Cork Cyber in November 2025 made a strategic move to expand beyond cyber warranties, releasing the
Vantage platform as a vehicle for MSPs and MSSPs to use telemetry from an array of a client’s security tools to assess their cybersecurity capabilities and see where improvements can be made.
At the time, Cork CEO
Dan Candee said that “visibility means understanding the state of your environment, the impact of vulnerabilities, and the business risk created when something is misconfigured or unpatched.” Vantage turns the visibility into “actionable insights,” the CEO said.
The company this week added a new capability to the platform aimed at extending that understanding of a client’s cybersecurity posture, combining both internal insights and external risk scoring to show what’s happening in a security environment and which improvements will have the greatest effect.
Cork Cyber Score isn’t meant to tell an organization whether their cybersecurity passes or fails a test. Instead, it creates a score that MSPs can uses to assess their client’s security capabilities, focus on remediation, and then track progress over time. As improvements are made and issues are addressed, the score will update to reflect the steps taken.
It's a 'Clarity Problem'
Candee told MSSP Alert that he heard from multiple people at the recent
Right of Boom cybersecurity event that “clients and partners don’t have a data problem, they have a clarity problem. So, they’re drowning in reports, but they struggle to answer the one question that matters: 'Are we safer today than we were yesterday?’”
Cork Cyber Score “makes that answer tangible,” he said. “We designed it so that fundamentals move the needle. It prioritizes real-time reality, like connecting tools and patching vulnerabilities, over historical claims.”
The new offering pulls in telemetry from across the MSP technology stack to understand the internal conditions across endpoints, inboxes, and security controls and arming security services providers with the information to explain risks to clients, guide remediation efforts, and show improvements without replacing existing tools, according to the company.
“We needed a tool to turn abstract cyber hygiene into a visible metric,” Candee said. “When the MSP does the work, the score goes up and the client instantly sees the benefit.It rewards good behavior and gives the client immediate proof that their environment is moving in the right direction.”
Fueled by AI Adoption
The
rapid adoption of AI
by security teams,
security services providers, and
threat actors was a key driver in developing Cork Cyber Score, with the CEO saying the technology “has effectively hit the fast forward button on the threat landscape. Attacks are faster, and the noise level is deafening.”
That’s created an environment where data is cheap and context is expensive, and what’s needed is a deep understanding of the data, he said.
“We don’t need more blinking lights; we need interpretation,” Candee said. “The Cork Score takes that massive influx of AI-driven telemetry and translates it into a simple narrative. It tells the business owner, ‘Here is your reality right now,’ cutting through the complexity so they can actually make a decision.”
Evolving Roles for MSSPs, MSPs
It also reflects the rapid and ongoing shift in the roles of MSSPs and MSPs from that of a tech vendor to a strategic adviser. For services providers to be a true partner, they need to use language their clients understand. The Cork Cyber Score enables this, he said, calling it “essentially Credit Karma for cyber risk.”
“It helps MSPs stop talking about ‘stack’ and start talking about ‘standing,’” Candee said. “Instead of listing tools, they can say, ‘Here is your score, and here is exactly how we improved it this month.’ It’s so simple and intuitive that even a summer intern could walk a client through it.”
In addition, the new feature dovetails with Cork’s foundational cyber warranty business – the company changed its name from Cork Protection when it introduced the Vantage Platform – for MSPs and their SMB customers. The CEO said Cyber Score acts as a “universal translator for risk.”
From Theoretical Risk to Real Exposure
The
cyber insurance industry is “moving away from theoretical risk based on questionnaires and toward real exposure based on evidence,” he said. “But that raw data is messy. This score takes all those complex signals – vulnerabilities, controls, active threats – and boils them down into a clear, advisory signal that anyone can understand.”
It won’t make the decision about insurance underwriting, but gives MSSPs and MSPs, their clients, and insurance broker a shared language for talking about what’s going on inside the business, removing the guessing that can take place.
“Prevention is just table stakes,” Candee said. “The real problem is that for too long, cybersecurity has been a black box You only looked inside when something broke. Especially for SMB clients. The Cork Score smashes that box open. We are moving from ‘hoping we’re safe’ to knowing where we stand.”
