It wasn’t that long ago that cybersecurity and ransomware were topics generally only discussed within IT teams managing security for large-scale enterprises. Many small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) pushed concerns to the side, mistakenly thinking these were issues that only affected big business.
And for some, that made sense. Their enterprises were small. Their technologies are limited and on-premises. In comparison to large businesses, their sensitive data flows didn’t appear worth the hassle—or the payoff—for threat actors to try to breach.
But those days are now long behind us, and as such, a growing number of SMBs and large enterprises are turning to MSSPs for help.
In fact, cybersecurity is a top concern for organizations of all sizes, especially in terms of the growing risks and successful breaches caused by ransomware attacks.
Increasing Breach Concerns
According to Verizon’s 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report, attackers are just as likely to target SMBs for cyber breaches as large enterprises, which should concern MSSPs tasked with securing those enterprises.
The report notes that small and large organizations aren’t that far apart in terms of breaches, with large enterprises reporting 819 security incidents resulting in 307 confirmed breaches. SMBs reported experiencing 1,037 total security incidents resulting in 263 confirmed breaches.
It's worth noting this report also looked at a much larger scope of security incidents and breaches, starting with almost 80,000 incidents for review. From there, it reported just shy of 30,000 met the study’s quality standards for consideration as an incident, and of those, a total of 5,258 confirmed breaches.
Combined, large enterprises and SMBs made up 570 confirmed breaches, with the remaining 4,688 classified as “unknown.”
And, according to a recent article in Forbes, cyber risks are a top worldwide business concern for 2022, and that’s something that MSSP providers should be well aware of.
The report says that concerns about the threat of ransomware, data breaches, or other major IT outages now worry companies more than other business disruptions such as supply chain issues, the pandemic, or natural disasters.
MSSPs to the Rescue
Even with these known risks, most SMBs just don’t have the resources or skilled professionals on hand to mitigate these growing risks.
So, as an MSSP, what can you do to add more value to your clients and help them secure their systems, and data, and ultimately ensure operational resilience?
The answer is in how you manage their cybersecurity and compliance programs, and it doesn’t have to be as tedious, expensive, or manually driven as you think.
It’s time to go on the offense on behalf of your clients to defend them better by adopting a cybersecurity management platform that’s built for multi-tenant environments and has cybersecurity, compliance, risk, and vendor management frameworks and controls right at your fingertips.
SaaS-based governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) management platform can simplify your company’s offense—managing your clients’ cybersecurity programs—by taking control of your clients’ defense in a simplified way—their cybersecurity practices.
The New Face of GRC
Using a SaaS-based GRC platform should be a simpler way to offer your customers more value on your services and give you a competitive advantage to win and retain business today and in the future.
Often, when MSSPs think about software and services, they automatically think of traditional GRC programs. That makes sense because those tools have been the industry standard and used by MSSPs for years. But anyone who has used these traditional technologies also knows they’re expensive to purchase, complicated to set up, and many don’t work well in multi-tenant environments. However, it’s time to ride the GRC wave with a software provider that eliminates the traditional burdens.
Putting a GRC Platform to Work for You
Modern GRC platforms are not like the legacy GRC platforms MSSPs are used to and a software solution is often more accurate and less complicated than using traditional spreadsheets for cybersecurity and compliance management.
With the power of a GRC platform, you can quickly manage multiple compliance and security needs for your customers within a single, simple-to-use, multi-tenant platform.
A quality GRC platform should also help you conduct accurate, thorough assessments for your customers quickly, giving them instant insight into their current security posture and should be able to identify gaps and security weaknesses and offer recommendations based on best practices to resolve those issues. Also, look for a solution that enables you to set a target profile and build a roadmap to mature your client’s cybersecurity practices as they evolve.
A quality GRC platform should also eliminate compliance guesswork.
Seek out a GRC solution that also includes a growing number of compliance, cybersecurity, and risk management frameworks built into the platform. This is a great way to get instant insight into your client’s processes, even at a granular control and sub-control level.
Have controls in place for one framework that are applicable to another? Look for a GRC solution that enables you to map those right in the platform, so you no longer have to duplicate your work. And one that supports a multi-tenant environment so you can repeat that for all your MSSP clients, regardless of their size, complexity, or unique needs.
A quality GRC platform should empower you to simplify client program management with real-time compliance scoring and real-time insight into project lifecycles, down to individual task management. Look for a solution that offers alerts and notifications (and can automatically send them to assignees) so no extra reminders are needed from you or your team.
Put away those spreadsheets to help mature your clients’ security defense. Consider implementing a GRC solution that offers customized reporting so you can easily share information with your clients that specifically focus on their unique needs and business objectives—with confidence.
Guest blog courtesy of Apptega. Read more Apptega guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of MSSP Alert’s sponsorship program.
