As a Managed Services Provider, you already have plenty of responsibilities. You manage the technology for small to medium-sized business—not to mention providing co-managed solutions for even larger organizations.
You help companies by providing direction on technology that meets their needs and are addressing core problems within their businesses. In essence, you are their CIO in many cases. You are overseeing their IT infrastructure, making sure that your IT processes are in line with their needs, and even supporting IT-related policies and procedures in some cases—to make sure you (and they) are abiding by compliance pressures or adhere to some sort of standard when it comes to keeping their organizations running smoothly.
The CIO is responsible for enabling a business through technology. To me, that means enabling them to securely run their business, making sure that all of their technology, making it accessible, well-managed and deployed. You have an integral part in making sure that data is available when they need it and provide immense value making sure that users are able to get their roles fulfilled.
But what about a CSO—the chief security officer?
When you have your CIO hat on—focused on the operations of day-to-day IT, how is your client making sure they are protecting themselves from growing threats?
Who is going to define security controls to make sure the IT team is keeping their data secure? Who is auditing their work? How will you be able to see that issues are resolved?
You already have the implementation side down. And your clients understand that.
What they might not understand is who is making sure controls, audits and testing are in place?
What are they exposed to? Where is their risk?
That’s where many organizations haven’t been focused on and a great opportunity for you to swim up-market.
The big question is how can you show your clients value in making sure security is handled?
Why not come to the table with a framework that is proven to work—regardless of the client being a managed client or one looking purely for security through leadership.
Why not come to the table with a third-party assessment linked to remediation steps?
Why not continually evaluate their network—linking current threats and showing them why specific concerns should actually be business concerns?
We are focused on getting you there.
Consider a stack evaluation as a first step if you’re not a partner.
If you are a partner, we are implementing a complete framework for your MSP to offer vCSO services.