According to the 2019 Cost of Cybercrime Study report by Accenture & Ponemon, the world economy is at risk of losing $US5.2 trillion globally over the next five years to cyber attacks. To avoid becoming a statistic in today’s dangerous cybersecurity landscape, more and more businesses are seeking ways to improve their security posture.
Usually, these businesses turn to their managed service providers (MSPs) to secure their IT infrastructure. However, most MSPs do not have the personnel, technology, and operational infrastructure to properly address their customers’ IT security needs.
As such, these MSPs end up losing customers to more robust providers due to their inability to provide effective IT security services. With growing demands for managed security services, MSPs that want to remain relevant, retain/increase their market share and increase revenues should include managed IT security services in their suite of managed offerings.
(You might also want to read our Guide on Providing Managed Security for a better understanding of the concept of managed security services.)
Increased Demand for One-Stop IT Shopping
In today’s fast-paced work environment, businesses look for providers that can simultaneously take care of their IT, network infrastructure and security needs. They do not want to deal with a plethora of vendors for technology outsourcing since this involves multiple meetings and consultations with each vendor, ensuring that the solutions from each provider integrate/function properly and managing relationships and invoicing.
Essentially, today’s businesses prefer a one-stop-shop for all their IT needs. This means that MSPs that do more for their clients (i.e. offer MSSP services) have a competitive advantage over those that don’t.
Further reading How You Can Transition from MSP to MSSP
However, transitioning from MSP to MSSP takes time, effort, operational maturity and significant upfront investment in personnel, equipment, certifications, and technology.
To offer managed security services, MSPs must build a Security Operations Center — a combination of people, processes, and technologies that handle the task of protecting clients’ IT infrastructure. They also need a robust security information event management (SIEM) solution to provide real-time analysis of security alerts generated by applications and network hardware. Lastly, MSPs must hire security analysts (to run their SOCs) and develop threat remediation processes to maintain the security posture of the client’s IT infrastructure.
The Way Out
A huge number of MSPs do not have the requisite financial resources and operational maturity to effectively offer managed security services. Those that do have the financial resources need to build the requisite security infrastructure and hire the right team. This takes time and your clients need their IT systems secure…today.
The only way out of this dilemma is to partner with a trusted MSSP. A strategic partnership with an established MSSP enables you to leverage their mature managed security offerings to effectively secure your client’s IT infrastructure.
To identify the best MSSP to partner with, start by reviewing the managed services you offer and the type of security services your customers are looking for. If your clients come from a particular industry or your managed services are geared towards a vertical, it’s a good idea to partner with an MSSP that specializes in that industry or vertical. The MSSP should also have the ability to scale its MSSP services as your company and client base grows.
Wrapping Up
If you’re looking to enhance your MSP’s security services portfolio to offer one-stop shopping to your managed IT clients, partnering with an MSSP is your best bet. While you can buy or build your own MSSP from the ground up (if you have the resources), partnering with an MSSP is the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to offer managed security services to your customers.
- Phishing response checklist
- Phishing awareness training slides
- Anti-phishing posters
