Grow Your Managed Security Service Offerings with Fortinet’s SOC Lifecycle Strategy
- MSS 2.0 – Outsourced SOC: Once service offerings have been established, the next step on the path to becoming a visionary MSSP is to begin providing SIEM and SOC services in a 7×24 capacity. However, there are limited internal resources in these areas at this point in the MSSP process. Fortinet helps partners bridge the gap by aligning them with a SOC Authorized Partner, taking first call support but outsourcing SOC functions to a partner until an internal team can be established. Furthermore, drawing from the pool of candidates in our FortiVets program, which trains transitioning military veterans into new roles in the cybersecurity industry, Fortinet helps partners fill the SOC analyst new hire pipeline.
- MSS 3.0 – MSSP Maturity: At this stage, our partners have broadened their service offerings with different aspects of the Security Fabric. Having leveraged core secure access technologies as beachhead services, they continue to advance their SIEM and SOC capabilities with training offered through Network Security Experts (NSE) program and NIST-based SOC analyst training. While core secure access technology constitutes the predominant share of the services revenue, our partners are expanding their service portfolio to offer SD-WAN, MDR and public multi-cloud security. The internal 8×5 NOC coverage is expanded to 24×7 SOC coverage.
- MSS 4.0 – Visionary MSSP: By now, partners have established a fully mature SOC and SOC team and are looking for ways to elevate offerings. Here, MSSP partners have the infrastructure and team to build innovative solutions to the key challenges facing the cybersecurity industry today. Some of these challenges include incorporating AI and machine learning into incident response processes, adding security capabilities to headless IoT devices, threat hunting, and bringing big data analytics into cybersecurity to facilitate predictive response. In addition to looking for solutions to these challenges, fully realized visionary MSSPs will incorporate SOAR (Security Orchestration Automation & Response) process to automate deployments, tier 1, mitigation and response. Fortinet MSSP partners at this level have configured security playbooks to assist with the standardization of security deployments.
The MSSP Partner Program
In addition to facilitating the creation and maintenance of an effective SOC, the Fortinet MSSP program offers specialized support, service creation assistance and technical guidance on Fortinet products, as well as business development assistance and sales alignment to identify new revenue streams. This is done through OpEx and SECaaS model enablement to grow MSSP capabilities and assist in preparing partners for future customer needs. Fortinet also offers our partners access to MSSP engineers with expertise in multi-tenant management and automation, enabling them to secure virtual and multi-tenant environments.
Furthermore, Fortinet offers a wide range of solutions, enabling partners to customize their offerings to their customers’ needs, while incorporating advanced threat intelligence.
Final Thoughts
The growth of digital transformation, when combined with the cybersecurity skills gap, means that organizations are increasingly seeking to outsource corporate cybersecurity to MSSPs. This is a huge opportunity for our partners to grow their businesses while increasing the value they offer their customers. However, in order to take advantage of this opportunity, aspiring MSSPs need the expertise and resources to create an advanced SOC, and offer diverse security services.
Through Fortinet’s SOC Lifecycle Strategy, our partners can seamlessly make the transition from MSP / VAR to a profitable MSSP.
This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.
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