To Tony Pietrocola, AI isn’t just a nice-to-have technology for MSSPs, it’s a matter of survival. Those who adopt the rapidly emerging technology will position themselves as leaders among their peers and reap the benefits of huge demand for advanced cybersecurity solutions. Those that don’t will see their businesses suffer next year.
AgileBlue, 104 on the 2024 Top MSSP 250 list, is not going to miss out, Pietrocola, president of the Valley View, Ohio-based company, told MSSP Alert. AgileBlue provides an AI-based SecOps platform and is “aggressively expanding our AI capabilities to drive growth via new revenue streams,” he said.
“AI is allowing us to do more of this for our clients’ cloud environments, and this will lead to new products we can bring to market as the cloud migrations continue to boom,” Pietrocola said. “We are on quarterly launch cycles, so we will add AI-based technology every quarter. Some will be new products, other releases will be upgrades to our existing platform, strengthening our AI interactions.”
AI in an Expanding MSSP Space
AgileBlue is not alone. The global managed security services market is booming, with Statista analysts expecting it to grow from $31.05 billion last year to $64.73 billion by 2026, fueled by such trends as more – and more complex – cyberattacks, more sophisticated threat groups, a widening gap in skilled cybersecurity talent, and an increasingly distributed IT environment that stretches from on-premises data center to the cloud and edge.
MSSPs are in position to take advantage of this with their increasingly broad array of security services that they can offer cash-strapped businesses, and adding AI and automation to the mix only makes those services faster and more effective.
AgileBlue unveiled the latest version of its Cerulean AI SecOps platform in March, months after launching its Sapphire AI technology.
“Sapphire has increased the speed with which we can detect a cyberattack and the accuracy of the investigation and decision on a timely response,” Pietrocola said. “Our clients want to see this progress because the only way we can defeat an AI-based cyberattack is with AI, and our clients truly understand this.”
All in on Google AI
DitoWeb, a Google cloud security partner, is all in with Google’s AI advancements, including Vertex AI platform, Gemini generative AI chatbot, Code Assist for developers, and Google Security Operations for intelligence- and AI-driven for threat detection, investigation, and response, according to Kevin McGrail, cloud fellow and principal evangelist with the Reston, Virginia-based company. McGrail served as a speaker at MSSP Alert Live 2024.
That includes Dito Legislative Insights, which uses generative AI and lets stakeholders track, analyze, and understand relevant state and local legislation. The AI automatically reads and analyzes targeted legislation, points to pertinent changes, summarizes the content, and uses a chatbot to interact with users. The platform, introduced earlier this month, uses Google Cloud infrastructure and AI and is available on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
“And we sell licensing where Gemini actually costs as much or more than a Google Workspace license because of its amazing potential,” McGrail told MSSP Alert.
AI, Automation Create Opportunities
Judy Security, a Detroit-based master MSSP whose stack helps other MSSPs and MSPs deliver security services, uses its AI technologies to reduce the operational workloads for MSPs by automating essential tasks, including password management, software updates, and security awareness training, according to founder and CEO Rafaele Mautone and Brian Stoner, Judy’s senior vice president of growth.
AI can help with security team challenges such as managing alerts and dealing with false positives. With the technology, AI can quickly sift through the noise and provide deliverable insights, Mautone and Stoner wrote in an email to MSSP Alert. Such automation helps MSPs and security teams save time and money, reduce client turnover, and create even more opportunities for higher-priced premium service tiers.
“The increased efficiency and reliability lead to higher customer satisfaction, creating opportunities for larger contracts and partnerships,” they wrote. “There is a growing demand for AI capabilities in sectors such as healthcare, finance, and critical infrastructure. Establishing a presence in these new markets can diversify revenue sources.”
In addition, next month, Judy will complete the integration of its AI capabilities with Amazon Bedrock, a managed service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes foundation models from AI companies available through a single API.
“It is one of six new highly performant AI services from AWS that can rapidly scale Judy’s learning and capabilities,” Mautone and Stoner wrote. “This platform will unlock the potential to offer more advanced features like proactive threat detection and customized recommendations for security teams.”
The trend among MSSPs is to adopt AI. In its Cybersecurity Services 2024 RadarView survey, management consulting firm Avasant found MSSPs are evolving their proprietary platforms with AI, noting that 84% of respondents said they were investing to expand the use of big data and AI in their threat intelligence efforts.
Both AgileBlue’s Pietrocola and DitoWeb’s McGrail were adamant that any security services provider that doesn’t will have a hard time competing in the near future.
“I think anyone who isn't running POCs and testing it out is being an irresponsible leader,” McGrail said. “This is no different than going from clay tablets to abacus to calculators to spreadsheets. Embrace it or go extinct, because others will.”
