Chris Wiser and Lindsay argue MSPs can't prevent every breach anymore. They need to mandate MFA and compliance, charge enough to fund security, and prove they did their due diligence when attacks happen. The shift is like how seatbelts became standard: you can't stop all accidents, but you can prepare for them.
Are you worried about your clients being hacked? So we work with msps. We are actually here at our quarterly event and we have hundreds of MSPs here in the room also virtually. And a huge conversation that we've been having is helping them protect their clients. And I'm curious, Chris, in your perspective, should our MSPS be worrying about this? Are they worrying about this? What can they do about it?
I think every msp, every single day, we just had somebody walk by. I'm literally like, hey, Cody, you worried about your clients getting in? He looked panicked. Every day, every day, every day. So I think it's, you know, while it doesn't seem, I'm almost going to say, I like that you use the word protect. Because most MSPs for the last 10, 15, 20 years have used the term prevent. We can prevent things. We can have anti spam and antivirus and all these things that have conditioned the end user, the decision makers at the end user, the end users themselves, like all these different people. It's conditioned them to think, oh, I have an IT company, they've got my back, I can't get anything. When in reality I'll say, this, guys, I think you all know this. This is like the farthest from the truth. They're all getting hacked. There's breaches happening everywhere. Sisa got hacked. Like, literally everybody is getting hacked, everybody's getting breached. There's problems across the board. So if you're not concerned about that as an msp, you absolutely, this should be number one concern. And to me it's not. And this is a transition point on this, because it's not what can I put in my MSP as a tool to fix that? There's no fixing that problem. It's putting procedures and pieces in place to make sure that you have the conversations with your clients. Because it's now not about prevention, it's about how do we show that we weren't negligent and how do we recover. So honestly, for the msp, this is the, it's the smoking gun we've always needed in this industry because now it's in this, this world for the client. You have to put this in. Because if you don't put this in, this is moved from a commoditization piece to an essential. So it was an optional to an essential now, but it's how we sell it and how we transition over to them. Because the client has to understand, and this is now your job, guys. Like you have to say to the MSP end user decision makers, you have to put this in because we have to prove to the insurance company, to the compliance people, to whoever is going clients even to whoever is going to happen to come around after there's a breach. We have to prove that we tried. Because just imagine if you have a client that's, let's say a lawyer's office or a doctor's office or an accounting firm, they get breached and then it find, they find out upon litigation, remediation, whatever, they find out that you didn't mandate multi factor.
Right.
Who are they? They're gonna be like, why didn't you tell them to do this? Well, they didn't want to spend them. Okay. Yeah, but it was your duty. So that's the thing, guys. Now it's like it's your duty. And this is where there's a. You know, definitely. I know there's debate about this. It's not even so much debate internally in the industry, but now it's like, well, it's not my. We have guys. I know, Lindsay, you've seen this. We have guys that come to us and they're like, well, good luck proving I can win in court. Okay. Good luck getting through. Get it. Actually, first of all, good luck getting to the point where there's a trial. Good luck getting in front of a judge because it's going to cost you so much money to get to that point of litigation. You're going to be done. Like good luck fighting against a multi billion dollar a year insurance company just to prove that you weren't negligent when everything you did argues potentially otherwise. Yeah. And there's so many things in this industry and it's a challenge because at least doctors, lawyers, accounting firms, they have a degree, they have a certification. A lot of times most msps don't. Most even mssps don't. And I don't care if you have a CISSP or you know, you're running your world based on NIST or CISA or some of these other things. There's no plot. I mean any, any. You and I could start an MSP right now and we can, we can manage security for a bank.
Like there's, there's no regulation around what we do as a.
Correct.
If we were an MSP as a professional.
So it comes down to personal compliance for your company. And this is, and to come back, I know we didn't talk about money at this point yet or charging, but this is why you have to charge properly to your clients because then you can afford to put the right things in you can afford to do because it's expensive to run an MSP now. Right? This gets a lot, it gets very deep really quick.
Yeah, no, that's so good. And it's also, it's not just about yes, protecting your clients because that's what we need to be doing, but also protecting yourself. And it's kind of COVID like CYA there.
It's so much CYA now and, and this is, there's so much debate about it because you think about how, you know, depending on how long you've been in business as an MSP owner. I started my, my MSP in 2004, I sold in 2015 and if I think about that world versus now, like there was so much conversation like it was, it was totally optional and it was like we want to make our company more efficient or better. We want to make our people more efficient. Now it's like if you don't put this in, you're going to get hacked and good luck recovering. Yeah, that's the message you have to bring across to the, to the end user client. Now that's hard because the message we've all, we've, we've never had those conversations. Think about the relationship your just think of any I, any decision maker that you have at, at your oldest clients or your oldest clients. They've never been told you have to spend money on this and there's no roi. But it's, you know what, it's just like insurance. Think about insurance. You have to spend money and their, their mind is oh, we have to do this for insurance. Think about how many businesses have insurance. All of them do. With the mindset of there's no ROI on it. But that industry has been there for hundreds of years. This is brand new. Even though it is not brand new, even though managed services is not brand new. The transition to cybersecurity and mandating that from a commodity to an essential, that's totally different.
Now I think of it as like a seatbelt. Like you never hope that you're going to have to use the seatbelt, but it's there if and when it happens.
Well, funny you mentioned that because if you think about the seat belt auto industry, let's go back 20 years.
That's exactly what I was thinking.
Seat belts were not mandatory. Airbags weren't mandatory.
Years ago cars came out. You're like, why throw your kids on the dash?
Do you think, wow. Do you think that the, the auto manufacturers wanted to put seat belts in airbags?
More money on having.
They didn't want to do that. They just had a car. But who came in and regulated and mandated it? Well, it was the insurance industry that came in and said, oh, you better put this in, because we're having to pay for it. We're paying all these claims out. So they lobbied with the government, they lobbied with the feds and all the countries. And now, like those of us in 2024, we wake up standard seat belts. You know, now you're getting tickets if you don't have a seatbelt on. Like, I can't even think of the last time I drove my car where I didn't have a seatbelt on. It's just what you don't do and you have airbags. It's just a standard.
Yeah.
So we have to get into the world in this industry where that becomes a standard.
Yeah, absolutely. 100%. So we actually have a Tech Stack guide.
Right.
So again, it's not all about the stack. It's not all about the products, but it's also about the way that you are servicing in your process much more.
Now, about the type, you know, we don't necessarily. We are a vendor agnostic community that's purposely done, but we align ourselves with. Here's the type of technology you should be putting in. Pick the vendor you want. There's a. There's a ton of great vendors in this industry. I will state that aligning yourself with multiple different facets of them is really key. And making sure you become like a general contractor around that. That mindset.
Yep. Because it changes every day.
Every day.
Yep. Okay, so if you want to learn more about this, you can grab our Tech Stack guide right below this. You can book a call with the team to learn how our clients are doing exactly this to help protect themselves and their clients and to grow their monthly recurring revenue. So we'll see you in the next video. Thank you.
