SMBs Stoke Opportunities for MSSPs, MSPs with Outsourcing Email Security -

Small- and medium-sized organizations are providing “unprecedented” cybersecurity opportunities for managed security service providers (MSSPs) and managed service providers (MSPs), a new study of 500 IT decision makers across organizations with 10-1,000 employees concluded.

Most SMBs Seek MSPs, MSSPs

Some 96% of SMBs in the research commissioned by Vade, an email security specialist, are either currently outsourcing at least some of their needs to MSPs or planning to do so in the future. Of the organizations in the study, nearly 70% said a serious breach had skirted their current email security solution and 92% said they would be willing to listen to email security suggestions made by an MSSP and/or MSP.

Georges Lotigier, Vade chief executive, explained the imperative for SMBs:

"Decision makers are in agreement that cybersecurity is extremely important, and it's only going to become more important as the sophistication of cyberattacks increases. However, we also found that even though confidence in cybersecurity is high, that bullishness may be misplaced. IT decision makers are seeing more attacks in the last year than they have previously."

A Closer Look at the Findings

Key findings from the report include:

91% of respondents said cybersecurity will increase in importance over the next two years, and 63% cited the increased sophistication of cyberattacks as the key driver behind their focus on cybersecurity.

Threat monitoring and intrusion (43%), cybersecurity consulting (37%) and firewall management (36%) are the three most important services to SMBs that MSSPs and MSPs can provide.

79% of the respondents agreed that the number of cyberattacks their organization experienced increased over the past 12 months, facing an average of eight cyberattacks over the same time period.

Malware (40%), password cracking (35%) and phishing (34%) were the most common cyberattacks. Small businesses were also more likely (35%) than enterprises (11%) to experience zero-day exploit attacks.

94% of the respondents have a high level of confidence in their organization's ability to completely defend themselves against all types of attacks, with 51% saying they are completely confident. However, 68% agree that their organization's security solutions are not as advanced as they could be.

77% of respondents reported their organization uses the built-in security features offered by their email provider.