LINEARSTACK
March 23, 2023

MSSP's Contribution to their Client Success and Security

MSSPs play both a strategic & tactical role in supporting the SMB market. SMB often find IT &SecOps challenges that larger firms face, are identical to their own.

SMBs increasingly depend on information technology as a critical element of their business' success. These businesses deploy a wide range of progressively complex technology solutions, applications, and platform technologies while attempting to contain IT-related costs, like personnel costs. This combination of increased need for technological know-how, mounting complexity, and absence of funds has been the catalyzing agent behind the use of managed services.

Does an MSP fit your budget while aligning with your business objectives? Do the MSPs and MSSPs offer remote monitoring and other technology services atSmall-to-medium (SMB) market rates?

This blog discusses several managed services options available through a NewZealand-based MSP, LinearStack. 

This global MSP supports the small-to-medium and mid-enterprise market segments with their different offerings and provides insight into the latest technology trends and access to skilled IT resources to their clients.

What is the Role of an MSSP? 

MSSPs play both a strategic and tactical role in supporting the SMB market. SMBs require extensive security protection capabilities to comply with their client's requirements. Many small businesses in the United States and other parts of the world provide goods and services to government agencies requiring extensive data protection capabilities that align with NIST-800-171, HIPAA, PCI, and GDPR. Many SMBs and mid-enterprise need more resources, expertise, and staff to monitor these complex infrastructures.

Organizations need qualified talent to manage all incident response cases, no matter which framework they align. Knowing how to tune the appropriately tailored security controls while aligning them to the overall security objectives is critical for the organization. 

Many security providers offer various services, including network design, adaptive control deployment, and ongoing management of these solutions to help SMBs achieve their compliance and security goals. Helping achieve this goal is a core strength of an MSP.

Tactically, managed providers also play a critical role in the SMB market. If the client is seeking a hybrid model to include staff augment or after-hours coverage support, MSSPs also offer these services. 

Managing the RFP Process for SMBs

Another critical role MSPs play is around vendor selection and managing a request for proposal (RFPs). Organizations often need more time and resources to conduct a formal request for the proposal process. MSPs provide a unique and critical insight into the various technology market because several technology vendors, including Cisco Systems, Citrix, and PaloAlto Networks, have certified many MSPs. Through these relationships, the MSP can draw from their experience to assist their clients in vendor reviews, industry analysis, and IT spending modeling to determine which vendors and solutions align with their business model.

Meeting Tomorrow's Security Challenges, today with an MSP

Many SMBs and mid-enterprises organizations realise that the organization's size matters very little to hackers and cybercriminals. Even if an organization has fewer employees or a smaller market cap, they still get breached by the same attack vectors as larger firms. Every organization faces millions of email phishing attacks, denial-of-service attacks, and ransomware.

CIOs and CISOs from the SMB to mid-enterprise market will engage their peers in larger organizations to better understand their security strategy, including which technologies are most relevant. More often, while conducting peer discussions, SMB CIOs and CISOs discover similar IT and SecOps challenges that the larger firms face, are identical to their own.

Lack of resources, SecOps alert fatigue, and cost per breach affecting their yearly cybersecurity insurance premiums are common challenges for every organization.

MSP's breadth of services offered to clients helps with many of these challenges, regardless of the firm's size.

MSSP's Value in Deployment Next-GenerationSecurity Capabilities 

SMB firms recognise the need, like more prominent firms, to deploy several layers of security protection that need to integrate flawlessly and be easy to manage and update. Several critical security capabilities, including extended detection and response (XDR), managed security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) from Palo Alto Networks, bring amuch-needed security protection and response layer. Often, these solutions require extensive expertise to set up and manage. 

MSSPs Certified in Palo Alto Networks

Certified Palo Alto Networks managed services providers like LinearStack brings experience and expertise across several solutions to meet SMB and medium business needs while aligning to their budget expectations. 

Ultimately, MSSPs like LinearStack partner with their clients to provide the much-needed expertise and resources to ensure a successful XDR and SOAR strategy, deployment, and ongoing operation. 

LinearStack Managed Services Offering to Align with XDR & SOAR Deployments

  • Complete Visibility, 24-hour Vigilance: We monitor your environment for threats 24x7, strengthen your existing security controls, and optimize detection rules and policies to quickly prevent, detect, and block advanced threats.
  • Fast Containment and Removal: Avoid delays between threat discovery and response with our fully managed service.
  • Orchestration and Automation: We use orchestration and automation to streamline the investigation and response process with playbooks customized to your environment and automate repeatable tasks, reducing response time significantly. 

About LinearStack

Founded in 2013, focusing strongly on world-class cyber security services, we built LinearStack from the ground up in Auckland, New Zealand. Our passion for making information security simple and accessible for all organizations is the fuel that fires our engine.

We’re a growing team of certified Cyber Defence Analysts, Threat Hunters, Incident Responders, CTI specialists, Malware analysts, security architectures, and engineers with two geo-redundant operations centers across the globe. 

Culture

We’re100% privately held, grown with a family mindset. When working with clients, we’re well-integrated within their teams and act as an extension of their operations. Augmenting existing teams is a transition we manage smoothly, empowering our customers to prioritize cybersecurity strategy while we protect their business from cyber threats 24x7.

Maintaining thriving IT systems and assuring data protection are fundamental needs that all businesses deserve.

Contact Us

Want to know more about what we offer? We'd love to hear from you.

Get in touch with us today:

Phone: 0800 008 795

Email: info@linearstack.co.nz

Website: https://linearstack.co.nz

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