Back in January one partner asked me what I thought the next big thing for MSPs was going to be. And instantly I responded with vCSO.
Our team has been looking into how MSPs can implement a sustainable, scalable offering for the past 2 years and have honed a process and framework we know works with companies willing to invest in advisory services.
What is tremendously special about vCSO offerings is they allow you to swim upstream to bigger marketplaces and become a trusted advisor instead of ending the conversation as being the technician or IT operations manager. You actually are able to deliver a service that is highly valued (there are thousands of job offerings left unfilled and few people interested in seriously filling these roles).
Even more, having a vCSO offering for high value clients (or prospects) could put you in the position of a reputation-building trajectory unseen in other managed services offerings. You not only gain client trust but are able to claim a stake to a service offering deficient in the IT arena right now.
But to effectively deliver vCSO services, you need a framework
BUT you need to have a framework that works….
If you sell your client on being an advisor and promise a bunch of deliverables, but never follow through on them, you won’t get very far. If you don’t have a tested framework that is known to work, you are blindly leading the blind.
what to cover over the course of the year in meetings. What your agendas look like? What your priorities should be. These are all things that no one is going to talk about in a cybersecurity certification program. These activities may seem to many like busy work or fluff, but unless you have a clear path to deliver work product, no one will be impressed by what you know.
A vCSO framework deliver not only types of meetings, but also analyses, checklists that ensure the client environment is making improvements, and communicating improvements and current risks.
Unless your client clearly understands the level of security risks in their company, they won’t understand what to do about it.
The CSO role within your client organizations is becoming more than a “just nice to have” position. It’s purely a necessity right now. With cyber insurance not capable of transferring much of their business risk when it comes to data security, your high value clients WILL need someone overlooking their security strategy. This is a HUGE opportunity right now for you as a provider to help them with a solution that will not only get them to operationalize security within their businesses but will offer you a high margin forward-thinking solution that will make a big impact on the organizations where it is implemented.
To help MSPs address this need, we have designed a framework based off 3 years of CSO operations within MSP clients. This framework is exclusive to the MSP community and has worked to build companies ranking at the top 10% of their industry’s security standards.
More information on this MSP-revolutionizing program can be found at www.galacticscan.com/vcso.
