Unified Next-Gen Protection: An MSP Guide to Selling Cybersecurity as a System

Managed IT services, just like the technologies they utilize, need to be efficient and effective in order to complete tasks and sustain growth.  To that end, many MSPs know that it is a challenge to find a cost-effective solution to secure their clients that is easy to manage, reliable and provides superior protection. That’s why Sophos Central is purpose-built as a complete next-gen protection system to help MSPs provide better control over network and device security while allowing for the flexibility required to meet the varying needs of the businesses they serve. Sophos Central harnesses the patented Synchronized Heartbeat technology, allowing endpoint and network activity to communicate with each other to discover and respond to threats. This synchronization provides the world’s most comprehensive cybersecurity system and provides increased automation.

Benefits of a Unified Platform

Hackers and malicious actors continue to prove that small and midsize businesses are most vulnerable to attacks, with 76 percent of SMB’s reporting a cyberattack in 2019.¹  To get to these businesses, the attackers use a variety of tools and systems of their own to gain access. Traditionally, MSPs employ a range of disparate tools from different vendors to combat these threats. However, adding more tools and additional billing cycles dramatically decreases productivity and thus the overall quality of services. Sophos Central is a unified management console that allows MSPs to utilize a range of proven next-gen cybersecurity tools efficiently without disparity.  MSPs who use a single cloud-based management console realize immediate benefits, as it allows them to be more predictive, adaptive and synchronized when applying security services.

Systems are defined by four key elements: central management, integrated components, automated action and extendibility. These four elements are what transform disparate point products into a system. The stronger each of these components, the stronger the system. A system with deep integration will outperform one with weak integration. These same principles apply to cybersecurity when the aim is to protect and scale your solutions to your clients.

Predictive

Sophos Central is backed by the power of artificial intelligence and made even more robust with the inclusion of SophosLabs data scientists. This team is composed of cybersecurity experts that continually analyze our AI and machine learning models, which increases the performance of Sophos products. The capabilities of artificial intelligence and machine learning models are able to decipher anomalies in IT infrastructure quickly and precisely. This allows MSPs to better protect clients by offering cybersecurity that can predict threats and attacks before they happen, allowing your clients to be much more resilient to a cyberattack.

Central Management

What good is lightning-fast technology if it is intrusive to manage and laborious to implement? Sophos Central is a highly intuitive single pane of glass dashboard that installs quickly. It provides a clear picture of clients that you manage and their environments. With Sophos Central, MSPs can easily secure and report on client endpoint, server and network health (Intercept X & XG Firewall), while seamlessly deploying automated phishing emails (Phish Threat), secure cloud environments (Cloud Optix) and much more. Beyond the control, MSPs also benefit from the visibility that allows them to easily cross-sell/upsell into accounts. This scalability and breadth of protection is unmatched in the industry.

Adaptive

Combining the efficiency of a centralized management platform with evolving AI models, Sophos Central gives you the benefits of one of the most intelligent cybersecurity platforms in the industry. Sophos Adaptive Learning capability allows the Sophos Central platform to communicate items such as application usage and threat data to Sophos. This intelligence allows the platform to adapt to the behaviors and actions of systems and users and provide much better protection from threats.

Synchronized

As previously mentioned, Sophos has pioneered a next-gen approach that utilizes a patented Synchronized Heartbeat technology to share network and endpoint data. Synchronized Security is a revolutionary concept in cybersecurity that allows Sophos products to respond automatically to incidents. With Sophos Central, MSPs gain the full benefits of a synchronized cybersecurity system and are able to find threats faster, reduce remediation times with active investigation and secure clients confidently by minimizing threat vectors.

Designed for MSPs

Sophos Central management console provides MSPs with the tools and functionality to secure clients while growing profitability. No other single security platform on the market today can offer the breadth of protection with full featured integrations, scalability and automation–all of which has been developed into this complete cybersecurity system designed for MSPs. To make implementation and usage even easier, Sophos Central integrates with multiple industry-leading RMM and PSA vendors to complement your workflow management and automation. These integrations plus the enhanced Sophos API allow MSPs to offer next-gen cybersecurity without a lot heavy lifting.

Try Sophos Central for yourself to see the advantages of using a truly unified next-gen cybersecurity system to protect your clients.

Selling CyberSecurity as a System

Many MSPs will include “AV” as a checkbox under the base agreement to offer “security.” However, traditional low-cost AV solutions no longer fill the security need of businesses. It’s a well-documented fact that most customers that suffer a breach have a difficult time recovering, or end up paying significant ransom to decrypt their files. When offering security, MSPs need to take a more holistic all-in approach, and offer CyberSecurity as a System, removing the basic security components from the base agreement and charging a premium agreement, whether standard or advanced, at a 50% or 100% premium above their existing base agreement. The cost justification is simple: To deliver a top-notch security offering, more sophisticated technicians are required, additional training and certification are prerequisites, and knowledge of deployment, configuration and management must be mastered.

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