World's Best MSPs Tell Us Why Cybersecurity Is Top of Mind
We’re nearing the second quarter after a tumultuous year. We checked in with some 501ers to get a sense of what they’re seeing.
March 22, 2021
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“We’ve been talking about cybersecurity and the threat landscape for quite some time now from the perspective of providers, from the heroes of the story. But what happens when we are the targets? What happens when the perspective shifts and we have to secure our own domains? If MSPs are not paying attention to what is in their own infrastructure, it’s time to do so.”
—Nancy Sabino, CEO & co-founder, SabinoCompTech
“In our current post-pandemic landscape with most folks working from anywhere (WFA), the network perimeter is no longer limited to the local area network (LAN). Whereas before companies invested in advanced firewalls and best-of-breed security hardware protecting their corporate offices, today we have broken down that security perimeter and made it infinite in scope. LAN apps once tied to on-premises servers are now cloud apps (SaaS) tied to some remotely hosted data center. Employees once tied to their company desktops are now bringing their own devices to work from anywhere.
The post-pandemic world has forced us to reimagine how we will work. The corporate culture now requires WFA and BYOD, whereas before it was a flexible exception not the rule.
Unfortunately for IT, we now need to rethink how we can set up network perimeters that have no limits. How do we support apps that are based in the cloud? Do our security tools support someone’s non-Windows device? How do we create redundancy for a remote data center that’s no longer in-house?”
—Anthony Oren, president, Nero Consulting
“The ‘work from home’ trend has had a huge impact on our business. As employees work outside the security perimeter of their office environment, businesses find themselves at greater risk for ransomware. Demand for employee awareness training for anti-phishing attacks has exploded.
We have also seen strong demand to lift and shift workloads to the cloud to support remote workers reliably and secure access to critical business systems and data. Also, co-Managed IT is gaining popularity. Many small IT departments don’t have the skill or capacity to keep up with the demands of the remote workforce. With our 220+ locations, we find ourselves able to supplement IT as we are within a truck roll of most businesses across the nation.”
—Dan Shapero, president and COO, TeamLogic
“It used to be that supplying your security stack of products and best practices was good enough to keep your customers safe. These are items like firewalls, antivirus, Domain Name Service (DNS) gateways, spam filtering, security awareness training, multifactor authentication (MFA), etc. But now, above and beyond the product stack, you need eyes watching your environments. Having a managed detection and response (MDR) system in place is almost becoming a must. It has gone from having a wall around your environment not being enough; you now need the guards on the wall fighting off the bad guys.
This is something that I believe will be a big trend moving forward. Not just for the big guys, but also the SMBs. There are a handful of companies that are starting to provide these types of services to MSPs, such as us.”
—Tom Bowles, president, Alltek IT Services
“We are seeing a big increase in cybersecurity requirements across all industries. As the threats continue to escalate, including the most recent Exchange attacks, requirements are being pushed further and further downstream into small businesses.
For example, the CMMC requirements for a small business that might be a subcontractor of a subcontractor for a federal contract can be pretty daunting and hard to implement in an SMB environment. As we try to help our clients navigate these ever increasing requirements, as well as generally protect them, new threats are coming out every day.”
—Larry Schwartz, president/CEO, Midnight Blue Technology Services
“It seems like the amount of vendors offering cybersecurity solutions to MSPs has skyrocketed in the last year. Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been a transformational cyber resiliency shift for SMBs; they are now relying more on MSPs to deliver their cybersecurity services stack.
It is inevitable that a cyberattack can occur for any business. For the channel, cyber resilience means an MSP will not be able to choose one vendor for all their cyber security needs. As many vendors offer the same solutions, it is important to partner with a vendor that has strong, scalable solutions to identify, protect, detect, respond and recover from a cyberattack.”
—Ian Evans, president, E-Tech
“A hot topic that just about every MSP is talking about is dark web monitoring. It is an important service, but it’s just one of the many layers of security that must be in place for our customers. When MSPs run entire campaigns around dark web monitoring, I think they’re doing their marketing and business a disservice. Many times, discussing the layered approach is going to be more meaningful than just talking about the most “trendy” service added to the mix.
Another hot topic is cybersecurity awareness training. This service is very beneficial and meets the needs of the customer and the IT team. We have peace of mind that our clients are better prepared and the end user now has additional knowledge and skill. We have actually expanded on these trainings by offering educational webinars (not boring webinars about backup). We have specialists speaking on Excel, Outlook, SharePoint and other directly applicable skills that end users utilize every day. Training and education is always a good idea, so this is a trend I can get behind.”
—Taher Hamid, VP of business development, Alltek IT Services
“With the hot button pressed on SaaS-based offerings flooding into the channel, it’s easy to be attracted to tales of large margins and single-panes-of-glass promises. The trend has been growing for some time now, and MSPs looking to make the shift from project-based delivery to managed services are finding that there is a clear difference. Both in the way we used to do it, and what is now main stage.
We have done wonders building hourly-based contracts with X hours a month for a fixed fee for some time now. So managed services, although less reactive and challenging to swing toward, wasn’t as much of a jump as we thought it would be. Honestly, it made us better, more profitable and allowed us to focus more on our customers.
The elephant in the room is “as a service.”
This is the buzz on the boards and around the industry. For those wondering what I am talking about, as a service is the new kid on the block. Although it sounds like what we have been providing since the beginning of time, “services for cash” is a whole new ballgame.”
—Juan Fernandez, VP of managed IT services, ImageNet Consulting
“With the hot button pressed on SaaS-based offerings flooding into the channel, it’s easy to be attracted to tales of large margins and single-panes-of-glass promises. The trend has been growing for some time now, and MSPs looking to make the shift from project-based delivery to managed services are finding that there is a clear difference. Both in the way we used to do it, and what is now main stage.
We have done wonders building hourly-based contracts with X hours a month for a fixed fee for some time now. So managed services, although less reactive and challenging to swing toward, wasn’t as much of a jump as we thought it would be. Honestly, it made us better, more profitable and allowed us to focus more on our customers.
The elephant in the room is “as a service.”
This is the buzz on the boards and around the industry. For those wondering what I am talking about, as a service is the new kid on the block. Although it sounds like what we have been providing since the beginning of time, “services for cash” is a whole new ballgame.”
—Juan Fernandez, VP of managed IT services, ImageNet Consulting
2020 will always be the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will always be a pivot point for companies all over the world, and the birth of new business trends across the board. In the IT services world, it’s no stretch to say 2020 was the year that altered the MSP industry forever.
It wasn’t just new trends rising from the ashes of the Dumpster fire that was 2020. Some already existing technologies and processes were spurred on by new and changing needs. Those needs very well may have changed how MSPs will operate for years to come.
We’re taking applications for the 2021 MSP 501. It’s the biggest and best collection of managed service providers from around the world. |
We checked in with some of our MSP 501ers to get their take on the current hottest happenings in the industry. Hint: Just about everyone is talking cybersecurity.
Click through the slideshow above to see what they had to say.
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