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At IT Nation Secure 2023, ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee and Greystone Technology CEO Peter Melby had a clear message: It’s time for IT providers to close the SMB cybersecurity gap. The threat landscape is untenable for SMBs, so it is the duty of managed IT providers to protect them.
During the opening keynote, Magee said that cybersecurity has reached a tipping point, breeding a culture of fear in SMBs. While 83% of SMBs are worried that they will be the target of a cybersecurity attack in the next six months, only 14% feel that they can defend themselves. SMB owners know that they need to act, but they cannot defend themselves—they need help from IT providers.
What’s Standing in the Way of IT Providers from Closing the Gap?
Peter Melby is the Cofounder and CEO of Greystone Technology, an MSP in Colorado. In a little over two decades, Greystone Technology has grown into a $30 million IT services provider (and was named one of Colorado’s top IT employers). Cybersecurity has played a big role in Greystone Technology’s success.
He believes that there are three areas where IT providers need to evolve in order to close the SMB security gap: perspective, playbook, and partners.
Evolve Your Perspective
Melby noted that IT providers aren’t fond of change. Change is expensive and stressful, and no one likes expensive and stressful. But unwillingness to change is incongruent with being an IT provider. IT is always evolving and changing. You don’t change because you want to change—you change because you have to.
So, the first thing that IT providers need to do is embrace change and commit to being change makers instead of change responders. Cybersecurity and compliance are not going away. They are only going become more and more important, and your clients are going to turn to you for help.
Evolve Your Playbook
One of the problems that IT providers run into when introducing cybersecurity and compliance services into their portfolio, is that they think there is a single step they can take or tool they can buy that will solve all their problems. But that is now how cybersecurity works in reality. There is no Hail Mary. There is only thoughtful, meticulous planning, strategizing, and adjusting.
Melby had five tips for your playbook:
- Cybersecurity and compliance are a never-ending journey that managed IT providers and their customers embark on together. When you engage customers, you need to invite them on this journey with you and tell them that it’s never-ending journey.
- Create a predictable communication channel.
- When you engage clients, use pictures, not just words. Visualize how you can help them and show them a roadmap.
- Bring everything down to a business decision. These are “business people,” after all—you need to get the point across using language and context they can understand.
- Repeat—don’t stop. Continually engage your client.
Evolve with Partners
After decades of running an IT firm, Melby has learned that there are no problem-free journeys in cybersecurity and compliance. Nothing is shiny or easy or simple. Managed IT providers can’t develop all the tools that they need to protect their clients, they can’t solve the labor shortages, and they can’t rebuild their business from the ground up on their own.
They need partners if they want to succeed. Partners don’t just provide the tools that underpin your business. Partners can also help you understand your customers’ business and provide them with solutions to problems that they cannot solve on their own.
Keypoint Intelligence Opinion
Managed IT providers are having a plata o plomo kind of moment with cybersecurity. There is a tremendous need for cybersecurity and compliance solutions. Threat actors are becoming increasingly sophisticated and proficient attackers, while SMBs have been slow to recognize and mediate their risk. You can’t throw a rock out of your window without hitting someone who is looking for the solution to their numerous cybersecurity and compliance problems.
Most of your customers, your competitors’ customers, and all the new logos you desperately want to win are at the beginning of their cybersecurity journey, and they don’t have the time, money, or skills to protect themselves. In Keypoint Intelligence’s Managed IT Services Primary Research Study, we found that cybersecurity is a top operational concern, but it something that IT decision makers tend to outsource. In general, respondents didn’t have the in-house expertise to protect themselves, and it was too expensive or difficult to find someone with the expertise to do it in-house. And even if they had the budget to hire a cybersecurity professional, there wouldn’t be enough work to justify the hire. At the end of the day, most managed IT providers felt that dedicated experts would do a better job, and that they could stretch their limited budget further by outsourcing.
The ubiquitous need for cybersecurity and compliance services don’t just represent an outstanding opportunity to evolve and grow your business—they are prerequisite offerings that every managed IT provider is going to need in their portfolio if they want to keep the lights on. As difficult of a transition as it may be, IT providers must find a way to offer cybersecurity and compliance services as part of their portfolio.
Log in to the InfoCenter to view research on managed IT services through our Office CompleteView Advisory Service. If you’re not a subscriber, contact us for more info by clicking here. I’d also strongly urge managed IT providers to take a look at ConnectWise’s Partner Program and how it can help MSPs transform into MSSPs.
