Posts

In the Field: Real-World Success with SonicWall Overdrive 2.0

/0 Comments/in /by

Effectively marketing and selling managed service provider (MSP) services can be a real uphill battle for many organizations. The competition is fierce and positioning your organization’s services or competitive advantages isn’t easy.

For many MSPs and MSSPs, the responsibility of envisioning, designing, developing and maintaining effective marketing materials falls on the shoulders of the sales team or the senior leadership team. But they don’t always have the time or skill to execute what’s needed to cut through the cacophony of marketing noise.

Fortunately, SonicWall has alleviated much of this burden.

SonicWall Overdrive 2.0 is a remarkable resource stocked with modern, appealing and relevant content to help MSPs and MSSPs generate demand and close more business.

If you haven’t spent time in Overdrive 2.0, you’re missing out; there is an incredibly diverse set of resources to assist and even automate things like email blasts, social media, thought-leadership content and promotional material.

In my experience, there are three foundational best practices you should implement as an MSP or MSSP, especially when you’re scratching and clawing for sales in the competitive cybersecurity landscape.

Set Your Goals

Let me take you back a few years. As SonicWall’s FY2016 drew to a close, ProviNET scheduled a meeting with our SonicWall territory account manager (TAM). He really challenged us to set a goal for FY2017 to move up a level in our SonicWall SecureFirst partnership.

He was right. We had been a SonicWall ‘Silver’ partner for several years and with our FY2016 sales, we weren’t too far away from being eligible for ‘gold’ if we also achieved some additional sales and technical certifications. But we weren’t quite sure how to push ourselves across that next threshold.

Our TAM had the answer. He turned us on to SonicWall Overdrive 2.0, the company’s fully automated partner marketing engine designed specifically around key go-to-market themes, campaigns and resources. He assured us that if we invested a little bit of time into marketing, we’d be able to elevate our partnership. With that, our goal was set: we were going to become a SonicWall gold partner in 2017.

SonicWall Overdrive offers turnkey campaigns SecureFirst partners can launch to build awareness, create pipeline and close deals.

Develop Your Strategy

Without a strategy, marketing is a lot like throwing bubble gum at the wall and seeing if it sticks. Spend some time intentionally thinking through four things:

  • Who your organization will target
  • What methods it will use to target
  • How often you will target potential buyers
  • How you will track and measure your efforts

If you have a dedicated marketing person, consider developing a multi-faceted campaign that the marketing team can execute. The campaign should include multiple touchpoints across a variety of channels. Overdrive is an easy-to-use tool, regardless of your resources, to reach your customers and prospects.

At a basic level, consider sending an email blast, posting on social media, sending a postcard, publishing whitepapers or case studies on the website, and using the Overdrive 2.0 content to educate customers and prospects.

SonicWall Overdrive 2.0 packages content and resources partners can leverage as part of one-off marketing efforts or fully integrated campaigns.

We had success using much of the Overdrive 2.0 content to point people to a dedicated SonicWall landing page within our own website where prospects could fill out a form and be contacted to learn more. And because these campaigns were launched by us, they were contacting us for more information (i.e., we received the lead and the opportunity to either nurture the prospect or close the deal).

Even sophisticated customers will not always be able to grasp the full advantages and capabilities of the Capture Cloud platform after just one touchpoint. It will be important to educate them on the advantages that the orchestration of these security products and services can provide to them.

But don’t forget about existing customers here, too. For us, the Overdrive 2.0 marketing content was a motivator to look across our existing SonicWall customer install base and look for opportunity to add additional services like the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox service or secure email solutions.

Analyze Your Results

There is remarkably valuable information in marketing analytics reports. Whether you use a marketing automation tool, a website analytics engine or even just campaign reporting from Overdrive, it can help your sales staff be more efficient and effective in their sales efforts.

Our team uses a combination of HubSpot, Google Analytics, and the email reports from Overdrive 2.0 to glean insights into customers and prospects who may or may not have an interest in particular marketing campaigns.

We can track if an individual opened an email four times, clicked the link to our site, or engaged with us on social media on several occasions to gauge if there is a genuine interest. Our sales team then makes those prospects and customers the focus of contact for more direct conversations — and that often leads to close deals.

Bear in mind, the goal of marketing is not to sell. These are two very different activities. For ProviNET, we define marketing as a process where we:

Our sales team has a very different, yet complementary, function:

SonicWall Overdrive 2.0 has been an invaluable resource for our team to really accomplish all four of our marketing objectives. By using the assets available in Overdrive 2.0, we’re providing meaningful education about the necessity and value of security products and services. We can position those assets in a compelling and efficient manner to provide the most value to our prospects and customers.

