Security Trends for Managed IT Service Providers

The global managed security services market was valued at $19.4 billion in 2017 and is forecast to reach $46.1 billion by 2023 at a CAGR of 14.9%. There has been an upward trend seen in the need for threat-intelligence by several sectors today. Due to an increased requirement to fight against the advanced threat landscape, customers today expect managed IT service providers and MSPs to adopt advanced security technologies to detect better and anticipate potential threats well in time.

Today managed service providers face various challenges, some new, some inevitable and some persisting for many years. These include obstacles ranging from the diversity of threats, shortage of skilled labour, increasing awareness of the services they provide, managing enterprise security and the most recent, remote working.

To face these challenges head-on, managed IT service providers, MSPs, MDR service providers, and IT consultants need to keep abreast of the top technology trends for 2021 to help them deliver top-notch services to their clients as well as drive revenue for their business. Let's find out where to keep an eye on in 2021 if you are managed IT service providers.

Managed Security Services Trends 2021

Platform Scalability

With growing competition in the security services industry, scalability for managed security service providers has become essential. As the number of customers continues to vary month on month/ year on year, increasing or reducing the infrastructure and operations, & adding or removing clients without compromising your service quality, is a big challenge for managed IT service providers. It thus requires the adoption of scalable technology to avoid burning holes in their pocket. Automated platforms offering limitless vertical and horizontal scaling will be trending in 2021.

True Multi-Tenancy Single Pane

A true multitenancy architecture is where a single instance of the software serves multiple groups of users or tenants. Each tenant has a dedicated share of instance with configuration and data. What does this mean for managed IT service providers? It means centralised security management and monitoring system, giving the power to control several customers in one place. Multi-tenancy has numerous benefits like fast deployment, easy maintenance, reduced manual labour, and increased threat detection efficiency. Hence, to maximise profits this year, managed IT service providers should look out for multi-tenancy dashboards.

Single Pane of Glass Enablement for a Client

You start out with a straightforward monitoring product to meet your daily requirements. Sprinkle some expanded database, a few more applications, new cloud services, and just like that you land into the most intricate, hard to decipher and confusing set of information. Enter the single pane of glass dashboard. This automated, easy-to-configure and flexible dashboard become the only source for monitoring, analysing and interpreting the security information in a digestible form. They scan everything in your environment and present it in the form of meaningful and actionable information. Managed IT service providers can thus resolve issues faster and make informed security decisions for your clients. In the year 2021, managed IT service providers should look out for single pane glass enablement for clients that includes automated monitoring, app integration capabilities, consistent insights, role-based access, and the ability to infer trends based on historical data.

Accuracy in Detecting Threats not Alerts

According to Frost & Sullivan's research, 2021, threat detection and remediation are emerging as the critical market engines for managed security services. As mentioned by Anton Chuvakin, a security specialist and Research Director at Gartner, there is a vast amount of uncertainty attached to threat detection.

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Between fielding several events per day and resolving potential threats, it is challenging for organisations to prioritise. Security service providers who do not prioritise threats over alerts run the risk of drowning in the ocean of false positives and reducing their efficiency of dealing with the ACTUAL threats. Due to a substantial rise in the number of threats in 2020-2021, this year, managed IT service providers should adopt technologies that that provide holistic threat visibility and the feature of automatically grouping alerts by type, giving them a higher awareness and accuracy of the situational attacks.

Adopting to Cloud Native Security

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As per the IDC reports, by 2022, more than 90% of the global enterprises will depend on a mix of on-premise or dedicated private cloud, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs. The pandemic has further driven the organisations to choose agility and scalability without significant cost fluctuations. A survey found that 97% of IT managers planned to allocate workloads across two or more clouds to maximise resilience, meet regulatory and compliance requirements, and leverage best-of-breed services from different providers.

To keep up with this growing cloud adoption trend, managed IT service providers should invest in cloud-native platforms that can increase the speed of the security processes and integrate zero trust models easily.

Conclusion

With companies having more workforce scattered across various home environments, managed IT service providers security trends 2021 will help security service providers manage, monitor and remediate threats without complications. These trends are all about increasing the efficiency of security operations for managed service providers while also providing seamless protection for the clients. Looking for easy, automated cloud security services for your managed clients? Contact Octiga now to experience a smooth guided security journey.