The Organization’s major security concern and the lack of security professionals are leading many enterprises to turn towards managed security service provider to help them.
According to the comprehensive report by SIM IT Trends of 2018, security has become number 1 concern of organizations. But the lack of security professionals isn't stopping organizations from opposing the boom in security issues.
To make a decision by getting help from outside is a process in itself, which can defer the introduction of critically needed resources. There might be a question on how managed services can fit into a cloud services model or concern about the loss of control.
We’ve complied a list of 6 things to look for when selecting the managed security service provider.
1. Why hire a managed services provider (MSP)?
In general, organizations begin to consider MSP because they either want to free their internal staff for strategic work or want to add capabilities that they don’t already have one. Due to the rapid change in technology, it can be challenging for the IT departments with a small team to keep up with. MSPs offer different levels of support to meet the requirements of all sized organizations.
MSPs have expert certified engineers who have years of experience for troubleshooting all types of issues. Without MSP, sometimes critical issues often tend to be urgent and time-consuming which is bad if you’ve other important work on the side. Employing MSP, whose main focus is to troubleshoot issues, provide reports, and communicating with the internal staff when needed to resolve the issue.
In today's global economy, ‘normal business hours’ is no longer sustainable. Many businesses need to be available 24x7 either because they service customers 24x7 or they are global. Additionally, cyber threats can happen anytime. To overcome this issue one must provide quick response and proactive security should be available 24x7.
The good MSPs are the ones who have enough resources to provide both remote management and monitoring and first call support services around the call. This means MSPs will handle all needs around the clock or supplementing the coverage of an internal staff when they're not available.
Another valuable capability that some MSPs can provide is multi-language support. MSPs help organizations to get on the fast track to overcome language barriers for its global users or to meet the demands of various customer segments.
2. What facilities to look for?
The best MSPs will have finely tuned high-quality NOC that is loaded with the latest technologies. To cover 24x7 or regional coverage and in some cases where language is a barrier, some MSP may have more than one. Businesses can take this advantage by tapping these NOCs who doesn’t have on-premise or to reduce some of the workloads of their staffs.
When choosing between two MSPs, companies should make sure the NOCs have all the certifications required for the technology it’ll be leveraging. Additionally, MSPs should have the certifications that point in the direction of maturity of the MSPs internal operations. Also make sure to question the MSPs processes, procedures, organizational structure, and internal controls.
In today’s digital age, a few minutes of downtime translates to a loss of millions of dollars. Good MSPs will have full redundancy and disaster recovery capabilities with automatic switch to failovers if the on-premise data center fails, such that the businesses will be protected from the revenue loss.
3. What will ever day be like?
The MSPs should always feel like part of the business’s IT organization. MSPs will perform monitoring every day and the responses while the organization will still maintain control over the protocols and policies. To achieve this there should be the day to day communication between the MSPs and organization such as trouble tickets, project status report, and reports on service levels.
The effective ticketing system makes it easy to communicate and provide updates, as well as sharing best practices by maintaining Wiki, debug methods, standard operating procedures and other critical information.
Good MSPs must provide a report on SLA that has defined - notification time, response time, uptime of devices, an accuracy of performing change requests, availability of services or hardware and anything that is a measurable delivery. The IT ops team can also request reports on a daily basis on managed intrusion protection results. Also if any change request was sent to MSP, you should be able to get a report on the success of testing.
4. How skilled are they?
A better team will have a better performance, and it starts with taking individual certifications. Certificates are not only a measure of knowledge but also an indication of dedicated excellence. MSPs will have its employees undergo constant learning and training to keep up with the latest technologies. Look for MSPs with these features.
5. How good are certification relationships with the manufacturers?
No matter how good the MSP is on their own there are times when they’ll need to get in touch with the manufacturer of the technology being used to resolve critical issues. You can verify the relationship with the technology partners by looking at their certification or partner status.
Check if the MSPs have direct access to the manufacturers L3 engineers. L3 engineers are the experts in solving the most complex issues. If your organization is seeking that level support, then make sure to perform in-depth research on them.
6. How good a fit is their team for yours?
Make sure there is a cultural match between the MSP and the organization. Not every MSP is a match for every organization. There are various managed service providers for organizations that specialize in certain areas, boutiques, large system integrators, telcos, and overseas outsourcers and more. Choosing a large well reputed MSP might provide you with good service but not good at providing focused and customized offering as the small or mid-sized MSP does. The key is to identify the MSP that best matches the priorities of your organization.