Even better? All registered SonicWall SecureFirst Silver, Gold and Platinum partners in good standing are eligible to use the SonicWall Overdrive 2.0 platform, at no cost, through the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Portal.

About ProviNET

ProviNET is a SonicWall SecureFirst Gold Partner. For nearly three decades, ProviNET has delivered trusted technology solutions for senior living and post-acute healthcare organizations. Whether it’s a single project or full-time onsite work, ProviNET designs and implements customized solutions so healthcare organizations can focus on core services.

ProviNET’s tight-knit group of experienced, industry-certified personnel are focused on customer satisfaction. They are a reputable organization, fulfilling immediate IT needs and helping plan for tomorrow. They are ready to put their extensive knowledge to work for healthcare, developing strategies and solving challenges with the latest technology.

To learn more about ProviNET, please visit www.provinet.com.

Slide Anything shortcode error: A valid ID has not been provided

3 Elements of a Successful Managed Security Services (MSS) Bundle

/0 Comments/in /by

The small- and medium-sized business (SMB) market is rapidly accelerating its adoption of converged managed IT services to alleviate headaches and prevent risks.

More and more businesses use cloud-based services for enterprise applications, processing or communications, placing an even higher priority on network performance and reliability. Yet many SMBs are facing a cybersecurity crisis.

Cyber threats are continuing to get more sophisticated and frequent; SMBs are becoming a more routine target. 61 percent of SMBs experienced a cyber breach in 2017, compared to 55 percent in 2016.

Most managed IT service providers recognize that SMBs don’t have the awareness, knowledge or resources to implement cyber defense mechanisms to effectively protect their data, devices and people. Furthermore, the cybersecurity services market has developed enterprise-class solutions aimed at large enterprise businesses because they have historically been prime targets.

“The challenge for MSPs is finding effective tools that pair well with internal processes to mitigate the risk of a cyber breach, threat of downtime or damage to customers’ reputation.”

There are incredible opportunities for MSPs to develop service options customized for SMBs to address cybersecurity woes while accommodating limited budgets. MSPs that are focused on this will continue to add real value to the services they are providing and strengthen customer relationships by building trust.

The challenge for MSPs is finding effective tools that pair well with internal processes to mitigate the risk of a cyber breach, threat of downtime or damage to customers’ reputation. If bundled intelligently, these services are any easy sell. No business owner wants to see their organization featured on the six o’clock news for a data breach.

Consider three foundational elements of an MSSP plan. These may consist of several individual services, but those services are aimed at protecting specific functions.

Data Protection

Just like their enterprise counterparts, small businesses have a growing data footprint. Storage keeps getting less expensive and many SMBs don’t have a data governance policy, causing the gigabytes to pile up.

Whether the data is stored on-premises or in the cloud, it’s important to have appropriate protections in place, but also the ability to restore data in the event of a disaster or cyberattack. Good MSSP bundles aimed at protecting data will include:

  • Content Filtering: Having a web filtering service to block inappropriate, unproductive or malicious websites is a major first step in preventing cyberattacks.
  • Email Security: Implement secure email solutions to protect SMBs from email-borne threats, such as ransomware, zero-day attacks and spear-phishing attempts, and comply with regulatory mandates to encrypt sensitive emails.
  • Backup & Disaster Recovery: Ensure that an SMB’s data is effectively backed up; whether it lives on a workstation, on-premises device or in the cloud. Being able to restore information that has been compromised is the best insurance policy.

Device Protection

Endpoint devices come in all shapes, sizes and flavors, but the quantity of devices continues to grow. This means that there are more potential intrusion points than ever before. It’s important for a good MSSP bundle to include services aimed at protecting and monitoring endpoint devices.

  • Endpoint Management: MSSPs should have a comprehensive inventory of all devices associated with an SMB customer. Good endpoint management solutions will allow MSSPs to push updates and security patches as they are released to ensure that endpoints stay hardened.
  • Endpoint Security: It almost goes without saying, but having a solid antivirus endpoint security solution in place is still one of the best defenses for protecting endpoint devices.
  • Endpoint Rollback: Mistakes happen. Phishing emails are opened. Malicious links are clicked. But MSSPs can add value for their customers by using endpoint protection solutions that include automated rollback features for those events when a device is compromised.

