MSPs with a robust data protection strategy will achieve market success

Data is the fuel that powers organisations. And like any fuel, it is powerful and useful but dangerous if mishandled. When used strategically, it can drive organisations past their competitors and enable them to deliver the best possible outcomes for their customers. This is why every organisation must put data protection at the centre of its technology operations. The loss, corruption or compromise of data can halt operations, damage reputations, and trigger costly compliance breaches.

For managed service (MSPs), protecting customer data is life or death. A single incident can lead to the data and systems of multiple customers being compromised. MSPs hold privileged access to multiple tenants and systems, so a single breach, ransomware infection, or backup compromise can cascade rapidly across client environments. This can lead to business failure as customers walk away.  

Mature MSPs that have well planned and executed data protection plans have moved far beyond organisations that take basic backups and only test them occasionally. They understand their compliance obligations and use technology to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery orchestration. MSPs that move beyond being transactional partners, simply providing hardware and software, to becoming strategic advisors can help their customers navigate compliance and create resilient platforms that enable operations to continue in the event of an incident that impacts data access or integrity.

MSPs typically engage with different people within customer organisations. It is critical that service providers understand their different needs and motivations and how those change as customers evolve. Senior leaders and owners will focus on risk minimisation and reputation. They will want to avoid regulatory penalties and the loss of customer trust. Metrics like availability, cost of downtime and compliance adherence will be front of mind for them.

Technology managers will have their eyes on maximising uptime and performance while minimising costs. They will want tools that easy to deploy and manage with ease of recovery should an incident occur. They will work closely with compliance owners who want to know what data is being stored and who has access. Application owners will focus on availability and will be concerned with lost productivity from downtime, lost data and insider threats.

All these different requirements need to be considered in light of different compliance regimes, In Australia, rules such as data breach notification rule, CPS234 and the Essential Eight are key compliance obligations and frameworks while there are privacy acts that must be adhered to in Australia and New Zealand. In an escalating threat environment, organisations cannot wait. The must understand the risks they face and put in place appropriate compliance mitigation strategies.

Service providers are well placed to support organisations navigating these difficult waters. If they have appropriate playbooks and plans in place to identify, deploy and support their customers they can choose the most suitable solutions to mitigate the risks customers face. While it’s possible to purchase and deploy specific solutions such as Data Loss Prevention tools, backup and recovery software, auditing support, endpoint protection and other important tools, integrating their management and monitoring their telemetry to detect threats and attacks requires specific expertise.

MSPs can work with customers, by using field-proven playbooks and tools, to identify risks, define mitigation strategies, supply tools and offer ongoing support and refinement to meet new threats and challenges. By partnering with customers, instead of engaging with them in a purely transactional way, service providers can elevate their data protection and security posture.

The key to succeeding in this is having a streamlined and market-proven methodology. This means starting by identifying the customer’s maturity stage. Are they only maintaining onsite backups that are tested on an ad hoc basis or have they considered automated restoration and disaster recovery? Depending on where they are on that continuum, there will be opportunities for MSPs to meet the needs of different stakeholders in customer businesses.

Once the maturity level is identified, MSPs can map their capabilities to their customer’s need and ensure they articulate the risks and solutions to each stakeholder in a way that is meaningful to them. From there, they can offer appropriate solutions that are backed by expert advice that helps refine the strategy as needs change and ensure solutions are delivering the anticipated benefits.

Service providers seeking to boost their capabilities in offering data protection services are not alone. Crayon works closely with service providers, offering strategic guidance that helps partners to steer customer conversations, and technical advisory to support capability builds. This includes a four-part series of Data Protection Playbooks examining each stage of customer maturity, and how the role of partners evolves from selling products to delivering ongoing data protection services.

By taking a holistic view of risk and capability, MSPs can partner with their customers to offer highly customised solutions that the risk of data loss, boost business continuity and adapt to changing needs. By following a market-tested and proven playbook, they can ensure that success is repeatable. If you’re ready to get underway, download the Data Protection Playbook: Pre-Adoption and Exploration Stage today.