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MSP vs MSSP

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What to Expect From a Managed Service Provider (MSP)

Companies must navigate and make sense of an increasingly complex suite of technologies to meet their business goals. The problem is that when one of these technology fails, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars as well as reputational damage. For many businesses, even an hour of downtime can become a huge setback.

Further, it requires a great deal of IT expertise and resources to keep critical systems running smoothly. Unfortunately, most in-house IT teams simply aren’t big enough.

Companies turn to MSPs to outsource IT operations so their in-house team can focus on furthering business goals. MSPs manage integrations between software and hardware, provide cloud connectivity, and app support — all in one place.

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Strengths

The power of the MSP model is that MSPs can act as a sort of composer, orchestrating every bit of technology to run harmoniously. The result is simple: usable technology that allows your business to run more efficiently.

Using an MSP empowers you to run a lean in-house IT team that can remain focused on innovation and furthering business goals while the outsourced MSP handles the minutia of IT, such as end-user support tickets. MSPs can also provide round-the-clock monitoring so you can act quickly to recover data and prevent disastrous downtime.

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Weaknesses

While an MSP can be a great “jack of all trades” solution for IT operations, most MSPs lack specialized cybersecurity knowledge and resources. The cybersecurity plan and capabilities of the typical MSP have proven to be more reactive than proactive, only springing to action in when there is an attack.

What’s traditionally not included in the MSP model is the ability to prevent breaches and provide critical services such as managed detection and response, incident planning and management, red teaming, security awareness, and more…

A Security Operations Center can provide all of these services, including 24/7 security monitoring, incident response, and remediation. Unfortunately, most MSPs don’t provide these critical elements. Instead, oftentimes they contract these sophisticated and critical cybersecurity services out to MSSPs — a practice that comes as an added cost to you.

What to Expect From a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)

The biggest shortcoming demonstrated by MSPs these days is that they don’t provide comprehensive cybersecurity tools, people, and processes.

Cyberattacks have been increasing both in regularity and sophistication in the past two years, costing businesses an unprecedented amount of money, time, resources, and reputational damage. Attack surfaces increase as more businesses continue to adopt a remote or hybrid workforce model, which, in turn, makes endpoint security more crucial.

MSSPs focus on providing the latest security tools so companies can keep all of their networks and assets safe.

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Strengths

Cybersecurity is a round-the-clock job, and most in-house IT teams don’t contain the resources to provide 24/7 monitoring and rapid response. An MSSP provides a Security Operations Center that monitors networks and systems and uses powerful AI tools to continually hunt for potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Along with threat detection, monitoring, and vulnerability management, MSSPs also provide services such as incident response planning.

For example, an MSSP might employ Red Teaming — comprehensive simulations of attacks that are aimed at sniffing out every possible weakness in your network, so you can shore up your defenses in preparation of a real attack.

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Weaknesses

While cybersecurity is obviously critical for businesses, MSSPs are typically laser-focused on ensuring security, which can come at the cost of usability. MSSPs tend to provide siloed tools that don’t always integrate well with the rest of an organization’s technology suite, so you end up with too many tools that can add complexity to your IT environment instead of simplifying things. MSSPs who are focused solely on cybersecurity often act in discordance with the harmonious orchestra of your other managed services.

The Best of Both Worlds — An MSSP With MSP Services

Both MSPs and MSSPs have their strengths and weaknesses. An MSSP combined with MSP services, however, can provide the best of both worlds — powerful cybersecurity tools and the simplification of your technology suite.

Cybersecurity should not be siloed from the rest of your tools. Every bit of technology that you use — from within your cloud infrastructure to your network and applications — should be held to the highest standards of cybersecurity and usability.

An MSSP that can provide MSP services is able to choose the best solutions for your business that both simplify your technology and make it more secure. They know every aspect of your technology and can act as an advocate both for your technology goals as well as to your critical security needs.

Instead of the reactive, limited capabilities delivered by MSPs or the siloed MSSP cybersecurity tools that can slow your team down, having one source for all of your managed IT and security needs reduces IT complexity without sacrificing security.

DYOPATH provides the security of an MSSP with comprehensive MSP services so you can simplify your IT infrastructure and stay focused on your business goals. As one of the largest privately held MSP/MSSPs in the U.S., DYOPATH proactively monitors, identifies, acts upon, and remediate security vulnerabilities while keeping your IT operations running smoothly.

Contact Us and learn more about how you can do more without having to grow your internal IT team.

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