3 Tips to Help MSPs Prepare Clients for Ransomware Attacks

For today’s businesses, ransomware remains a very real threat. As October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, managed service providers (MSPs) should take this as an opportunity to educate their clients about ransomware and other cyber threats.

As a trusted IT advisor, you can help clients understand that a proper business protection strategy requires a three-pronged approach of education, security and backup.

1. Begin with educating your clients. Perhaps begin the conversation by bringing up a recent ransomware attack that made headlines. This will help your clients come to the realization that these attacks are very real occurrences. It’s also important to urge clients to require all new employees to go through some type of basic cybersecurity training. During this training, SMBs should provide specific visual examples of what a phishing email looks like, which is one of the leading causes of a ransomware infection. Employees should know how to spot a malicious email and know exactly what to do if they do encounter a potential ransomware lure (that is, don’t open attachments; if you see something, say something; etc.). Training is an essential part of protecting your clients against attacks, and it should become a fundamental practice in any business today.

2. Talk to your clients about the various security options on the market today. Begin by introducing the needs for a multi-layered approach to protect against ransomware. Antivirus software, firewall, and web filtering should all fall under this umbrella. Many of your clients will likely already be familiar with these security measures, but what they may not realize is that these security measures are not foolproof. MSPs should also talk to clients about the importance of keeping all software patched and up-to-date in order to protect the business against newly identified threats. Finally, make sure customers understand the need for an additional layer of business protection in the not-so-rare case that ransomware does make it through the front lines of defense.

3. This is where a discussion about a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solution comes in. Modern total data protection solutions will allow businesses to operate from a point in time where a healthy, viable backup occurred. Thus, businesses can avoid substantial downtime if they have BCDR solution in place taking frequent backups. Your clients likely will not care or understand a technical deep dive the way that you would, but they will care about the benefits (and peace of mind!) a BCDR solution can deliver. Focus on the benefits, rather than the features and innovation of the technology. When it comes to the threat of ransomware, these are some noteworthy benefits a BCDR solution offers:

• Your business will not need to pay hackers ransom to get critical data back.
• Your business will avoid data loss–from ransomware or other threats–since backups are taken frequently and can be restored quickly.
• Your business will not experience significant downtime (since users can access critical data and applications while primary systems are being restored).

For more tips to help your clients keep their business data secure, check out our toolkit, Cybersecurity Made MSPeasy, today.

Ryan Weeks is Chief Information Security Officer, Datto.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.