MSP to MSSP: the new face of Aussie services

Managed services have had their heyday since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic two years ago, as scores of customers sought help and support for their now-distributed environments. 

In response to this, customers are also becoming heavily reliant on security providers to protect their widening perimeters and attack surfaces from an ever-menacing threat of cyber breaches. 

To this end, Australia’s managed service provider (MSP) is in a prime position to capitalise on this demand, while also providing higher-margin and value services by transitioning to a managed services security provider (MSSP). 

But becoming an MSSP is by no means a cheap or easy process. It is simply not just a case of investing and on-boarding a couple of security vendors and claiming to offer an end-to-end cyber security service. 

Indeed, Ron Jarvis, sales director of distributor Bluechip Infotech, believes there is a “bare minimum” that an MSSP must provide in a security operations centre (SOC) such as penetration testing, compliance monitoring, managed security monitoring, vulnerability assessments, perimeter securing and application control. 

“Where MSPs would have just looked after the network and the end point, customers are now looking to add security to that mix,” he said.

The Missing Link and Somerville Group are two Australian success stories of transitioning from an MSP-to-MSSP, but it has taken both Sydney providers years to build.