A report from MSP Barracuda shows that cyber-criminals have been taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to Barracuda Vice President, Brian Babineau, channel partners currently on their MSP journey, now is the time to really think about adding security to their services portfolio.
The report shows that 88 percent of partners questioned, believed demand for security services was set to increase over the next 12 months.
“It also is no surprise that 91 percent of the global MSP partners we surveyed are planning to increase the number of services they offer in the coming year, particularly around security”, he said.
Managed services are set to be the top revenue generator for the vast majority of respondents.
A total of 69 percent of respondents picked managed services as the biggest opportunity for increasing sales this year. This is significantly up on 2019 where 54 percent saw managed services as their biggest opportunity, he said.
Most partners favoured a hybrid approach to services with more than half saying they expect to generate 51 percent or more of their business through managed services, with approximately 45 percent saying they expected to generate up to 50 percent of business through managed services in 2020.
Security services are higher up the agenda for MSPs this year. Endpoint Security, Email Security and Network Security all made it into the top five services table in 2020. In 2019, email security was the only security service in the top five.
Rising security concerns and a lack of in-house skills within end user customers are driving the need for third party service providers.
More than 79 percent of partners felt customer security concerns were a good opportunity particularly with the rise of remote workers, 72 percent said the lack of in-house security skills at their customers was also creating new revenue possibilities.
Nearly all partner respondents agreed that demand for managed security services is increasing. In total, 88 percent of those questioned said that demand for security services was either ‘moderately’ or ‘significantly’ increasing.
