Report finds MSPs saving nearly $230K and five hours per cybersecurity incident response

New research from Acronis shows that consolidating and integrating cybersecurity, backup, and disaster recovery services produces $229,159 in savings on average and reduces the time required to recover from a breach or data loss incident by an average of five hours.

Conducted by Vanson Bourne, the report “MSPs Speak: Cybersecurity and the future role of the MSP” (available here) dives deep into the biggest challenges and opportunities that MSPs currently face when providing cybersecurity, backup, and disaster recovery (DR) service, focusing on critical issues such as cybersecurity attacks, “vendor sprawl,” remote work environments, and the use of SaaS tools by clients. Here are a few key data points:

1. 96% of MSPs are concerned about suffering a cybersecurity breach in the next 12 months. This sense of vulnerability is amplified by a lack of trust in two directions: 49% of MSPs responded that their clients do not completely trust the security of the services their organisation provides, while 53% of MSPs do not completely trust the vendors they use to provide cybersecurity services.
2. MSPs report managing an average of 58% of their clients’ SaaS tools, with only 3% indicating they manage 100%. This discrepancy results in greater vulnerabilities for clients, because SaaS data is not being properly protected, and the MSPs have limited visibility into these environments. However, there is a huge potential for growth for service providers if they are able to prove to their clients that there are benefits to them managing the licenses, on-boarding, security and performance of these SaaS applications. MSPs report that the biggest obstacles to managing more of their clients’ SaaS tools are not having the right relationships with line of business decision makers (44%), not having the right tools (41%), and a lack of trust (39%).
3. The two most commonly faced challenges are the integration of security offerings with existing business and IT systems (40%) and security workflow and process creation and updates (37%).
4. Over the past two years, the average cost of providing cybersecurity, backup, and/or DR services has increased by 19%. However, 71% of MSPs report struggling to demonstrate the value of these cost increases to their clients, which creates a serious dilemma and pressure on profit margins.
5. 92% of MSPs report having consolidated vendors and 70% plan to consolidate further due to the substantial savings they’ve realised from lower licensing costs, training costs, and employee documentation costs and the hours of time they save when recovering from incidents.

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Further to the increased demand, we’re also seeing the dividends of our multi-year investments into advanced systems and business automation as we continue to record double digit growth despite the global product supply constraints.”