Enterprise Fuel, Part 5: Security
BY IT GLUE | August 17, 2020
Not all MSPs care about cybersecurity. Sounds strange, but it’s true. Yet MSPs are increasingly being targeted in cyberattacks, specifically because they have access to a wealth of sensitive data. If you have any ambitions of growing to serve the mid-market, and especially any sort of co-managed or enterprise environments, you need to take security much more seriously than an old school break-fix or VAR probably does.
Security is also Enterprise Fuel in the sense of generating revenue. With businesses of all sizes being targeted routinely, there’s a lot of money to be made selling a wide range of security products and services, including security training. But you can figure out how to make your own money – we’re here to talk about how security of your environment is Enterprise Fuel.
Securing your MSP is Enterprise Fuel. Without enterprise-grade security, you probably won’t get your foot in the door with larger businesses. Plus, the cybersecurity environment is changing so quickly that this is one area where you can sell yourself as a co-managed partner. But the larger point is that in order to service larger clients, you need to have security standards with which they are comfortable. That starts with your stack.
Secure documentation is essential, especially as you grow. You need people on your team to have secure access to the right things, and no access to the wrong things. You also need to be able to operate in a co-managed environment, and that can be done either by granting an IT Glue license to the internal IT, or by using MyGlue to securely share documentation. In either case, the key is that you need documentation with MFA and granular access controls.
A lot of MSP tools are built by small companies, or were built a long time ago. Quite frankly, the world has changed a lot, and some of the tools out there simply haven’t kept up. And some of the smaller tools, even if they’re owned by a larger player, never had good security to begin with.
IT Glue is the only enterprise-grade documentation solution. While built for MSPs of all sizes, we’ve invested heavily in security, and it shows. Walk through our Secure Documentation Checklist and see how the other guys stack up (they don’t).
Taking shortcuts on security just to save a few bucks is ill-advised if you’re a small MSP, let alone if you’re aiming for larger clients, co-managed clients, or anything remotely enterprise. You need to prioritize security.