People Protection

The human element is the most difficult to control and the hardest to protect. But it is critical.

Provide convenient and easy pathways for people to adopt sound security behavior. A consistent security awareness culture makes it easier for users to be aware of security threats. Consider the following bundled services as part of your MSSP offering.

  • Virtual Private Network (VPN): Provide a secure lane for all SMB endpoints to work over a VPN connection. A VPN client may route back to the customer’s network if there are on-premises connectivity demands, or it may be more generic VPN connection to an MSSP’s gateway. VPNs are prevalent and not just for workstations anymore. Modern VPN services offer clients for just about any type of endpoint and are especially important for mobile devices.
  • Policies & Procedures: Provide template policies and procedures to your SMB customers. Again, many of them are leaving IT management, including governance, up to you. Providing basic templates for things like password management, backup and user provisioning is an easy way to get them to create a more robust security awareness culture.
  • Security Awareness Training: For SMBs that subscribe to your MSSP bundle, provide them with routine threat awareness and simple tips and tricks to enforce that security awareness culture.

The most effective MSSP program is dependent on partnerships. Partnerships between SMBs and their IT partners, but also partnerships between MSSP providers and solutions providers. MSPs that bundle services to offer an MSSP will be well-suited to work with security vendors able to offer a comprehensive spectrum of services for their SMB customers.

About ProviNET

ProviNET is a SonicWall SecureFirst Gold Partner. For nearly three decades, ProviNET has delivered trusted technology solutions for healthcare organizations. Whether it’s a single project or full-time onsite work, ProviNET designs and implements customized solutions so healthcare organizations can focus on core services.

ProviNET’s tight-knit group of experienced, industry-certified personnel are focused on customer satisfaction. They are a reputable organization, fulfilling immediate IT needs and helping plan for tomorrow. They are ready to put their extensive knowledge to work for healthcare, developing strategies and solving challenges with the latest technology.

To learn more about ProviNET, please visit www.provinet.com.

Maintaining Your Most Valuable Assets

/0 Comments/in /by

by Charles Ho
SonicWall Outside Regional Sales Director

Creating a team of skilled security professionals is the single biggest gap for businesses today. While this gap is fueling the need for managed security services, managed security service providers (MSSPs) also face the same problem.

MSSP staff members are constantly being approached by recruiters, competitors and even their customers. The value that MSSPs deliver to their customers is a direct correlation to the talented people manning their operations. How can you better keep your security operations center (SOC) analysts happy, engaged and committed for the long term? Compensation is obvious, but I want to focus on three arguably more important factors: technology, team building and enablement.

Technology

Throughout an analyst’s day, they’re touching different technologies at the customer site and in your SOC. Having access to the right tools can make the job significantly more effective and efficient, which cuts down on frustration and increases productivity.

Involve analysts in technology choices

Which threat detection technology should your customer deploy? Ask your analyst! They understand what’s effective but more importantly, which technologies make their job easier. One brand’s alerts may only show a title, but another brand may provide comprehensive access to packet data as well as additional context from threat intelligence feeds. This is even more important when evaluating SOC tools. Changing to a more cost-effective tool that your analysts hate will only result in employee attrition.

Look at automation

Many MSSPs I talk to are looking at automation to reduce costs by increasing the analyst-to-customer ratio. However, the bigger benefit is being able to reduce the amount of Level 1 work an analyst needs to perform. Analysts love working on net-new cases where they can potentially unravel a significant breach and will, in many cases, work overtime to continue to triage. The opposite is also true, where working on repetitive cases can lead to fatigue.

Team Building and Culture

Analysts don’t work alone. The more they can work as a team, the more effective they’ll be. The camaraderie of a team helps employees believe they’re part of something bigger than themselves. Here are some suggestions to improve working environment:

Promote joint activities outside of work

  • Provide access to entertainment at the office with a focus on multiplayer activities, like ping pong
  • Plan regular team-building activities, like a staff lunch
  • Encourage involvement in company activities
  • Rotate analysts appropriately so everyone gets a chance to participate

Encourage interaction between SOCs

  • Hold regular video conference hand-offs; everyone needs to know everyone’s face
  • Offer cross-SOC training opportunities
  • Create options to relocate between SOCs

Enablement and Career

Just like any other job, a network security employee wants to grow professionally. Not only do they want to enhance their skills, but they also want the opportunity to progress to a bigger role. Unless you’re a global MSSP, the latter can be a challenge as the company structure can be very flat. Some suggestions for professional development:

Implement training and mentor programs

  • Particularly for a new analyst, it can be very rewarding to learn from someone senior. Establishing mentor relationships not only allows the new analyst to grow, but can also give the senior analyst a sense of accomplishment, especially if they’re not a manager.
  • Encourage and support external training activities. Sending someone to the yearly Black Hat global information security conference can be seen as a big reward, but attending smaller — and often free — vendor trainings can have similar effects.

