MSP Growth Opportunities Abound in Cybersecurity for Small Businesses

Written by Dror Liwer
May 21, 2019

Offer an end-to-end security service and an assessment to be a cybersecurity hero for SMBs.

… enterprise actually needs, leaving small businesses looking for more.

How Can MSPs Capitalize on SMB Demand for Security Services?

While falling victim to cyberattack might not monetarily cost corporations much, many small businesses would crumble. According to a Cisco special report, 53% of SMBs have experienced a data breach with more than half of those attacks resulting in more than $500,000 worth of damages – more than enough to put many SMBs out of business within a year. Additionally, only 33 percent of small businesses believe that they could remain profitable for more than three months if they permanently lost access to their essential data.

Simply put, small businesses need a cybersecurity hero. MSPs have the ability to become just that. Here’s how:

Actively stress the importance of cybersecurity. Let clients and potential customers know that cybersecurity is always top of mind, positioning company leaders as thought experts who can be trusted.
Offer a cybersecurity assessment service. Many SMBs don’t know where to start when it comes to protecting their business from potential cyberattacks. Providing an assessment that includes security suggestions can go a long way in cementing a partnership.
Make it simple. Cybersecurity can be very intimidating for a small business, potentially leading to denial or procrastination in establishing a cyber plan. MSPs can ease that stress by offering an end-to-end service that outsources all of the security monitoring and remediation, providing peace of mind to the customer.
Be transparent. Offer a weekly cyber report that will give the customer a sense of what happened during the week – what potential issues were discovered and how they were handled by technology and your team.

In addition, to deliver the best service for SMB clients, MSPs should provide security services that not only identify risks, but automatically mitigate them. This gets ahead of the data breach and minimizes the need for human intervention from both the end user and the MSP security specialists.

Small businesses face unprecedented risk, and no entity is better positioned to help them than MSPs.

Dror Liwer is the co-founder and CISO of Coronet, a leading provider of data breach protection for companies that use the cloud. He brings more than 25 years of technology, security and business development experience to Coronet, including posts as CIO of the IDF’s Military Police, CEO at Pose, a venture partner at RDSeed, general manager at IXI Mobile and senior VP at Publicis and Wunderman. Follow Liwer or Coronet on LinkedIn or on Twitter @coronetworks.