It’s a good time to be a cyber resilience managed service provider (MSP). You can do some real good in the world and enjoy the satisfaction that comes with being truly helpful, and at a time when superheroes are all the rage, you sometimes get to wear the cape and save the day for your clients.

And opportunity is knocking. To be blunt about it, demand for cyber resilience services is booming.

But none of that means that growing your MSP is easy. You face the same challenges many technology firms face in the current market—a tight labor pool, scaling a skills-based organization, client confusion about products and technologies and, of course, potential supply chain challenges.

Only, in your case, those supply-side challenges often come in the form of the services in your portfolio, which is a long way of saying that you need the best possible cyber resilience supplier partner in your corner. The right one can address all your challenges at once. Here’s why:

The right cyber resilience provider partner knows your business

MSPs need help on two fronts:

• On the first front, they need help managing, growing and positioning their own firms. That means training, outsourcing, sales materials, sales engineering … the works.
• On the second, they need help taking care of their clients. MSPs put their reputations on the line every time they recommend providers and solutions to their clients. They need a provider partner that delivers when it matters.

These realities are why you need to work with a provider with a strong commitment, history and devotion to the channel. Working with MSPs shouldn’t be an afterthought for your provider partner. It should be a central focus of the provider’s operations.

The right provider partner helps you meet demand

Cyber resilience offers layered solutions that tackle complex problems. But that doesn’t mean you can open with all that information on every client you encounter. Many are confused by the difference between cyber security and cyber resilience to begin with. More still read headlines about hot security products and think that’s all they need to defeat the bad guys. For example, managed detection and response (MDR) and security awareness training (SAT) are hot right now. The provider you work with should be able to deliver both as an entry point to help you get your clients on the path to full resilience, even that means starting out more modestly.
The right provider partner also helps you generate demand

Ultimately, achieving cyber resilience means having the ability to continue business operations even when a cyberattack is successful. For a provider to power that ability, it needs to back cutting-edge security with backup and rapid restoration service that delivers genuine, cyber-resilience-powered business continuity. In practical terms, your partner should be able to provide a full spectrum of defense and restoration—from complete system recovery all the way down to surgically isolating a compromised endpoint or email account and instantly patching and restoring it without needing to roll back an entire business unit.

The business case for client sales practically writes itself, but to generate that demand, you need to have a provider that can make every piece happen.

The right partner should be the only one you need

On a final note, you likely noticed that we referred to the need for a provider partner—not multiple partners—that can equip you for client success. That’s because the only way you can scale your MSP to its full potential is to work with a single-source provider that allows you to deliver everything your clients need under a single, simplified umbrella. You get the benefit of pitching your clients a single-provider solution to complex challenges, and you get the simplicity of dealing with a single account team for all your client needs.

These objectives mean that your provider partner’s scale and reach also matter, and we aren’t just talking product portfolios. Yes, your provider should be able to deliver a full suite of cyber resilience solutions that all work in sync. But your partner also should have a global presence so that no prospect is too big for your MSP to pursue and no customer outgrows your ability to serve them.