Expand job scopes

It’s not always possible to promote an individual, but providing them unique opportunities to show off their capability can be an alternative to career progression.

  • Use case walkthroughs with the team to have analysts share interesting findings. This is even better if they can share their discoveries with people outside the SOC, such as the sales team.
  • Provide SOC tours to customers and have analysts walk through their daily activity and share sample cases.
  • Use monthly/quarterly customer reviews (onsite or remote) to show value to customers beyond reporting and alerting.

SOC analysts are your most valuable asset. Keep them happy and your business will prosper.

Learn more information about SonicWall’s SecureFirst partner program, which helps accelerate our partners’ ability to be thought-leaders and game-changers in the ever-evolving security landscape.

https://www.sonicwall.com/en-us/partners/mssp-partner-program

5 Cyberattack Vectors for MSSP to Mitigate in Healthcare

/in /by

It’s no secret that healthcare continues to be one of the most targeted industries for cybercriminals. Healthcare providers store and maintain some of the most valuable data and the appetite for fraudulent claims or fake prescription medications is insatiable.

Despite all of the regulations, there are still fewer watchdogs overseeing healthcare. For many providers, cyber security hasn’t been a priority until very recently.

With more and more organizations reaching out to cyber security experts for assistance, it’s more important than ever that managed security services providers (MSSPs) understand the healthcare industry so that they can tailor solutions aimed at improving the security posture of healthcare providers.

Inside Users Present the Greatest Threat

According to a 2018 survey of cyber security professionals conducted by HIMSS, over 60 percent of threat actors are internal users within a healthcare organization. Email phishing and spear-phishing attempts are aimed at tricking users into providing credentials or access to information for cybercriminals. Negligent insiders, who have access to trusted information, can facilitate data breaches or cyber incidents while trying to be helpful.

In addition to systematically monitoring and protecting infrastructure components, MSSPs need to consider a multi-faceted campaign that creates a cyber security awareness culture within healthcare organizations. This campaign should include template policies and procedures for organizations to adopt, regular and routine training efforts, and human penetration-testing.

From a systematic perspective, it’s important to have tools that will do everything possible to mitigate cyberattacks. Tools like next-generation email security to block potential phishing or spear phishing attempts; endpoint security solutions to monitor behavior through heuristic-based techniques; and internal network routing through a next-generation firewall to perform deep packet inspection (DPI) on any information transgressing the network — especially if it’s encrypted.

Mobile Devices Open Large Attack Surfaces

Mobile devices have changed the way that we do just about everything. And the same is true for the manner in which healthcare conducts business.

To enable mobility and on-demand access, many electronic health record (EHR) applications have specific apps that create avenues for mobile devices to access portions of the EHR software. The widespread adoption of mobile devices and BYOD trends are pushing healthcare to adapt new business models and workflows. Cyber risk mitigation must be a priority as momentum continues to build.

MSSPs need to pay very careful attention to the access that mobile devices have to the EHR application, whether hosted on-premise or in the cloud. For more protection, implement a mobile device management (MDM) solution if the organization doesn’t already have one.

IoT Leaves Many Healthcare Providers at Risk

The Internet of Things (IoT) is bringing connectivity and statistical information to providers in near real-time while offering incredible convenience to the patient. Even wearable devices have immense capabilities to monitor chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. With these devices comes an incredible opportunity for hackers and immense threat for healthcare providers.

IoT devices tend to have weaker protections than typical computers. Many IoT devices do not receive software or firmware updates in any sort of regular cadence even though all of them are connected to the internet. There are so many manufacturers of IoT devices, and they are distributed through so many channels. There are no standards or controls regarding passwords, encryption or chain of command tracking capabilities to see who has handled the device.

If it’s feasible for the organization, totally isolate any IoT-connected devices to a secure inside network not connected to the internet (i.e., air gapped).

