MSP Guide to Choosing Security Products

Many MSPs struggle when trying to select the right vendors and products for their businesses and end-clients. This struggle is becoming even greater when it comes to selecting security solutions. With cyberattacks on the rise, small to medium sized businesses are becoming increasingly vulnerable. It's no longer a matter of if, but when, a small business will be exposed to threat of business interruption, downtime, data loss, or ransom. For MSPs, having proper security solutions in place for your clients has become priority number one in 2023.

But where do you start?

Of course, not all solutions are created equal, and even the most popular ones may not work for your business or end-clients’ needs. One way to ensure that a vendor’s solutions are right for you and your customers would be to test it yourself! Set up their solution in a test environment within your business. Any good vendor will offer a trial or demo of their solution, and you should take advantage of this opportunity to get a better feel for how the product will work for you.

Test the vendor's support by asking them questions or seeking their help. You'll want to know how well they perform while trying to earn your business. Understand what kind of support you can expect once they've secured your business!

You’ll also want to verify integration within your current systems, as well as your clients’ systems, even if the vendor has assured you that it will. Create documentation of what is involved in deploying the solution, step-by-step, so it will be easy to streamline deployment and set expectations for your end-clients.

Which security solutions are necessary?

Ask yourself if the product you’re considering enhances your offering in a way that makes it worth the effort involved in deploying it. You might see some impressive security products, but are they something your end client cares about as much as you do? Consider if the solution will do the following for your clients:

• Adds value to their business
• Resolves a specific need
• Meets a requirement your clients have

If the solution doesn’t meet any of the requirements above, it might not be a viable option for you or your clients. That’s your cue to test another solution to see if it’s a match!

Finally, determine whether the solution has channel-friendly pricing or gained operational efficiencies that will allow you to improve your gross margins. Adding a solution or service to your stack should allow for either a new revenue opportunity, by solving a need for the client, or gaining operational efficiencies that lower support burden and increase client satisfaction. The ideal solution will do both.

Even if the solution works with your existing offerings and contributes to profitability, you still have another decision to make before purchasing it: should you offer it as a standalone product, or will you build it into your existing offering?

After you've implemented it, you might need to tweak it to make it work. Reevaluate the product to see if any processes need updating.

What problem are you solving for?

At the end of the day, you need to understand what problems your clients are facing, what problems their vertical industries may be facing, and find a way to solve those problems. At D&H, we offer complete solutions to cover anything and everything you’ll need as an MSP to support and protect your end clients. No matter what size your end-clients are, we have you covered.

For security offerings, make sure you at least have the permissions to play! Are you currently offering any of the following?

• Network firewalls
• Anti-virus
• Anti-SPAM
• Multi-Factor Authentication
• Identity management for remote workers
• Dark Web monitoring
• Cyber security training and education for end users

D&H provides MSPs with solutions that work

There's a lot of noise in the security market these days. If you’re looking for security solutions for your clients, you have a very time-consuming task ahead of you. But if you check with us first, you’ll find that we have done all the heavy lifting for you.

D&H offers everything you need to keep your clients safe, including solutions for cybersecurity, network security, physical security, and web security. We can supply you with a security solution for your client's specific needs.

If you're ready to grow not only your Security offering but your entire Managed Services practice, check out our previously recorded training seminar MSP Sales Planning & Prep for 2023. During this exclusive D&H partner event, you’ll hear from Nick Points, Sales Director at CharTec Academy, who advises how to achieve your lofty goals this year.