Kaseya's Annual MSP Benchmark Survey Reveals Compliance Challenges, Remote Opportunities

Compliance. This is increasingly becoming a pain point for providers. The ever-evolving compliance landscape has been a significant challenge for SMBs. Three in four (74%) MSPs said their customers struggle to meet regulatory compliance requirements. 75 percent of the MSP respondents either offer or are interested in offering compliance services. Naerly three in five (59%) have clients that were required to comply with HIPAA guidelines. This was followed by PCI DSS (41%) and GDPR (27%).

Cybersecurity. Unsurprisingly, security remains top of mind of MSPs, and for good reason. Providers are feeling increasingly concerned about the cybersecurity landscape — one-half said their business is more at risk of cybercrime compared to one year ago. This is an 11% increase from 2021’s data. Of course the increased focus is justified. Almost half of MSPs reported that a significant portion of their clients fell victim to a cyberattack within the last 12 months. Though cybersecurity is a significant concern for MSPs, it has also been a revenue driver; the survey found that one-half of MSPs evaluate the threat landscape quarterly to add new services to their lineups.

Remote work. This new way of working has provided a wealth of opportunities. The pandemic has permanently reshaped the work environment, with 22% of respondents stating that remote workforce setup was the top service requested by their clients — followed by cloud migration (21%) and business continuity (13%). Remote work is also a significant pain point for MSPs’ customers, with 36% of respondents selecting it as one of the top three IT problems for clients in 2022.

MSPs value integrated solutions. Two in three (64%) MSPs said integration among core applications, including RMM, PSA and IT documentation software, is either critical or very important, with 78% stating that this integration helps drive profit.

Supply chain issues and hiring. These are two major challenges MSPs expect to face in 2022. The lion’s share (92%) of MSPs have had supply chain issues impact their ability to sell solutions. One in five (19%) said hiring would be their primary challenge in 2022 — a 15% jump from 2021.

Active incident response plans. These are still a major need for MSPs’ clients. Only 4% of respondents said that their entire client base has an active incident response plan. About half of the respondents reported that only one in four of their clients had an active incident response plan. Eight percent of MSPs stated that none of their clients had an incident response plan in place.

Disaster recovery capabilities. Most MSPs are testing their capabilities, but frequency varies. IT professionals should test their disaster-recovery capabilities regularly. This is of course due to the increasing complexity of IT environments and the cyber threat landscape. Kaseya’s 2022 survey found 30% of MSPs simulate disaster recovery capabilities quarterly, 25% test annually and 9% test monthly — with 15% admitting that they never test.