5 Essential Factors MSPs need to Consider when Choosing a Security Platform

Posted by Trevagh Stankard on Tue, Aug 2nd, 2022

The managed service provider community has taken up the challenge of protecting against increasing and complex cybersecurity threats on behalf of their clients. This drive to security is now ubiquitous amongst MSPs, with 99% of the sector offering security services, according to a 2021 report by Datto. With so much competition for security services in the MSP market, how does a managed services provider differentiate itself from other MSPs?

Here are the factors an MSP company should consider when choosing an exceptional security platform that lets your company stand out in a crowded space.

The Essentials of a Layered Security Platform

There are many security platforms available; so many, in fact, that picking the right one for your clients can be difficult. A good starting point is to look at the key security pain points of your customers. One of the favored tactics of the cybercriminal community is the use of phishing and malicious websites. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) report for Q3 2021, shows phishing attempts were at a record high in 2021, with attacks doubling since early 2020. These attacks reflect the surge in ransomware infections, also at a record high during 2021.

Finding a layered cybersecurity platform that deals with the sophistication and complexity of modern phishing threats, will give an MSP a competitive edge. If an MSP can deliver an effective cybersecurity platform that prevents phishing threats, clients will save money, protect their systems against ransomware and loss of data, maintain regulatory compliance, and prevent reputation damage.

Here are five factors to use as a buying guide when choosing a great layered cybersecurity platform to deliver value to your clients.

Five of the Most Important Cybersecurity Platform Considerations

A systematic approach to the evaluation of a security platform will give you the best intelligence to make a good choice. Here are five factors that are must-have features in that evaluation process.

The Security Platform is Innovative

The cybersecurity threat landscape has recently been described by ENISA in their Threat Landscape Report 2021 as:

“the cybersecurity landscape has grown in terms of sophistication of attacks, their complexity and their impact.” 

Keeping up with changing cyber-threats means that a cybersecurity platform must be adaptive to changing attack conditions and tactics. Innovation in phishing and content filtering should be evidenced during the evaluation. Some of the latest developments in this area include the use of crowd-trained machine learning algorithms, that use real-time data. Machine learning algorithms are trained to spot patterns and anomalies and automatically filter malicious content. These algorithms can also be used to protect against zero-day threats, which are some of the most difficult to detect cyber-threats. However, also look for a security platform that offers a multi-layered approach to threat detection that makes use of a variety of mechanisms to protect against malicious content.

Ease of Deployment and Management

When evaluating a security platform, make sure that deployment and management of the platform is easy. As an MSP, you can benefit from reduced costs, resources, and time, if the security platform can be centrally managed. Look for a solution that is cloud-based. A centrally managed cloud-based security platform will make deployment across a client’s expanded corporate network, simple and fast.

Management of updates, patches, and new configuration settings should ideally be automated and/or easy to perform. A cloud-based security platform should be able to automatically deploy and upgrade smoothly across all devices and computers on a client’s network.

MSP Friendly Pricing Model and Dedicated Program

Check out if the security platform vendor runs a dedicated MSP partner program. Security platform providers who have designed their platforms for deployment and management by an MSP will have keen pricing models. Typical MSP programs will provide several benefits such as:

• Designed to deeply integrate into an existing Service Stack through APIs and RMM integrations
• Offer competitive pricing strategies that reflect the SMB market.
• Offer a recurring revenue model on a high margin, subscription-based, security platform as SaaS
• Offer to white label the security platform to reflect your MSP brand.

Proven Track Record

Security platform vendors that have a proven track record of working with MSPs will understand your unique position. TitanHQ has worked with over 3000 MSPs through our Titan Shield MSP program. By working closely with MSPs, a security platform vendor will be able to design features such as central management, multi-tenant capability, and easy deployment into the solution.

Designed to Support an MSP to Deliver Exceptional Security

The crowded MSP security market demands that any security solution must be innovative and effective in its functionality, protecting against the most complex cyber-threats. However, an MSP needs support in the delivery and use of a security platform. As an MSP, you need to be able to rely on a security platform vendor to give you gold-level support that you can pass on to your clients. Ensure the security platform you choose is augmented with:

• Exceptional customer service
• Scalable pre-sales and technical support
• Sales and technical training

A multi-tenant dashboard is also an important aspect of a well-designed security platform, as it allows an MSP to deliver to multiple clients. Using a security solution that enables an MSP-client hierarchy, allows you to keep clients separated and choose whether to manage client settings in bulk or on an individual basis.

Choose the right Security Platform for MSP Success

Research from IBM and Ponemon into the cost of a data breach shows that an SMB (less than 500 employees) spends, on average, $2.98 million per incident. Preventing data loss is vital for all companies, but the SMB is arguably less able to weather the storm of a cyber-attack. An MSP is in an ideal position to choose a robust and cost-effective, security platform on behalf of their clients. By choosing the right security platform, the MSP will also put itself into a leadership position in a crowded marketplace.