Market conditions ripe for MSP value to shine bright
Over the last two years, supply chain issues have, along with ransomware attacks, dominated as the leading challenges for IT organizations. These challenges are where modern MSPs can rapidly show their value and grow as the markets shift. In addition, organizations are experiencing gaps that MSPs are perfectly poised to fill.
However, over the same time period, many MSPs got caught up in the massive rise in ransomware attacks as well. And sadly, in addition to monetary losses, many MSPs had sunk costs into data protection that didn’t end up working; they ended up losing data, and on average experienced 16.2 days of downtime. Downtime equals lost customers, service credits, and impacts to growth and productivity, if not outright business failure.
Despite these challenges, it has never been a better time to be the MSP with the right solutions, and technology partnerships help them solve today’s challenges with confidence and ease by delivering cyber resilient Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS).
Typical pain of organizations trying to protect their data
All businesses with computers attached to a network and the internet face the same challenges — the only variable is the scale and the cost of the impact:
- Traditional solutions are designed to recover from system failure only, not from a cyber attack
- Backup control pane exists on-server on the local network — vulnerable to attack
- High storage costs restrict organizations from retaining backup data for longer than typical ransomware incubation periods
- Rising cyber-insurance premiums, with many being denied insurance for non-cyber resilient backup
- Destroying or encrypting backups is a crucial step in a ransomware attacker’s playbook
- Backup systems that are not highly secure with an immutable cloud copy, do not comply with many insurers minimum requirements
- Internal IT teams not equipped with skills or time to properly address issues
- Increasing costs of data protection due to inefficient use of resources
MSPs differentiate by delivering cyber resilient BaaS
Given the market conditions and inability of organizations to solve these challenges alone, MSPs are more successful than ever, with approximately 60% of organizations outsourcing some IT functions to MSPs. Backup management is the most popular choice, with approximately 20% of organizations paying MSPs to handle their backups.
This is a double-edged sword, as MSPs who have advised customers on solutions that are not cyber resilient are no longer seen as trusted advisors. As a result, customers are looking elsewhere for MSPs that understand the gravity of this risk, and leveraging those MSPs that offer cyber resilient data protection technologies.
To remain relevant with customers and their most popular needs, MSPs must differentiate themselves as trusted advisors that understand the value of a cyber resilient BaaS solution for their customers.
Customers are quickly moving away from traditional solutions to MSPs that offer cyber resilient BaaS, and eventually looking to move all their IT needs to this single MSP. The MSP that wins the cyber resiliency share of mind of its customers wins the share of wallet from those customers across the MSP’s entire service catalog.
Minimum requirements for cyber resilient BaaS
- Providing advice on what data should be protected and how
- Providing immutable backups with the control panel air-gapped from the customer’s network
- Retaining backup for longer than typical ransomware incubation periods at a reasonable cost
- Implementation of solutions end to end
- Proactive monitoring and remediation
- TCO that meets the organization’s budget — similar or less than traditional backup solutions
- Quick deployment without relying on hardware or succumbing to supply chain bottlenecks
Higher value services offered in addition to basic cyber resilient BaaS
Where MSPs offer higher-value services they build stronger customer relationships and further differentiate themselves from competitors, while enjoying higher profitability.
Examples of these higher-value services include:
- Providing a full managed service offering for all data protection and recovery activities
- Insurance readiness consultation and implementation
- Detailed data classification and data protection policy design
- Setting reasonable and achievable data recovery objectives
- Recovery benchmark tests
- Ensuring recovery objectives can be attained — with supporting recovery reports
- Catching misconfiguration issues such as data missed from being added to backup sets
- Regular recovery test, e.g. biannually or quarterly
- Accelerated ransomware recovery services — reducing downtime as much as possible
Cyber resilient BaaS leveraging the Druva Data Resiliency Cloud
MSPs that partner with Druva can meet the above requirements and provide value-added offerings in addition to cyber resilient BaaS with a platform that’s trusted and validated by the industry. Druva’s industry-tested platform has received the Cyber Catalyst designation, indicating that leading cyber insurers believe it is an effective tool in combating today’s most significant cyber risks — including ransomware and data loss.
Industry leaders have faith in Druva’s 100% SaaS approach to data resilience through immutable backup. Its cutting-edge architecture and platform advantages include:
- Air-gap of customer environments from the backup control pane and storage
- Zero-trust architecture and data privacy — not even Druva can access customer data
- Immutable storage in the cloud
- Information protection leveraging Druva’s unique deduplication and encryption
- Anomaly detection and deletion prevention
- Intrusion detection and prevention
Druva’s focus on MSP partnerships make all the difference
Druva’s MSP partners deliver outstanding outcomes to their end customers. Druva supports their efforts by working directly with them to achieve the following:
- Understanding and alignment with the MSP’s technical and business goals
- Clearly defined MSP packaging and pricing for Druva-based solutions
- Differentiating MSPs from the competition and from Druva’s direct-to-customer offerings
- Templates for describing and promoting Druva-based offerings
- Assisting with bringing services to market, enabling MSP internal teams
The demand for cyber resilient BaaS is extremely high, and organizations need MSPs to help them get protected and insured from ever-increasing cyber threats. With a leading cloud platform and comprehensive partnership, MSPs and Druva are delivering tremendous value together.