MSPs Should Fire Clients that Won’t Invest in Cyber Protection Services
“Conducting ‘The Conversation’ with your under-protected clients can be awkward,” says Simpson, “but it’s critical in the current cyberthreat environment. It doesn’t take many ransomware attacks to drain your resources and profits to the point where you aren’t providing good service to your other clients. A few weakly protected clients can drive up your costs and lower overall client satisfaction, hurting your ability to win renewals. And we’re now seeing MSPs that have to fight cyber insurers to avoid paying damages from an attack that was clearly the client’s fault.”
Simpson offers the following advice to MSPs on how to conduct “The Conversation” with their SMB clients that currently have inadequate cyber protection:
- Frame the upgrade not in terms of cybersecurity features and functions, but as a business necessity for both the SMB and the MSP to reduce their mutual risk and continue to grow profitably.
- Educate the client on how ransomware and other cyberthreats have outgrown the capabilities of legacy countermeasures like signature-based antivirus.
- Explain how their increased risk posture puts your other clients at risk–that responding to a successful attack on one client adversely affects your ability to protect and support all the others, which is unfair to clients that are paying for adequate defenses.
- Set a date for them to upgrade their services, and explain that your business relationship with them cannot continue past that point if they can’t or won’t find the means to get onto at least your basic cyber protection services plan. Give them time to make the business case and find the budget internally, but set a deadline for action.
“No MSP wants to fire a client,” says Simpson, “But without adequate cyber protection, a few problem SMBs can drag down your business with unacceptably high support costs, cyber risk exposure and the threat of insurance recovery actions. It only takes one successful ransomware attack to cripple a client’s business, put a dent in yours and weaken your ability to protect the rest of your base. MSPs that hope to keep all of their clients safe while maintaining decent margins must learn how to conduct ‘The Conversation,’ and use it to nudge their under-protected clients to a tier of services where they’re no longer easy prey for cybercriminals.”
For a more detailed look at conducting “The Conversation,” watch the replay of Acronis’ recent webinar with Erick Simpson on the subject. It also includes the perspectives of an MSP owner who has had success upgrading his own clients to better cyber protection services using this approach.
James R. Slaby is the Director of Cyber Protection at Acronis. Previously, Slaby was an industry analyst covering cybersecurity, cloud computing, and networking at Forrester Research, HFS Research, Yankee Group and The Info Pro. He has also held solutions, vertical, product and campaign marketing roles at tech security and networking vendors including Sonus, Acme Packet, Bay Networks and Motorola.
This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.
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