As managed service providers (MSPs) at the helm of keeping organizations secure, taking proactive steps toward cyber hygiene is more vital now than ever. Maintaining an up-to-date and healthy environment is impossible without regularly updating software agents. Updating these tools improves operational efficiency, reduces IT ticket volume, and defends against known or potential new vulnerabilities in your clients' systems.
Like previous years, 2022 was marked by the relentless rise in cybersecurity threats, resulting in higher investment in cybersecurity solutions and managed services (MSP). According to Canalys Q3 2022 data, despite deteriorating economic conditions, the global cybersecurity market grew 15.9% year-on-year to $17.8 billion. Channel sales accounted for 90.6% of the overall market and were up by 15.9% compared to 2021, outpacing direct sales.
MSPs are becoming critically important. The difficulty of finding security specialists and the high costs of managing their own security have led medium-sized companies to hire MSPs to keep their digital security up to date while they focus on their business. Growth in the MSP market means buyers are now showing interest. We are frequently seeing large and small MSPs being acquired by other larger managed services companies or private equity firms.
Adopting robust processes to identify, classify, remediate, and mitigate vulnerabilities before attackers can exploit them is a new imperative in corporate environments. An efficient, proactive cybersecurity strategy must be multi-layered and able to consider challenges from all angles. Although increasing the number of solutions deployed to protect the attack surface may appear to be the answer, the opposite is true.
Cybersecurity is an issue that’s becoming more and more difficult for SMBs to manage on their own. As a result, MSPs are on the rise. Data from Canalys indicates that the cybersecurity managed services business grew by 18% in 2021, driven by the combination of the increasing sophistication of cyber threats and the shortage of dedicated cybersecurity personnel, which makes the situation unscalable for SMBs and midsize companies who often hire an external MSP to help solve these issues.
Unpatched software vulnerabilities continue to be the most widely used attack vector. There are several factors behind this: SMBs are implementing new software applications in their infrastructure more than ever to simplify business operations and be more efficient. But this reality is changing their organizational landscape, adding more complexity to their security posture.
MSPs are being targeted by cybercriminals, as a single successful attack opens the door to multiple victims. This puts additional pressure on cybersecurity partners to step up the security services they offer their customers. The figures are worrying, as 9 out of 10 managed service providers state they have suffered a successful cyberattack since the start of the pandemic. This means MSPs are overtaking end users as the main target of malware, ransomware, phishing and other threats.
Data and money are two of the key assets that any industry needs to protect, and this is particularly important for financial institutions. Defending financial services against cyberattacks can be managed internally by relying on the organization's own systems; however, relying on an external cybersecurity provider offers a number of advantages that make a difference in the event of an attack.
