Acronis recently announced findings from
its 2020 MSP Cybersecurity Readiness Survey. The primary research effort was
conducted by Omdia (formerly Ovum) and explored the current and future
capabilities for managed security and backup/recovery among managed service
providers in the US and the UK. The survey also examined the biggest business
and technical obstacles to MSPs' ability to execute.
To
find out more, VMblog reached out to Topher Tebow, cybersecurity analyst at Acronis.
VMblog: Acronis recently conducted an independent
study. What does the study cover and why was this data important to
discover?
Topher Tebow: The purpose of the research was to
examine the current and planned offerings that MSPs have for backup/recovery as
well as cybersecurity, and to better understand the business, organizational,
and technical obstacles they face when executing those plans. Some of things we
wanted to verify which were borne out in the data, included the fact most MSPs
rely on a patchwork of legacy backup and security solutions. For example, MSPs
often have different solutions for backup, anti-malware, configuration management,
patch automation, remote desktop, and so on. This complexity gets expensive for
MSPs to operate and complicates their licensing, pricing, deployments, testing,
training, support workflows, and vendor contracting.
Naturally, we
also wanted to understand how the recently launched Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud could address the key market needs and
opportunities identified in the survey.
VMblog: How many people did the study
survey and what were their demographics?
Tebow: We received 263
responses, a little over 60% were from the US and the rest from the UK. The
respondents to our survey had to be executives or decision makers at the
organization. 13% of the MSPs in the study had less than 5 employees. 33% had
between 5 and 50 employees and 54% had more than 50 employees.
VMblog: What were the most important findings from the
study?
Tebow: First, MSPs' customers are demanding security
services and in order to stay relevant, let alone grow in today's market, MSPs
need to offer a range of managed security services. Over 50% of MSPs list
security as a top new service requested by their customers. However, 92% of
MSPs indicated that acquiring the skills and expertise needed to deliver
security services is a major obstacle to execution and 92% also indicated that
they were unable to keep up to date with the rapidly changing threat landscape.
So MSPs really feel the pressure to evolve into MSSPs but are facing incredibly
difficult challenges putting the right people and process resources into place.
VMblog: What are some of the biggest revelations that were
uncovered by this research?
Tebow: The research was organized into three main
sections, and I'll briefly cover the key results in each section. The first
section was about the most important capabilities currently offered and planned
for the next 12 months in terms of security services. The most important
current capabilities included the ability to ensure minimal data loss or
corruption in the event of an attack (86%), the rapid mitigation for discovered
cyberthreats (86%), and a service that secures endpoints beyond anti-virus and
anti-ransomware (85%). However, the biggest delta between current and planned
capabilities came from security endpoints, indicating this is the area MSPs
will be investing the most in over the next year.
The second section was about the important
capabilities currently offered and planned for the next 12 months in terms of
backup/recovery services. The most important current capability was the ability
to automate the backup process (89%). However, the biggest delta between
current and planned capabilities focused on providing rapid RTO and RPO
(recovery time objective and recovery point objective) which indicates MSPs
will be investing in tools and technologies to help them move faster. This is
directly related to the need for better automation.
Finally, the last section focused on the business
and technical obstacles to execution. As I already mentioned, the shortage in
skills was the headline here. It is also worth noting that 83% of MSPs
indicated they were struggling to manage too many vendors while 87% were having
a hard time making a business case for developing managed security services
which suggests they don't have the right solutions or commercial terms in place
to package and price effectively.
VMblog: What interested you the most about the findings and
why?
Tebow: There were a lot of important findings but two related findings
that really stood out were the desire to offer better endpoint security and the
challenges managing too many vendors. Acronis
provides one of the most powerful combinations of endpoint protection
technologies available on the market, including anti-virus, anti-ransomware,
anti-cryptojacking, patch management, URL filtering, and hard drive failure
prediction. One of the fundamental value propositions of Acronis Cyber Protect
Cloud is the ability to eliminate the complexity of juggling multiple vendor
contracts and solutions.
VMblog: After everything you've learned from this survey,
what's next for Acronis? How do you respond to the challenges found
within the survey?
Tebow: The research results were incredibly
validating for Acronis in terms of the message we are bringing to MSPs and the
benefits that Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud brings. We need to continue to
educate the channel on the importance of cyber protection - the integration of
backup/recovery with cybersecurity, and we need to make sure MSPs understand
Acronis is the right vendor to help them evolve beyond a traditional MSP in
order to stay relevant and keep growing.
VMblog: Finally, where can readers go to learn more about
the survey results?
Tebow: We are
actually hosting a webinar this Thursday, June 11th
at 12:30pm EST with the lead Omdia analysts to help MSPs understand the results and better prepare for
future challenges.
You
can read and download
the full report.