Know thy customer. That could be the first rule of building a successful MSP cybersecurity business, according to elite MSPs who participated in Channel Futures Webinar "How MSPs Can Grow Their Cybersecurity Businesses." Executives from three MSP 501 winners provided insights on what the title says, how they grow their cybersecurity businesses.
Vinod Paul, president of Align’s managed services, Omega Systems chief operating officer Ben Tercha, and Dataprise VP of cybersecurity services Nima Khamooshi filled the session with practical advice for building cybersecurity business. One major takeaway is that cybersecurity is an all-encompassing area that requires MSPs to know as much as possible about their clients.
“We spend a lot of time understanding what our customers’ needs are, what's kind of pushing them to adopt new cyber strategies,” Tercha said. “Cyber goes alongside everything. Your data is no longer in one spot. It's all over the place. It's local, it's in the cloud, it's multi-cloud, so we’re becoming aware of that, specifically with our customers -- what platforms they're using, what data are they storing, where are they sharing? How we can better protect is really kind of top of mind when we start to build on our product roadmap and bring solutions to our customers. We can then turn around say, ‘Well, you need this because you're using x, your data lives here, others are using this. Did you know about it?’”
Khamooshi agreed cybersecurity must be integrated across an organization’s technology stack, but added that cost is also a factor.
“We're seeing a lot of companies move in a trend where they're starting to be more cost conscious, and so integration is coming, and with a secondary need to be more effective with the pricing structure for the services that are being delivered,” he said. “That's why they're looking for a lot of the integration to kind of make sure that they're able to reduce their overall cost and spend. The other big thing is I see AI adoption becoming even more and more prominent. We're seeing a lot of rumblings already. A lot of vendors and service providers are integrating AI and claiming AI as part of their tool and deliveries capabilities. I think that's going to continue to be a pretty dramatic shift in the market, because it's really going to be a game changer once everybody gets their feet underneath them and is able to incorporate it.”
Align’s Paul said a successful MSP must be comprehensive and also innovative when building a cybersecurity business.
“There’s an expectation from our clientele to be offer as much of a comprehensive solution in terms of cybersecurity protection as possible,” Paul said. “So what that means our clientele are expecting innovation. They expect to be protected. We're going to be innovating thinking about tomorrow's threat landscape, and fortunately, we've been able to partner with the right firms in terms of our cybersecurity offerings that one of the key criteria for us is picking partners that innovate for the future. Similar to the past few years, this coming year, the natural innovation of the cybersecurity threat landscape is going to lead to better tools, better solutions, better products, and fortunately, , we're going to be partnered with the right individuals to make sure that our client can capture that innovation that's constantly happening.”
It’s almost impossible to talk of innovation these days without discussing AI – warts and all.
“AI blew up this year,” Tercha said. “Not everyone was ready. Microsoft launched Copilot, and customers are wanting to turn it on right away, and we said ‘Time out. Do you understand what this can do? It's very powerful. Let's make sure your organization is properly secured before we just give everyone this license. Now they can start querying data that maybe you didn't know they had access to or don't want them to have access to.’ So kind of wrapping a program around AI governance for customers is something that is really top of mind for us going into next year.”
I suggest you register to watch the Channel Futures webinar. Cybersecurity and AI will also be hot topics at the 2025 Channel Partners Conference & Expo. You can register for that event now, too.