Cybersecurity Expo Phoenix: Cybersecurity Ecosystem to Help MSPs, More Fight Cybercrime
MSPs should be addressing liability in their master service agreements.
Jay McBain is Canalys’ chief analyst for global channels. In a virtual keynote, he talked about the massive growth that’s taking place in cybersecurity and how MSPs will be crucial in helping businesses stay safe.
He also talked about the increasing importance of channel to cybersecurity companies.
“Of the 4,300 security companies we track, 2,000 have channel programs and the rest are coming soon,” McBain said. “And the largest cybersecurity firm in the world has 2% market share, so it’s a complex market.”
Every company is becoming a tech company, and they trust MSPs, McBain said.
“About 1 million partners around the world are having security conversations in front of clients,” he said. “This thing is exploding.”
There’s big opportunities for partners in resales, and marketplaces are having a big impact, McBain said. And the direct element is being assisted by channel.
And when it comes to security, every dollar of vendor revenue can kick up to $10 in channel revenue, he said.
Given macro challenges taking place, customers are pushing forward on transformation, McBain said. They’re accelerating to the cloud, and remote and hybrid work has created new surface area and threat vectors.
“They’re looking to accelerate out of the downturn, so they’re looking hard at partners,” he said.
During his keynote, Adam Bennett, founder and CEO of Crosshair Cyber, gave a glimpse into the mind of a hacker and how they target channel partners.
He said malicious hackers are driving rapid growth in cybersecurity.
“Who here has played with ChatGPT?” Bennett said. “Who has used it for work purposes? There’s all kinds of things going onto this. As if we need more fuel to the fire, every day you see something new. It lowers the bar for malicious threat actors.”
Reflecting on the Kaseya cyberattack, it reiterates how the MSP market is really in the crosshairs because “when you can get into one, you can get into many,” he said.
For hackers, initial access can be the toughest part of launching an attack, Bennett said. That can be via phishing or trying to get someone to download something they shouldn’t, like getting someone in HR to download a resume.
“After initial access is discovery and lateral movement,” he said. “When you’re moving around, have to be very, very careful.”
Next is full compromise and “now I want everything,” Bennett said.
When penetration testing an MSP customer, Bennett found a file share of an old domain and was able to get old credentials out of it that still worked.
“It can be something very simple, like you forgot to encrypt … or get rid of it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s simple housekeeping. This was an MSP, but it could have affected all customers.”
So how should MSPs respond? First, put barriers in the way of hackers, Bennett said. Also, layered defenses and secure architecture are important, as well as conducting a risk assessment and business impact analysis.
In addition, regularly test data recovery, enable proactive response actions, conduct incident response exercises at least annually, and monitor networks 24/7 or hire someone qualified to do the monitoring, he said.
All backups should be encrypted, Bennett said.
“Awareness, email protections, cyber insurance, endpoint and network controls, threat intel, including proactive blocking, vulnerability and patch management, including process and prioritization, are key, and continuous security assessment, seek adversarial viewpoints,” he said.
Shane Gibson, CEO of Professional Sales Academy, highlighted the right and wrong ways to sell cybersecurity. He said there’s a lot of focus on selling by scaring.
“Selling from a fear perspective will get you only so far,” he said. “You won’t be seen as a trusted advisor or true partner. Get away from fear to abundance. Where I see the opportunity is sales and marketing are now a conversation.”
The biggest challenge for salespeople is getting that first conversation, Gibson said. Connecting via social media can help get the conversation started.
The average salesperson sells price, product, company and self, he said.
“People who get by in industry … typically sell on price,” Gibson said. “And then they’ll sell their product, what it is, features, etc., then talk about company and yourself.”
Exceptional salespeople focus on self, their company, a better future state and value, he said. They focus on having “really great conversations” and expanding the person’s perception.
“Good salespeople sell outcomes,” Gibson said. “They collaboratively talk to clients about what it looks like. Then sell not price, but value. So it’s a return on our relationship.”
Good salespeople lead potential customers to talk about things they need, he said.
“They didn’t think they need all this stuff and now they need it,” he said.
Mark Sasson is managing partner at Pinpoint Search Group, a cybersecurity recruitment firm. He gave advice to attendees on attracting and retaining talent.
“Talent isn’t hard to find,” he said. “It’s hard to attract. You can apply process to talent acquisition. You can improve outcomes and repeatability. Process plus professionalism equals success.”
When attracting talent, it’s important to establish a mindset and culture, Sasson said. It’s important to create messaging that projects positive and professional.
“We want to create and map out a comprehensive interview process, a cohesive process,” he said. “You need an informed conversation about what the opportunity is, why it’s being brought up and how it impacts the company.”
Also, all interviewers should be aligned and a liaison is needed to communicate with both the interviewers and the candidates, Sasson said.
The liaison’s sole role is to enhance communications, he said. After an interview, the liaison debriefs the candidate and the company. That’s to ensure people are interpreting what happened correctly and are not left guessing to ensure that “it doesn’t end up breaking up a potentially great relationship.
In terms of retention, one of the main things leading employees to leave their jobs is lack of visibility, Gibson said. In this industry, where a lot of M&A is taking place, leadership might be changing and changes are happening, “if people aren’t told hey, you’re safe, and they don’t know that … it’s highly likely they’re going to leave.”
Business technology attorney Brad Gross told attendees what they should include in their agreements to eliminate liability and manage their customers’ expectations when offering cybersecurity solutions. He’s counseled 6,000 MSPs.
“We’re going to start with your agreements,” he said. “Your agreements suck and that’s why you’re worried. It starts with your master service agreement. A good one covers legal. Here’s the problem: you don’t live in legal and your customers don’t live in legal. Where you exist is in reality, situational reality. You don’t go to bed thinking legal thoughts. Instead, what you’re worried about is reality in the cybersecurity world.”
