MSPs Race to Establish Zero-Trust: ‘We Are Headed for Disaster’
… plan deeper than just adding vendors. They need to fine-tune their policies.
“Make sure that internally you have an actual process,” Wiser said. “You have to have a human being that’s looking at this.”
Who’s Next?
Jenkins in his keynote pointed to the omnipresent threat of cybercriminals. Consider that the DarkSide group, the authors of the Colonial Pipeline attack, have pushed back on the idea that it was a political group. Apparently their targeting of a company in the gasoline market painted them in a bad light.
“They came out and apologized and said that going forward they’re going to go after less controversial targets,” Jenkins said. “What does that mean? Children’s hospitals? Fair game. Charities? Fair game. MSPs are fair game.”
Industry Growth
Despite downer conversations about cybercrime, the MSP industry is enjoying a prosperous season. Rae said Datto’s numbers show that 47% of MSPs grew during the pandemic.
“MSPs did pretty damn good through this,” Rae said.
Rae said that MSPs have historically struggled to retain customers. When customers only talk to you when something is broken, it can be difficult to remind them of the value you provide. Well, the pandemic made that value more than obvious.
“All of a sudden, everyone’s hair’s on fire, and who came through? It’s the MSPs. The MSPs are the ones that are there to help mobilize. Security is a conversation we’re going to talk a lot about I’m sure. But we’re not talking about retention anymore. We’re looking now for what are greater opportunities than we can see.”
Partner Profile
Datalink Networks is a Santa Clarita, California-based MSP. Datalink acts as IT staff for customers of 25-100 seats, a strategic IT partner for customers of 100-1,000 and a product vendor for customers of more than 1,000 seats.
The company holds gold partner status with Microsoft and has seen significant opportunities come from helping customers who don’t know much about email environments. Datalink offers a complimentary upfront scan to build trust with the customer and develop a relationship. Senior account executive Brian Wisdom said the company prides itself on providing education and analysis for the customer.
“We’re the liaison between our customers and the manufacturer. A lot of customers don’t know the lingo that we talked about,” Wisdom said. “That’s why it’s on us to understand what’s out there in the market. How we can put it in a box and then give it to them in a digestible manner so that customers trust and believe what we’re telling them?”
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