Encryption for Data at Rest Is Critical

For healthcare providers, it’s equally important to have a strong encryption for both data at rest and data in transit. Encryption for data at rest includes ensuring the software managing PHI doesn’t have a really weak single key that could unlock everyone’s PHI. If at all possible, records should be encrypted with unique keys so that a potentially exposed key doesn’t open the door to everyone’s information.

Attacks Are Hiding within Encrypted Traffic

MSSPs serving healthcare organizations need to realize that there is not one layer of defense that they should rely on. That said, perhaps the most important layer is the firewall.

A next-generation firewall, with DPI capabilities, is a critical component to securing a healthcare network. Even internal traffic transgressing the network should be routed through the firewall to prevent any potential malicious traffic from proliferating the entire LAN and to log transactions.

As much as possible, isolate medical devices and software applications that host PHI inside a secure network zone and protect that zone with an internal DPI-capable firewall that will only allow access to authorized services and IP addresses.

About ProviNET

ProviNET is a SonicWall SecureFirst Gold Partner. For nearly three decades, ProviNET has delivered trusted technology solutions for healthcare organizations. Whether it’s a single project or full-time onsite work, ProviNET designs and implements customized solutions so healthcare organizations can focus on core services.

ProviNET’s tight-knit group of experienced, industry-certified personnel are focused on customer satisfaction. They are a reputable organization, fulfilling immediate IT needs and helping plan for tomorrow. They are ready to put their extensive knowledge to work for healthcare, developing strategies and solving challenges with the latest technology.

To learn more about ProviNET, please visit www.provinet.com.

Should I Become an MSSP? 13 Considerations from MSP Expo

/0 Comments/in /by

With the cyber security skills gap being a point of contention for closing in on five years now, the managed security services provider (MSSP) industry has responded in kind.

In fact, Gartner predicted that 40 percent of all managed security services contracts will be bundled with other security services and IT outsourcing projects by 2020.

But the fact is, not every IT vendor, distributor or value-added reseller (VAR) is cut out to be an MSSP. For each MSSP that truly adds value in protecting their customers, there are others that fall short of what the cyber security industry — and prospective customers — requires.

I recently attended the MSP Expo in Las Vegas, Nev., to participate on an engaging panel of cyber security experts, including Guy Cunningham, VP of Channel Sales and Alliances at EventTracker; Jonathan Morgan, Director of Security Operations and Development at Area 1 Security; and DV Dronamraju, Managing Director at InfoSecEnforcer.com.

While we were able to collectively field and discuss many of the day’s top questions, I felt it prudent to republish these topics to help a broader audience of existing and future MSSPs.

What should business customers be most concerned about relative to cybersecurity, and why?

It’s rapidly changing threat landscape. For instance, we are seeing crypto-jacking this year as a new cyber threat. And while ransomware volume was somewhat down in 2017, new threat intelligence already shows a massive 299 percent year-to-date increase in 2018. So, the landscape continues to be agile and cybercriminals are diligent in seeking out new ways to impact organizations.

What can MSPs do to protect their customers from cyberattacks?

It’s important to consistently employ basic best practices: patching, updates, segmentation, etc. For MSP/MSSPs, the reality is that customers need help with this. So, developing services that take care of the basics is a great place to start. From there, you can scale your services and offerings to enhance their security postures.

Phishing is the root cause of data breaches and financial losses. How do anti-phishing solutions work?

They’re valuable in a variety of ways, but most email security solutions revolve around maturing the hygiene capabilities of corporate email platforms. Whether deployed on-premise or in the cloud, email security should automatically protect inboxes against links and attachments that are commonly used in phishing attacks.

More advanced offerings will use URL filtering and integrate with cloud sandboxes for protecting against known and unknown malware attacks. So, I believe strongly that we need to work to get advanced email security solutions more widely adopted in the market. Hygiene solutions, which most people think of when they hear security, just isn’t good enough anymore.

What kind of margins do email security solutions offer for MSSPs?

While there are many variables in play here, an MSSP could expect a margin of 10-15 percent for an email security product, or 30-50 percent margins if you provide email security as a service.

Since more than 89 percent of breaches have a financial or espionage motive, how are companies supposed to protect their intellectual property?

At a basic level, organizations should map their data so they know what’s most valuable and requires the most security. Depending on what’s being protected, consider using industry compliance guidelines (e.g., PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, etc.) as a baseline, but understand that compliance does not equal automatic security.

From there, layered strategies should include everything from network security firewalls, endpoint protection, secure email and even protection for remote access workers.

What do Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions do, and why are they important? Aren’t they expensive to buy and difficult to operate?

