Why MSPs Must Take a Proactive Role in Cybersecurity Planning
MSPs are no longer called when something breaks or if a password needs to be reset. MSPs act as trusted advisors or business partners that provide clients with strategic guidance on how to reduce risk, allocate budget effectively, and build long-term cybersecurity success roadmaps.
Building a cybersecurity roadmap begins with a full understanding of the client’s existing infrastructure and technologies, the number of endpoints, and business-critical assets at the highest risk of exposure. The most binary way to present these key findings to your client is by conducting a thorough risk assessment of all assets, endpoints, applications, and users. A risk assessment is your starting point of reference.
Once you’ve inventoried all business-critical assets, endpoints, applications, and users within your client’s organization and perimeter scope, you’ll have better visibility into the level of threat exposure to build a sustainable cybersecurity plan and roadmap.
Your client will be surprised by what you discover, as they’re likely unaware of just how many unmanaged devices or shadow IT applications are circulating freely within their network. Then we have the issue of third parties, with unrestricted access to cloud environments, lingering around. These are the details you need to consider when planning the assessment. Cover every possible attack scenario unique to the client’s current security posture. This is where you get to showcase your expertise as a trusted security partner and advisor.
The risk assessment and planning stage is where your clients can set aside a budget based on anticipated risk reduction and revenue generated from cybersecurity initiatives. As a trusted security advisor, you must demonstrate those estimated cost-saving opportunities. This can be done in the form of threat exposure KPIs, which can be attributed to measurable outcomes and benchmarked as part of quarterly business review (QBR) discussions.
4 Key Components of a Winning Cybersecurity Roadmap
Focus on ROI-Driven Threat Metrics: Threat exposure metrics tied to business-driven objectives, such as a lower Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) or number of endpoints secured MoM, help quantify the effectiveness of your cybersecurity investments. 50 additional endpoints secured can significantly reduce the attack surface. Other threat exposure metrics to focus on include phishing click rate, percentage of users enrolled in MFA, and incident closure rate. Fewer incidents. Fewer support tickets. More time for strategic projects. Better allocation of IT resources and measurable ROI that your clients can actually see. These metrics are highly valuable when justifying security budgets.
Cyber Insurance Optimization: Cyber insurance isn’t optional; it’s mandatory. Every business must have cyber insurance coverage. Save your clients the time, guesswork, and frustration by aligning your cybersecurity roadmap with their unique business needs and attack surface posture. This means having the right security controls in place to prevent potential attacks, such as ransomware, which many insurance providers either won’t cover or may partially cover. A potential ransomware attack could cost your clients more if they need to reach into their pockets due to denied claims, coverage gaps, or high deductibles. Comb through the exclusions and limitations, and make sure the fine print matches the cybersecurity roadmap you’re building for your clients.
Cost-Saving Opportunities: Imagine if you could optimize unused cloud storage, reduce the amount of licenses your client pays for, and automate certain processes, such as threat detection and response. Budget planning is a key consideration for clients to sign off on the POC and provide you with sustainable business for the foreseeable future.
Other areas for cost-saving opportunities include negotiating vendor contracts for better pricing, consolidating tools, and offering complementary security training awareness for employees. No additional investment needed. Because if a single employee falls for a phishing campaign, you could be saving your client millions. Your clients would be greatly appreciative and reward you with long-term loyalty and business.
These are also golden opportunities to upsell or cross-sell advanced services, introduce bundled packages, and experiment with tiered pricing models that align with your cybersecurity roadmap. Take the initiative here. Shop around and compare vendors to give your clients the best offer. Let them know that you’re looking out for their best interests. This forward-thinking will help deepen the trust level and position you as a value-driven partner, rather than just “another IT provider.”
Tool Consolidation: Does your client know the number of security tools they have or use? Probably not. A study found that companies can have between 60 to 75 security tools installed on average, with larger enterprises typically deploying more than double the number of tools.
Shadow IT becomes a big concern, especially for remote employees who may have an entire ecosystem of unapproved apps, tools, and cloud services running on personal or unmanaged devices. By the way, your clients might not even know how many identities are being granted access to these tools, or if the tools are even being used at all. Oh, and let’s not forget the added threat risk exposure for those unused tools waiting to be exploited by an attacker at any given moment.
Then we have the cost factor.
More tools translate to more users, more licensing fees, extra maintenance, dedicated support teams, and vendor lock-in, where clients become stuck with contracts for tools they no longer use or need. Cost aside, tool sprawl can create many bottlenecks and data silos across departments.
Tool consolidation helps organizations reduce management complexity and improve visibility by centralizing data and workflows into a single pane of glass, which is what Guardz does.
Building a Winning Cybersecurity Client Roadmap with Guardz
Cybersecurity roadmaps and client budgets require a lot of strategic planning. The Guardz unified platform provides MSPs with a holistic view of all assets, identities, endpoints, and applications from a holistic aggregated view. Consolidate your security controls and demonstrate real value to your clients while building a winning roadmap and game plan for the long run. Protect your clients’ most business-critical assets with AI-powered threat detection and response.
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