Guest blog courtesy of Stellar Cyber and written by Steve Salinas.
The rise of the MSSP has provided a lifeline to many security teams that struggle to deliver the security outcomes their organizations demand. By partnering with a company whose sole purpose is to provide security services, security teams of any size in any industry can immediately uplevel their security posture while simultaneously decreasing their risk profile. As the demand for MSSP services rises, however, we see seasoned security professionals forming MSSPs, and many cybersecurity product vendors are extending their business to include managed security offerings — managed detection and response (MDR) services. So, the question for MSSPs is this: If any of your product vendors introduce a competitive security service to what you offer, what should you do?
Here is a simple three-step process to follow if you find yourself in this uncomfortable situation.
Call out the Elephant in the Room
Harken back to when you first met with the product vendor who has now become your competitor. I bet when they introduced the product to you and your team, they talked about how they help many MSSPs deliver more efficient security services, enabling them to increase revenue and profits. Through your due diligence, you probably tested the product thoroughly, spoke with customer references, and maybe even talked with executives from the vendor about their future plans for the product. During the entire process, their goal was to convince you that their product met your needs and that they would help you grow your business.
Fast forward to today, where they are now offering that competitive service. You have every right to ask them why they are taking this step when all along they worked so hard to convince you that they would be your trusted partner for the foreseeable future. Honestly, I am not sure what they could say that would make you comfortable with them becoming a competitor, but give them a chance to explain. In the unlikely event that they commit to serving a different market or somehow not competing with you, and you believe them, maybe this is nothing to worry about. More than likely, though, you’re going to be unsatisfied with any rationale they provide.
Review Your Contract
If you see this new competitive service as a direct threat to the growth of your business, you need to go back to your contract/partnership agreement and review it in detail. If you’re lucky, there may be a clause enabling you to either protect your target market from their competitive service offering, or terminate your contract with a short notice period as they have violated the letter or spirit of the agreement. Seek out third party legal advice if you don’t have in-house expertise to ensure you take every step possible to protect your customers and market.
Seek Out Alternatives
Unless you happen to be one of the biggest customers for the vendor in question, it’s unlikely you’ll have the power to stop the vendor from introducing their competitive security service into the market. Therefore, you need to initiate a new product search. Fortunately, with the size of the cybersecurity vendor landscape, there are many potential alternatives that can deliver the capabilities you need without the threat of a competitive service offering from the vendor.
Stellar Cyber: Built for MSSPs, not to Compete with Them
Stellar Cyber provides a very popular security operations platform designed for MSSPs that enables them to offer a wide variety of security services from a single platform. With our platform’s native open architecture and MSSP friendly approach, you can:
- Expand your addressable market, since our platform integrates with virtually any security product (EPP, EDR, Firewalls, IAMs, and others) through easy-to-configure, pre-built integrations. Furthermore, if an MSSP requires a new product integration, our commitment is to deliver the integration with no additional charge.
- Offer your customers an on-demand training portal to ensure they know how to interact with the platform from their side. With hundreds of hours of on-demand training available, our learning portal is among the best in the market.
- Quickly provision a new customer in our platform, making use of our multi-tier, multi-tenant architecture and ensuring your customers’ data is never co-mingled with data from any other customer. Additionally, our single license approach enables you to spread your licenses across your customer base as needed without having to buy a separate license for each customer.
- Deploy physical and/or virtual sensors in your customers’ environments dedicated to collecting data where it resides. Our approach to data collection is the most flexible in the market, eliminating the need to deploy agents to every asset in the customer’s environment .
- Deploy our security operations platform on-premises or in the cloud, depending on the needs of the customers you serve.
Closing Thoughts
Stellar Cyber will never compete with our customers. We are not in the security service business. Our objective is to help MSSPs grow their businesses as efficiently as possible by keeping their customers secure. We are here to enable MSSPs to offer the most comprehensive security services in the industry, and that will never change.
To find out more about our commitment to the MSSP market, and see how our platform can help you deliver the best security services possible reach out to set up a meeting with our security experts today.