Anybody who has ever used a SIEM will tell you, much like many cyber security tools, it will depend on the investment — time, staff, technology and resources – you put into it.

At the core, SIEMs help organizations correlate event logs (e.g., endpoint protection,  threat intelligence, user information, etc.) to search for patterns based on defined rules. They then provide a correlated output that flags potential risks or threats. They are extremely powerful and give organizations the ability to tune and customize rules for their specific environment(s).

But you have to know what you’re doing. And you have to have strong security engineers to get the most out of a SIEM.

Operationally, some MSSPs leverage a centralized SIEM model (i.e., all customer data flows through a single SIEM), where other MSSPs rely on a decentralized model that leverages whatever SIEM each customer already has in place. In both MSSPs and enterprises, SIEMs are typically used by Tier 1 security operations center (SOC) analysts to monitor alerts and identify events in real time.

How can MSSPs use artificial intelligence and automation to detect threats, trigger alerts, troubleshoot and address security situations?

The reality is that building your own artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities is probably not realistic unless you are a very, very large MSSP. So, ideally, you want to rely on the AI already built in to security products to help you identify and block cyberattacks to protect customers.

For example, SonicWall engineered very smart AI that we integrate into the real-time engines that power our Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) sandbox capabilities. This can allow you to leverage AI without the overhead and complexity of building it yourself.  Then you can use an intelligent SIEM to help make sense of the logs and alerts.

Finding and/or developing cyber security talent can be a challenge. There seems to be a constant shortage of affordable, qualified cyber security practitioners. What do MSPs need in terms of technical, sales and support talent?

The key here is retaining the talent that you train. Companies like SonicWall provide entire platforms to train people — both internal staff and partners — on cyber security best practices, products and emerging threat trends. We call it SonicWall University. Our SecureFirst partners can leverage this platform to train their employees, significantly improving value for their customers. It’s best to consistently use engaging tools to train people and then build a culture that makes them want to stay.

How can MSPs provide enhanced security without adding complexity and overhead?

In a way, MSSPs are supposed to take away the complexity and overhead. We talk a lot today about getting the basics right and the transition from MSP to MSSP. Complex, enterprise-class MSSPs have lots of money, but if you are making the transition from MSP, start with taking the burden of the basics off the customer.

Make sure security devices are installed correctly, patched and have good policies. Make sure good endpoint security is deployed and managed. Provide useful reporting so customers know how well they’re doing. Removing the complexity from the customers is absolutely critical to success.

How does compliance figure in to being an MSSP?

This is massively important. A lot of mid-market MSSPs focus almost exclusively on a vertical. We see healthcare-focused MSSP or others targeting financial services (e.g., PCI). Compliance regulations drive need, so focusing on a vertical is definitely an option — particularly for MSSPs that can’t quite scale to solve all security challenges across an untold number of industries.

But especially if you are just starting in the MSSP space, trying to solve all compliance needs is a tough challenge. So, pick your spots when it comes to compliance.

How can MSSPs protect themselves from financial ruin and lost reputation if their customers do experience an outage or breach?

Good question. But the short answer is you have to indemnify yourself. And also have some level of insurance. And make sure your service-level agreements (SLA) make sense.

What kind of security guarantees/SLAs should an MSSP offer?

This is a very broad topic and also very dependent on the services being offered. The key for the market is that you are selling to match up the SLAs in a way you know you can hit. Take response times for rule changes, for example. You can’t promise you’ll have them done in 30 minutes, 24/7, if you don’t have people on staff around the clock.

How can MSSPs differentiate their security offerings in the marketplace?

We touched on this a bit with the challenge of removing complexity for the customer. Strive to make the entire experience transparent and frictionless.

One of my SonicWall colleagues, Conrad Bell, actually penned an outstanding strategy, “Inside the Modern MSSP,” for MSSP Alert. It outlines how proactive MSSPs are adopting bundled, end-to-end approaches for simplifying cyber security for their customers.

Become a SonicWall MSSP Partner

Are you interested in expanding your security offerings? SonicWall offers the dedicated SecureFirst MSSP Partner Program to help you expand your portfolio to include a full range of flexible managed security services built on SonicWall’s robust security platform.

The SonicWall SecureFirst MSSP program offers training, enablement, support and financial benefits designed to help SecureFirst Partners grow their managed security business.

Build your MSSP offerings by implementing SonicWall MSS blueprints, or work with SonicWall to create customized MSS offerings leveraging your existing managed services expertise.