The Perpetually Valuable MSP: Offering Security Services

The sector continues to advance in its adoption of security services. As reported on MSPmentor, this is a rapidly expanding market, with continued opportunity for solution providers. With a fast-growing segment of the market being mid-sized businesses, this seems like a ripe opportunity to deliver services.

According to Gartner (and as quoted in the most recent CompTIA security report), the global security market was expected to reach $71.1 billion dollars by the end of 2014. So this is big business. Interestingly, based on analysis of data on successful attacks, many stats indicate that security should at least be a solvable problem for mid-sized businesses:

• More than 90% of successful breaches required only the most basic techniques.
• Only 3% of breaches were unavoidable without difficult or expensive actions.
• Outsiders were responsible for most breaches.
• 85% of breaches took months to be discovered; the average time is five months.
• 96% of successful breaches could have been avoided if the victim had put in place simple or intermediate controls.
• 75% of attacks use publicly known vulnerabilities in commercial software that could be prevented by regular patching.

When considering the above information, a logical pairing of services to deliver to this market could include patch management, system alerting, managed antivirus, email security and web filtering, which combines a layered defense to provide good SMB protection. Combining this toolkit is straight-forward enough, and all can easily be delivered as monthly recurring revenue. 

Implementing a Security Offering

In previous columns, the concept of the Perpetually Valuable MSP has been discussed. The post “Best Practices for Business Agility,” pulled right from the research, gives us guidance on how to proceed. Rather than making the offering perfect, best-in-class MSPs test a trial offering with customers, experiment, and refine by soliciting feedback and guidance from those using the service.

For our new security service, for example, the technical team will understand the various challenges in the service and deliver an experimental bundle. Sales and finance will input ranges of prices and cost of service delivery, and management will determine appropriate margins for the offering. The team will argue in the alternative, offering reasons not to buy the service to try and establish credibility, learn from mistakes before offering them to the market, and determine appropriate bundles.

The quest for perfection in our security service could potentially mean never actually releasing anything. Instead, an iterative process of testing the new service and making incremental improvements will help ensure business agility. When testing, it’s important to understand that you can try only one variable at a time, testing and changing with an analytical methodology.   

This service can be an additional line of business, or easily integrated into an existing managed services offering. Each business can explore how best to do this, and launching with perfection isn’t required. Instead, try the options, see which work, and experiment. Innovation doesn’t happen by waiting for perfection; instead it happens by constantly striving for the next change.  

Looking for this kind of opportunity is the goal of any technology business–and any business in general. Leveraging the techniques of being a Perpetually Valuable MSP means remaining agile, open to innovation, and ensuring relevancy going forward. 

Dave Sobel, Director of Partner Community at MAXfocus, is responsible for fostering the growth and success of MAXFocus Partners. As Director of Partner Community, he helps promote collaboration, education and innovation among MAXfocus Partners and among the industry as a whole, ensures they have access to business, technology and market resources, and are utilizing the MAX Platform to achieve positive growth, enhance their offerings and become best-in-class solution providers. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.