What tools, processes, and tips to help improve the cybersecurity aspect of an MSP service?

Your clients depend on you for a comprehensive cybersecurity plan to protect their businesses. How? IT security experts offered up the following solutions for taking your MSP service to the next level in the network protection you provide.

Three Tips to Improve the Cybersecurity of an MSP Service

Provide User Knowledge
The human element continues to be frequently overlooked as a weak point in data security. Security training for employees is one service that many MSPs should provide. Employees should be reminded of security best practices through regular and targeted user education. When automated policies for authentication support that knowledge, messaging, and document sharing, your security level improves. MSPs should also assist with policy implementation.

24/7 Proactive Monitoring
An MSP should provide surveillance not only during business hours but also around the clock. Surveillance could include business networks as well as cloud infrastructure while at the same time analyzing the numerous data access points. Providers should also offer automated compliance monitoring. With security and privacy regulations that affect every industry, compliance monitoring will save numerous troubles and protect the image of the company.

Include Contract Security
Users of MSPs should outline their expectations with their providers for cyber security immediately. They should inquire about the capability of candidate MSPs to fulfill the security requirements while administering their network. During negotiations, they may request that a candidate must demonstrate how they can manage a customer’s network.

Keep Your Security Strategy Simple, Straightforward

You might have all the necessary equipment. However, having a full toolbox is just one aspect of your job. Being able to convey such tools to your clientele is another aspect.

You must consider more than just the technology and the people it intends to assist. Will they understand the technical jargon you employ every day? Most likely not. Because of this, it’s imperative that you, as an MSP, explain concepts to clients in straightforward terms.

Speaking of simplicity, your suggested cybersecurity policy is another thing that should be kept straightforward. A straightforward policy is simple to implement and maintain.

Create an incident response strategy for each client: An incident response plan describes how a client will react to a threat. Despite the security precautions you take, incidents and breaches can still occur. A good incident response plan is crucial because how quickly problems are identified, isolated, and passed on to the appropriate stakeholders usually determines how much harm they cause. The essential elements are:

1. Quick post-breach actions. The MSP must contact their insurance provider to support any actions required for their client to submit a claim. Your team should also immediately get in touch with their SOC while performing an isolated backup of everything, including infected or encrypted computers.

2. Recognition. Review, look into, and document every situation aspect in great detail.

3. Setting up. Working with your SOC, determine the incident’s security perimeter using the data from the identification step.

4. Containment. Identify the attack vector used and neutralize any active threats to stop the breach from spreading or causing more harm.

5. Cleaning up. Start with each isolated machine to identify and remove the breach’s primary cause.

6. Restore. Return affected systems to a production environment once all previous steps have been completed. After everything has been restored, but before users are permitted to rejoin the network, run a fresh backup job.

7. Wrap up. By working with your SOC, determine the lessons gained from the incident and how to communicate them to the customer. After that, thoroughly debrief the customer to put in place a security strategy that will protect against such assaults in the future.