In our most recent Cyber Resilience Zone entries, we’ve delved into the extra risks your MSP faces relative to cyberthreats, including a look at why your MSP is a high-value target for cybercrime and the importance of establishing your own cyber resilience.

You Need the Right Provider Partner

Given that cyberthreats bring additional risk to MSPs in the realms of client trust, reputation and future revenues, the cyber resilience provider partner you choose is essential. That’s because:

• You need to be resilient, too. You need to establish rock-solid, highly reliable cyber resilience for your own firm. Aside from the higher stakes you face as an MSP, it’s just good business.
• You need to “show well” to your clients. Beyond the potentially devastating customer-relationship consequences of facing an attack while lacking resilience, the right provider partner also empowers your MSP to lead by example. “Walking the walk” can help you close business.
• Risks are accelerating. The threat landscape is expanding. Cybercrime is a high-growth industry and geopolitical events are creating new threats, such as those identified in CISA’s “Shields UP” advisory stemming from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

What the Right Provider Partner Looks Like

The right provider partner for your cyber resilience practice:

• Understands MSPs. We’ve said it before and it’s worth saying again: MSPs are a vertical unto themselves. Your cyber resilience provider should know your business inside and out, just like you do with your clients, including the unique threats facing your company.
• Lives, eats and breathes the channel. We often discuss the importance of working with a channel-friendly provider for sales and service reasons. But it’s just as important—arguably moreso, even—when it comes to building your own resilience, given that cybercrooks targeting MSPs often aim to use MSPs as gateways to their customers. You need a partner that knows how to mitigate risk and damages from cyberattacks on and through your MSP.
• Delivers the full spectrum of cyber resilience. Here again, what’s good for your clients is good for you. A single provider that supplies all the layers of defense and continuity packed into cyber resilience makes your life easier.

Don’t Overlook Power of Selling the Same Solutions Your MSP Relies On

Beyond your own firm’s resilience, working with a best-in-class provider provides you with a powerful sales tool. Using the products you sell has long been a known boost to sales efforts of all types. That’s especially the case when it comes to high-tech services. And since cyber resilience sales are trust-based sales, demonstrating to your customers that you’re trusting your firm’s resilience to the same tools you’re recommending to them provides a powerful, first-person instance of social proof.

All in, your resilience partner should protect you and your clients, which helps you retain customers and revenue while powering your sales operations.