What is the MSSP Opportunity?

BY IT GLUE | November 19, 2019

Easy to talk about, a little harder to conceptualize and execute. The MSSP opportunity is often pointed to as the next big thing for managed service providers, but what exactly is the opportunity?

In short, it’s an expansion of your suite of services that touches upon an existing and growing issue: cybersecurity. Whether your clients are aware or not of the growth in frequency and understand the ramifications for their business, it doesn’t minimize the issue and certainly doesn’t make it disappear. The risk of a cyberattack doesn’t cease to exist simply whether your head is in the sand or in the clouds.

In case you haven’t noticed, the MSP industry has becoming increasingly crowded and competitive. How do you compete in a cut-throat market? You differentiate and evolve your business so that it taps into changes in the IT industry.

There’s good reason why an MSP is well positioned to capture this emerging market need. First and foremost is the fact that you already have an established relationship with the market (your existing client base). The channel of conversation is open and you have the information to know who to talk to and how. Further to this you’re already the point-person for IT-related issues. As if that wasn’t enough, you have an in-depth understanding of their network—both the hardware and software—and are aware of the potential points of attack that demand protection from cybercriminals. The bottom line is that you are positioned to pluck this low hanging fruit.

Even if transitioning to an MSSP is a natural extension of your services, it may be uncharted territory for your MSP, and the next steps may be unclear. The first move forward is to understand why this is important for a client to think about. When you understand this, you can then convey this information to them, and in doing so make the business case for why they should care about it. Thinking about this in the context of your existing clients, will also highlight what cybersecurity services you should offer.

Here’s the lowdown: 76% of US companies experienced a cyberattack in the past 12 months, and this is up from 70% in 2018.1 Another study found that 32% of SMBs have experienced a security breach in the past five years.2 The odds are not in favor of businesses. Your clients will most certainly be targeted by an attack, and chances are that without proper cybersecurity safe-checks, an attack will eventually be successful. Malware is the most common type of attack method, and includes viruses, adware, spyware, cryptojacking, remote access trojans, rootkits, worms, keyloggers and exploit kits.3 In fact, 1 in 5 SMBs report having fallen victim to a ransomware attack.3 The bad news for your clients is that with the growth of the IoT and the adoption of 5G and other technological advances, new cybersecurity vulnerabilities will be created. The good news for you is that cybersecurity vulnerabilities result in additional cybersecurity needs that you can profit from. Pointing out a client’s security holes leads into the conversation of how you can help.

Once you have client buy-in, the next task is delivering these services. For some things you and your techs will be able to implement independently, with others you might have to enlist the expertise of a third-party services. It’s important to remember that, as is the case with any new endeavor, there’s a learning you’ll move along as you build out your services. It’s important to consider who’s responsible for what, and make sure you have your cybersecurity basis covered in terms of identification, monitoring, protection, and disaster recovery.

Cybersecurity is a growing opportunity and tapping into it means your revenue will grow with it. When you develop your services early on you get in on the ground floor and are prepared to fully capture this opportunity as it expands. With respect to IT Glue we focus on making sure the data you store in IT Glue is the most secure with SOC 2 (Type II) Certification, SSO, audit logs, user permissions, MFA, the Vault and other security features.

To learn more about making the shift from MSP to MSSP, catch this upcoming webinar with James Ratcliff, someone who successfully completed this transition with his MSP. Register here.

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1 Ponemon Institute study
2 Kaseya White Paper
3 Datto’s Global State of the Channel Ransomware Report 2019

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