MSPs recommend multifactor authentication to their clients and they say no, Gross said. Then something bad happens and “they blame you.”
“That’s why you’re worried about liability,” he said. “Show me in your agreement where customers have to listen to you … and if they don’t, it’s on them, not you.”
Agreements also should specify that you’re not responsible for what third-party providers are doing, Gross said.
“When an upstream fails, that’s not failure on your part, and at best you can help with workaround,” he said.
Partners shouldn’t be taking on incident response responsibilities unless it’s in a quote, Gross said.
“Everything should be done pursuant to a quote,” he said. “A quote is what you’re going to do and not going to do. In an incident response situation, the customer has no idea what to do. Have an incident response quote, a statement of work proposal. If you don’t do that type of detail that they sign off on, they will make up rules, assumptions.”
Gareth Case, Redstor‘s chief marketing offer, gave a keynote focusing on how MSPs can maximize their growth potential. Redstor provides backup solutions and data recovery.
With a lack of internal sales and marketing resources, and budget, many MSPs have a tough time attracting clients, he said.
Knowing where to invest is important to prove return on investment, serve new clients and scale your business, Case said.
It’s important to leverage vendors, build relationships and “get their buy in,” he said. Ask about market development funds (MDF), become a reference customer and leverage their social media.
In addition, build a marketing strategy around your ideal customer profile, and hire experienced marketing talent, Case said.
“Acquire another MSP,” he said. “There’s tons of businesses out there for sale. Look for MSPs that serve similar/adjacent markets because the speed to efficiency will be quicker. Don’t underestimate the impact on your business.”
This is the year that product-led growth takes off, Case said. That’s a business methodology in which user acquisition, expansion, conversion and retention are all driven primarily by the product.
“We’re used to product led in our personal lives,” he said. “But in the backup market, they don’t seem to have kept up, there’s still heavy reliance on on-premises devices that pose multiple risks. Moving backup out of an appliance situation is important. There’s too much manual intervention. Time to cash is slow. And end users lack control.”
Gareth Case, Redstor‘s chief marketing offer, gave a keynote focusing on how MSPs can maximize their growth potential. Redstor provides backup solutions and data recovery.
With a lack of internal sales and marketing resources, and budget, many MSPs have a tough time attracting clients, he said.
Knowing where to invest is important to prove return on investment, serve new clients and scale your business, Case said.
It’s important to leverage vendors, build relationships and “get their buy in,” he said. Ask about market development funds (MDF), become a reference customer and leverage their social media.
In addition, build a marketing strategy around your ideal customer profile, and hire experienced marketing talent, Case said.
“Acquire another MSP,” he said. “There’s tons of businesses out there for sale. Look for MSPs that serve similar/adjacent markets because the speed to efficiency will be quicker. Don’t underestimate the impact on your business.”
This is the year that product-led growth takes off, Case said. That’s a business methodology in which user acquisition, expansion, conversion and retention are all driven primarily by the product.
“We’re used to product led in our personal lives,” he said. “But in the backup market, they don’t seem to have kept up, there’s still heavy reliance on on-premises devices that pose multiple risks. Moving backup out of an appliance situation is important. There’s too much manual intervention. Time to cash is slow. And end users lack control.”
TechnoPlanet is building a cybersecurity defense ecosystem of MSPs, MSSPs and security operation centers (SOCs) to help each other in the fight against cybercrime.
That’s according to Julian Lee (pictured above), TechnoPlanet’s CEO. He spoke to us about the ecosystem during last week’s Cybersecurity Expo in Phoenix. It’s an IoT Security Services Association powered by ChannelNext event.
“This ecosystem is something that is going to help all of the channel community to solve the cybersecurity problem,” Lee said. “It’s a big task, of course, and it’s a long journey and there’s many moving parts to it. So in the ecosystem itself, it’s a place where you go to find everything you need to help you solve the cybersecurity problem. And I like to underscore the word everything, because we are going to be baking everything into this one ecosystem exclusively for channel partners, MSPs, MSSPs and SOCs. They want to solve the cybersecurity problem for themselves and their customers. They want to either build it, scale it or outsource it. And we’re going to have parts for each of those depending on their maturity level.”
Cybersecurity Ecosystem to Address Biggest Cybersecurity Challenges
The No. 1 problem facing MSPs when it comes to cybersecurity is there’s “way too many products to figure out what you know and what to choose,” Lee said.
“There’s a lot of them out there, 4,300 companies,” he said. “We’re going to boil that down to 50. And the next step is how do we do this? How do we get our customers to invest more in cybersecurity? It’s going to help them to understand how to sell better and communicate the message better. We can’t afford to have cyberattacks 24/7. It’s just crazy. So we need to push it back down a bit. If you look at it simplistically, we’re looking to build an army within the cybersecurity channel that’s going to push back on the cybercriminals in an effective way with the force of an entire organization behind them with all the things they need to do that.”
Those who sign up for the ecosystem have access to a new marketplace dedicated to cybersecurity for MSPs, MSSPs and SOCs, Lee said.
“Even though this event is on this particular day in February, we don’t stop,” he said. “It’s 365 days a year that we are communicating with them from webinars to updates and content, to new product solutions, to podcasts, to everything in between. What (MSPs, MSSPs and SOCs) are taking back with them is a community that you can rely on 365 days a year. They can meet each other any time virtually. They can go back and meet at the events. There’s no limits so they can lean into each other.”
See our slideshow above for more from Cybersecurity Expo in Phoenix.
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