Cybersecurity Dominates 2024 MSP 501 Services

The Channel Futures 2024 MSP 501 is a diverse group. They range from single-digit employees to more than 15,000, spanning six continents and 10 countries. Their revenue ranges from a few million dollars to more than 25 companies in the hundreds of millions. The most common thread is that they sell managed security services.

Security was the most commonly sold managed service among the 2024 MSP 501. It wasn’t quite unanimous, but 99% of the MSP 501 reported revenue from security services — reflecting the importance of cybersecurity. The other most popular services were help desk/service desk (93%), managed email/anti-spam (91%), cloud storage (89%) and remote monitoring and management (88%).

Cybersecurity covers a lot of ground these days. Endpoint security, network security, email security, end-user security training, managed detection and response (MDR), security information and event management (SIEM), security operations center (SOC), intrusion protection services (IPS) and dark web monitoring were all sold by at least three-quarters of the 2024 MSP 501. So it’s no wonder that 76% of the MSP 501 said managed security was among their biggest growth area last year, putting it atop that list, too.

Cybersecurity also plays a role in compliance and disaster recovery — two more popular services sold by the MSP 501. And most (52%) of the MSPs selling AI-powered solutions are doing so in cybersecurity services.

Related:Channel Futures MSP 501: Top Managed Service Providers 2024, 501-451

Some disciplines – such as disaster recovery – were around long before ransomware became a major threat. It has become a cyber play because recovering data after man-made malicious attacks rivals the need to recover from natural disasters. Disaster recovery as a service is a way to achieve resiliency by helping companies get their data and operations up and running. But DR is more complex now because of the type of attacks have expanded, and infrastructure is more spread out.

“Recovery is cool again,” said Recovery Point CEO Jack Dziak, whose company ranked No. 6 on the 2024 MSP 501 list. “Ransomware attacks are by definition disasters. They may be small, they may be large, but a ransomware attack could cripple a business, if not end it. There are plenty of stories out there about how it's done both. What we've seen in the first half of this year and even throughout last year, was an increased scrutiny on cyber plans. Therefore, resiliency plans on the part of boards, on the part of CFOs, on the part of their insurance providers, and others in the ecosystem.”

Security fears also prompt stronger regulations, which can also provide opportunities for MSPs.

Related:2024 MSP 501 Webinar On-Demand: Business Insights from Top MSPs

“I couldn’t agree more — recovery is cool, and high availability is mandatory,” said Marc Capri, president of Ensono (No. 2 on MSP 501 list). “And regulation that is in place today is just getting stronger.”

Omega Systems (No. 71 MSP) added Smart Comply compliance as a service, Smart Guard MDR and enhanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) services in early 2024. Omega CEO Mike Fuhrman said cybersecurity and regulatory compliance continue to grow in importance as people move workloads and increase their attack surfaces, and as regulations increase in fields such as retail, health care, financial and legal.

“Security is a big opportunity for us,” Fuhrman said. “We’re going to continue to invest organically and look for inorganic opportunities in and around security and compliance. We think the world is only going to get more complex for customers to navigate. All of this represents a tremendous opportunity to be that trusted adviser with customers and offer them abilities to make sure they're not just staying compliant, but they're hardened, secure and ready to respond if and when they see an attack.”

Omega Systems' Mike Fuhrman

RecoveryPoint’s Dziak said his MSP requires customers to take steps such as immutable snapshots, air-gapped backups, clean rooms for test/dev, and recovery planning. Still, ensuring resiliency has become more complex in recent years because of what he calls “continuous shifting of production environments into more elastic instantiations.”

“What happens in the production world, we have to mirror in the recovery world,” Dziak said. “We have to replicate it, we have to manage it, we have to orchestrate that recovery in the same exact fashion as it happens in a production environment. And there is the hybridization of production environments. As a service provider that has to deliver on the resiliency and the recovery of those elastic production environments, we're seeing those workloads factored into everything from location, sourcing, various consumption models.

RecoveryPoint's Jack Dziak

“And so that pushes quite a bit of creativity, on everything from solutioning, to pricing to delivery," he added.

It also pushes a lot of companies to turn to MSPs for their cybersecurity, resiliency and compliance.