Comprehensive cyber protection for SMBs has emerged as the next great revenue driver for IT service providers, with 60% of SMBs looking to outsource cybersecurity to a third party, according to a new report by Frost - Sullivan.
The report, commissioned by ASX-listed global cybersecurity company FirstWave Cloud Technology, showed SMBs were in “urgent” need of comprehensive cyber protection and were increasingly relying on managed service providers to deliver unified, centralised and automated solutions that offer enhanced threat remediation.
“Security, though a priority, often slips through the cracks, making it difficult to intentionally and continuously establish a security-forward organisational stance from their IT service providers,” the report said.
To fill this gap, FirstWave developed the CyberCision Open Security Management Platform (OSMP).
Designed to equip service providers with low-cost, high-revenue security services for their SMB customers, the platform enables SMB customers, in turn, to benefit from an enterprise-grade Cybersecurity-as-a-Service solution.
FirstWave CEO Danny Maher says it is no secret that cybersecurity had become one of the most pressing issues for businesses of all sizes, particularly SMBs.
He says, “With high-profile data breaches making headlines on an almost weekly basis, it is clear that traditional security measures are no longer enough to protect organisations from sophisticated cyber attacks.
“As a result, more and more businesses are turning to outsourcing as a way to improve their cybersecurity posture. Those service providers need to have a solution ready for their customers.
The global upheaval of the last two years that disrupted societies, governments, businesses, and the technologies that support them, also forced organisations worldwide to shift to remote working practically overnight.
Consequently, organisations have adopted new operational infrastructures as data has multiplied exponentially - all opening up a much wider attack surface.
Moreover, cyber attacks have grown smarter, scaling in both sophistication and speed, to penetrate the weak defences of solutions struggling to protect increasingly digital economies.
A recent Frost - Sullivan survey of SMBs found most were targeted by preventable threats, including ransomware (47%), vulnerabilities from unpatched systems (44%), web defacements (43%), insider threats from employees (31%), and phishing attacks (27%).
Frost - Sullivan finds that while only 14% of enterprises report outsourcing more than half of their cybersecurity operations, a much higher percentage (60%) of SMBs outsource.
“This presents a natural fit for partnerships between SMBs and their service providers. By adding cybersecurity to their existing services, SMBs can bolster existing connectivity assets with the critical protections they need, all through a single provider,” the report said.
However, for many service providers, while lucrative, delivering cybersecurity solutions to enterprise customers can involve significant cost and complexity. FirstWave's world-first OSMP, CyberCision, was explicitly designed to address this problem.
“CyberCision enables service providers to provision enterprise-grade security services to enterprise and SMB customers at scale, opening the door to new revenue opportunities with a lower cost-to-serve,” the report said.
“With CyberCision, service providers can build as-a-service cybersecurity packages of enterprise-grade, including a range of management and operational services such as multi-tenanting, billing, and provisioning that enable them to streamline the sales and delivery process at a minimal cost.
Essentially, CyberCision serves as a platform that service providers can depend on to scale their managed security services business and operations profitably, reducing the time to market for cybersecurity and serving SMB customers, which was not previously possible, FirstWave concludes.