Being a managed security services provider (MSSP) isn’t for the faint of heart. Your core mission is to protect your clients from cyberthreats, known and unknown—one of today’s most pressing needs. MSSPs have to protect themselves as well; reputational risks multiply the potential harm from a cyberattack.
It probably goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway: the solutions you offer and the vendor support you get will make or break you as an MSSP. When you add it all up, working with a single vendor that delivers end-to-end solutions gives you and clients an edge in the war against cybercrime. Here are three big reasons why:
1. Coordinated Threat Response
As we’ve discussed, you want all the components that make up your security fabric to coordinate and harden defenses in real time. It’s not just about delivering the best possible protection when the bad guys themselves are armed with AI. No, as vital as that may be, it’s also about gaining a tactical advantage over cybercrime rings that tend to specialize in certain types of attacks. Protecting against fractured forces delivers a decisive advantage, as any field general can attest.
2. It’s an Easier Sell
The range of threats—and solutions needed to mitigate those threats—can easily overwhelm your prospects and customers. There’s merit to consolidated billing, bundled discounts and other IT services mainstays. But in cybersecurity, the single-provider solution is also about simplification and being comfortable that there’s a defense available in your current provider’s tech stack, whatever the threat—new or existing.
3. It’s Easier to Grow Your MSSP Client Base
Working with a single vendor also simplifies life for you in the following ways:
- Better defenses. You can deliver unified protection for your clients. That means fewer incidents, faster resolutions and happier customers. In other words, the right vendor reduces your workload and makes you look good.
- More revenue. It’s easier to sell a single-provider solution. Working with one vendor that can deliver everything your clients need translates directly to more revenue. At the very least, you’ve eliminated the overhead of multivendor management and potential finger-pointing.
- Greater scalability. Working with an end-to-end provider allows you to build highly scalable processes around your vendor and its channel team, making training new team members and scaling up your operations much easier.
Channel Commitment is Key
Working with a vendor that can deliver reliable end-to-end security solutions is only part of the equation. Your vendor also needs steadfast commitment to the channel. Fortinet meets both of these objectives, delivering products that repeatedly land in Gartner Magic Quadrants and having no direct sales team. The company’s 100 percent committed to the channel. Learn more here.