cybersecurity requires a layered approach that addresses all points where an attack can occur, from the perimeter to the endpoint to the applications to the data itself to all mobile devices in use today. This is a lot for companies to get a handle on, and these are all areas that MSSPs can address.

If you’re an MSP, you already offer some security basics to customers. But if you’re going to make the transition to MSSP, you need to move beyond the basics. Offering the foundational blocks of managed security is essential, but it isn’t enough anymore–considering the size, complexity and potential for harm associated with the current threat landscape. To make that transition, MSPs need to offer advanced and comprehensive solutions that modern businesses increasingly need.

One of the areas where we’ve seen significant investment within our own security practice is building onto our services capabilities, allowing MSPs to have greater security capabilities within their own practices. Some of the things partners ask for the most are the ability to expand on incident response, as well as penetration testing and security posture assessments. These features give them a greater opportunity to do more than just resell a bundle of security solutions, with implementations, 24-hour support or something like incident response.

Ready to learn more about how you can take advantage of the golden managed security opportunity? Please contact us at [email protected] or visit our website for more information.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.