In a “I want it now” world – this blog is a direct hit. Both new and experienced managed services providers (MSPs) can benefit from opening up to new ideas. This blog is exactly that with deep insights into using security offerings to drive MSP success. Read on!
Cloud Services Providers (CPSs) are looking to increase the value they provide to their small-to-midsize business (SMB) and enterprise customers. Many want to branch out, offering additional services beyond basic connectivity. Their goals in such an expansion are to increase customer stickiness, generate new revenue streams, and continue to meet customers’ needs in the evolving digital economy.
Meeting these objectives is pushing many CSPs to add managed security services to their portfolio of offerings. The same pressures are driving many established managed security service providers (MSSPs) to transform their service portfolio.
How MSSP Services Are Evolving
One trend in the MSSP space is the expanding range of services these firms provide and an overall desire to provide business outcomes that customer are demanding. Previously, many MSSPs offered only firewall-based security services. Some now are beginning to differentiate themselves from the competition by supporting corporate clients in every facet of security.
Their offerings may include everything from virtual private networks (VPNs) to data center virtualization, from software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN) to SD-Branch, and from endpoint protection to web application firewalls. Further, as companies in every industry undergo digital transformation, it is critical for full-service MSSPs to offer multi-cloud security. Threat intelligence and advanced threat protection—through sandboxing, security information and event management (SIEM), and other capabilities—are also crucial in combating ever-more-sophisticated threats.
As they expand their portfolio of offerings, MSSPs need to keep an eye on the efficiency of their service delivery. Employing automation wherever possible, as well as orchestration among solutions, is increasingly important. Improving efficiency enables MSSPs to scale up more easily, as deployment of security to additional systems consumes minimal staff resources. More efficient operations can also reduce time to market because adding new services does not necessarily require the service provider to add staff with specific skills and expertise. Automation can even lead to customer empowerment if harnessed by an MSSP to give customers direct access to information about their security environment, or even the ability to make certain decisions about security settings.
In addition to providing a wider range of technology-focused services, many MSSPs are starting to offer consulting services. They may branch out into vulnerability and penetration testing, digital forensics and risk monitoring, and malware code analysis. These types of value-added services must be built on a solid foundation of effective and efficient security technologies, both to ensure the accuracy of information being analyzed and to minimize the staff time consumed by rote security tasks.
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