What is an MSSP and why do I need one?

The reality of today is that all organizations are at risk to the growing threat of cyber-attacks. Knowing this, businesses are scrambling and struggling to get a grasp on cybersecurity and determine how to overcome these consistently evolving cyber threats. Enter MSSP’s.

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An MSSP is a managed security services provider. This means that they provide security management services to customers of all sizes. Essentially, MSSPs take the burden of maintaining and managing a company’s overall cybersecurity program off your company’s IT team, allowing them to focus on additional important tasks.

If you don’t have an MSSP….

Then I’m assuming you are using either an MSP (Managed Service Provider) vendor or have an in-house IT team to manage your cybersecurity offerings. However, this creates massive gaps in your system, leaving an entrance for cybercriminals to hack into your network.

There are thousands of MSPs, MSSPs and in-house security teams that all vary from one another. The graph below is a high-level outline of the responsibilities of MSPs, MSSPs and in-house technology teams:

As you see in the graph above, MSP’s are generally focused on more traditional IT platforms, making sure they work and are connected, and install anti-virus. They are great at providing a technical solution to the problem, solving technical challenges, but security strategy is lost. Because of this, you aren’t getting the human expertise, compliance expertise and are not performing overall governance, so you don’t know what your risk level is. You need to know that your service offering is delivering. A technical solution isn’t doing that. You need more.

Now, say you don’t have an MSP vendor and you have an in-house security team who handles your security. Most companies have a smaller IT team of just a handful of experts who are solely responsible for the entire network of the company, updating technologies, fixing connection issues, the list goes on. Right now, there is a massive global shortage of IT professionals, and companies don’t have the resources to effectively manage their network. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have one, two or three people dedicated to monitoring and managing their companies’ network 24x7x365 and to know the latest threats that could be entering their network.

So, whether you have an in-house IT team, or an MSP vendor, or both, you still come across significant challenges when it comes to your network security.

Now Imagine this…

If you are an IT Director or on an IT team, imagine if you finally got a good night sleep knowing that your network was secured from hackers because you had someone else managing the activity. Not only that, but this expert was up-to-date on the latest threats and knew what to look for on a network and how to prevent and detect it.

Imagine being able to overcome all of your challenges that you’re facing with security—too many alerts, not sure where to start, no expertise, tool overloaded, lack of resources, no visibility, etc. That’s what an MSSP does. Fills in those gaps so you can sleep well at night and focus on other business needs.

An MSSP works with your current in-house IT team and/or MSP provider to help overcome these challenges so you don’t have to worry about them. With the right MSSP vendor, companies are protected and compliant, there’s no disruption to your current security posture, executives receive easy reporting with more visibility into their network. In addition, your IT team can rest easy knowing the network is protected because security experts are monitoring your network 24x7x365 and remediating any threat that get through.

Keep in mind, that while most MSSPs offer the same services, not all MSSPs are the same or have the same features. When you’re ready to start vetting MSSP vendors, take a look at what things you should look for.