Managed services providers with solid security practices are in high demand, with the market for security services expected to grow to US $46.4 billion by 2025. Nearly 40% of MSPs believe security will be one of the biggest growth drivers for their business, as their clients consistently identify security as their top challenge.
Competing against fellow MSPs to claim cybersecurity market share requires having the right offering for your clients, a team with the right skills to manage security effectively, and the resources your team needs to support them now and into the future. Scaling to meet the challenge is difficult. 62% of midmarket organizations report that their IT environment is more complex than it was two years ago, and 99% of businesses now believe an MSP's expertise is required to effectively protect their distributed users.
MSPs, like all businesses, struggle to source cybersecurity expertise. Universities and cybersecurity trade organizations simply are not graduating qualified candidates fast enough to fill the demand for entry-level talent and specialists. Recruiting senior cybersecurity staff is worse, with 37% of businesses struggling to fill the role. Simply put, MSPs must find ways of improving the efficiency and efficacy of their security team to grow.
Vendor Consolidation vs. a Unified Security Platform
According to Pulse, 96% of MSPs are consolidating their vendors or planning to start the process in the next year. Streamlining vendors is an excellent way for MSPs to reduce capital expenditures (CAPEX). Operational savings are limited, however. Having fewer support lines to call and billing departments to deal with can save some cycles, but there will still be multiple interfaces to master. Specialized solutions from multiple vendors limit insights, and oversight is fragmented. The ability to integrate security layers, a critical requirement for XDR and zero-trust networks, is minimal. Threat data can be lost in siloed logs and dashboards, and cross-platform automation is nearly impossible. 41% of IT leaders say they rarely or never review their logs.
The Unified Security Platform not only helps MSPs reduce their vendor stack, but it also empowers their security staff with a single, easy-to-learn interface that provides end-to-end visibility of their environment. Unifying security to a single platform also unlocks the opportunity for a significant amount of cross-platform automation and knowledge sharing.
A scalable platform for elevating the practice of modern security delivery
WatchGuard's Unified Security Platform delivers a new vision of managed security that helps MSPs cut complexity while evolving their security practice. The Unified Security Platform brings all of WatchGuard's award-winning security solutions under a single pane of glass, WatchGuard Cloud, for administration, operational automation, deep visibility, and advanced reporting.
The intuitive interface is easy to learn so that MSPs can spend less time on process, and more time on profitability, while still delivering the level of security their clients expect. There's no need for any physical or virtual infrastructure, no maintenance costs, no downtime, and no jumping back and forth between security service platforms. It's a simple solution to more effectively deliver security services to customers, and free up time to focus on the work that matters most.
Author Stephen Helm is senior product marketing manager at WatchGuard Technologies. Read more WatchGuard guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.
