Most people (wisely) leave complex household jobs like electrical work to skilled professionals. Electricians can get the job faster and cheaper, and they come with the tools, training and knowledge most of us are in the dark about.
So if electrical work is best left to the professionals, then why do so many organizations continue to manage cybersecurity on their own?
The rise in popularity of Cybersecurity-as-a-Service (CSaaS) has shifted a great deal of security workloads to third-party vendors. However, some IT and business leaders still believe managing cybersecurity in-house is a cost-effective choice that helps them maintain control over their IT infrastructure.
The reality? Today’s cyber threats are too complex and recurrent for organizations to handle on their own — and doing so is incredibly costly. This is where managed service providers (MSPs) come into play. With the right security services, MSPs can provide the expert solutions, on-demand resources and scalability to protect their customers against evolving threats.
The Costly Challenges of Managing Cybersecurity In-house
Despite a complex cybersecurity landscape, organizations manage security internally for a number of reasons. Some business and IT leaders assume managing cybersecurity in-house is the most cost-effective option, while others worry about losing control over their IT environments. And sometimes, organizations lack trust in security providers’ ability to customize solutions to their industry-specific needs and IT infrastructures.
When it comes to the criticality of cyber defense, these concerns are understandable. However, organizations that insist on spearheading cybersecurity in-house are setting themselves up for a risky game of chance.
Cyberthreats continue to grow in complexity, frequency and severity. To keep pace, organizations require 24/7/365 threat monitoring — a tall order even for large enterprises. This level of threat detection and necessary response capabilities require costly tools and extensive resources that most organizations lack.
Moreover, ongoing labor shortages continue to exacerbate the issue. Three-quarters of organizations are struggling to find the talent they need, especially when it comes to IT and security roles. In 2022, the cybersecurity workforce gap reached 3.4 million people.
Internal security teams are stretched thin, and they don’t have the in-house expertise to combat intensifying cyber threats. This makes CSaaS more critical than ever.
3 Ways MSPs Add Value to Their Customers’ Security Programs
From small and medium-sized businesses to large enterprises, most organizations need external security expertise to maintain holistic defenses.
You can demonstrate your value as an MSP by educating customers on the importance of managed security services and directly addressing business and IT leader concerns.
When you equip your teams with tools and services that uplevel your service offerings, you can add value to your customers’ businesses in three important ways:
1.) Leverage scalability and context. Even though your customers have extensive knowledge of their own business, you have something they don’t — broader industry context and visibility into thousands of network environments. Because you’re dedicated to keeping a pulse on developing cybercrime trends, you can pinpoint which threats are most relevant to customers and recommend best practices and technologies to mitigate them.
So, if prospective customers express concerns over your industry expertise or ability to customize service offerings, don’t worry. Ease their concerns by reinforcing the scale of your cybercrime knowledge and the sheer volume of threats you monitor on a daily basis.
2.) Reduce cybersecurity costs. Compared to costly and resource-intensive in-house cybersecurity management, leveraging managed security services is a much more economical option. Internal cybersecurity maintenance often requires organizations to invest in proprietary security tools, which means they must create an internal security operations center (SOC). The development and maintenance of an SOC alone costs an average of 2.86 million per year.
Additionally, ongoing labor shortages make it challenging for organizations to find and hire qualified workers. Even if organizations somehow find and hire internal security professionals, individuals with specialized skills are costly to retain. You can provide customers access to a team of experts for a fraction of the cost of hiring an equivalent in-house team.
You can also complement your offerings by leaning on third-party services like managed detection and response (MDR). Proactive threat monitoring with MDR can help you identify and neutralize attacks in a timely manner, helping customers avoid larger issues — and higher costs — down the line.
3.) Empower customers to prioritize their business. Bad actors will continue to hone their tactics to infiltrate networks, from using legitimate IT tools to impersonating employees. Not many organizations have the necessary resources for the level of threat monitoring required to mitigate these sophisticated threats, especially given their frequent occurrence.
Even if an organization is equipped with the right resources, too narrow of a focus on basic security measures leaves business innovation and growth on the backburner. When you take the reins of a customer’s cyber defenses, you enable their IT and security teams to shift their focus to value-adding and revenue-generating activities like custom application development.
Organizations don’t need to pour endless time and resources into their internal cybersecurity programs. With CSaaS more accessible and customizable than ever, the right service provider exists for every business, regardless of industry or budget. As you continue to help customers navigate their unique needs and build robust cyber defenses, encourage them to leave security to the experts so they can focus on what matters most — growing their business.
Scott Barlow is VP, Global MSP & Cloud Alliances, at Sophos. Read more Sophos guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of MSSP Alert’s sponsorship program.
