Autotask Survey: Managed Security a Growing Need

The influx of devices in the workplace is changing the way IT service providers (ITSPs) do business.

An Autotask survey of more than 1,100 ITSPs found that there is an increased demand for them to manage the security concerns of their clients.

“Our customers’ customers essentially want to do two things,” CEO Mark Cattini said. “They want to do achieve greater technology through the use of information technology, but they want to use less infrastructure.”

The situation is ironic in a sense. End users are calling for less physical infrastructure while possessing more endpoints than ever, said Patrick Burns, Autotask’s vice president of product management. Burns said those clients want to avoid expensive-to-maintain systems.

“They want to take advantage of the cloud, extensibility, cost-effectiveness, efficiency [and] productivity, but they actually need more endpoint-type devices to take advantage of that type of infrastructure.”{ad}

But Burns said this demand for less infrastructure won’t hurt the business of ITSPs, who are positioned to take a more trusted role.

“Getting rid of infrastructure doesn’t mean minimiz[ing] or reduc[ing] the amount of opportunities. It actually increases it, because the end-client businesses don’t really know how to get into the cloud,” he said. “They need expertise. They need guidance. They need some of these solutions to be brokered.”

The survey found that 55 percent of ITSPs saw endpoint increases that lead to security problems.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a time where everybody’s more concerned about [sic] security,” Cattini said.

Autotask and many of its ITSPs are recommending file synchronization and sharing (FSS) as a remedy. FSS involves more than the traditional security approach that oversees email, Cattini said.

“[There’s] an awful lot of security around business data and not around business documents, and that in my opinion is the core of FSS,” he said.

The survey also found that hiring is on the rise in 80 percent of ITSPs. Client-renewal rates also increased from last year, according to the survey.