An MSP is up against massive competition in the market. Successfully navigating a complex technology landscape and making wise choices is critical to differentiating an offering to clients. Providing cost-effective email security with exceptional protection ensures that an MSP maintains a competitive edge. However, cybersecurity threats are rapidly changing. AI is being weaponized by cybercriminals, making the detection and prevention of email-borne threats challenging. An MSP must choose a vendor that offers a unified toolkit to take on this existential threat. A game-changer for an MSP is finding a security vendor that takes on this challenge with advanced email security solutions. By choosing the right email security solutions, an MSP can improve profitability and offer best-of-breed services to clients.
The Current Security Challenges for MSPs
Finding the best-fit, advanced email security solution requires understanding where many conventional email security suites fail. Email-borne security threats' secret sauce lies in the layering and unification of security solutions and measures. Securing email requires three core pillars:
- Advanced email security
- Security awareness training
- A DNS filter
However, each pillar brings with it challenges. Therefore, choosing the right email security solution is critical to ensuring the competitive advantage of an MSP.
DNS Filtering Issues and Why MSPs Are Looking for Better Solutions
A DNS Filter is an essential element of a unified security approach to email protection. It enforces security policies based on domain categories. When a user attempts to navigate to a website, for example, clicks on a malicious link in a phishing email, the domain is checked against a blocklist. If the domain is deemed to be a risky website, the user will be blocked from access. Some advanced DNS filters can also block malware, ransomware, and viruses.
One of the issues of using a DNS filter is that it can be complex to manage, and conventional DNS filters can be inaccurate, block legitimate sites, and miss zero-day threats. Configuration of conventional DNS filters can be onerous and require continuous updating to capture new threats. Misconfiguration of a DNS filter can lead to missed phishing attacks. The resulting management headaches these issues cause can eat into the financial bottom line of an MSP.
MSPs need streamlined, accurate, and easy-to-manage DNS solutions. AI-enabled DNS filters are used to automate configuration and improve detection rates of modern cyber threats.
Email Security Pain Points for MSPs and SMBs
Cybercriminals weaponize email because it is at the heart of organizational communications. This insidious threat uses email to manipulate employees and push malicious content directly into employee inboxes. Attackers continuously change tactics, using evasive measures to avoid conventional email protection. AI is now helping cybercriminals circumvent traditional email security solutions.
Spam, phishing, spear phishing, and email-led social engineering all create a broad attack surface that requires advanced protective measures. The sophisticated nature of email-borne threats has meant that MSPs often turn to multiple products to capture the vast attack surface that emails move across. However, multi-product stacks usually mean higher costs.
The management requirement for deploying solutions from various vendors—often non-interoperable—compounds the costs of multiple products. Many MSPs end up offering separate solutions for different customer tiers, adding even more management headaches.
Another aspect of email security is the human-centered focus of modern, sophisticated cyberattacks. To counter social engineering and phishing, employees must receive security awareness training. An MSP must be able to offer integrated security awareness training to ensure that its email threat prevention offering is holistic.
A Better Alternative for MSPs: Cost-Effective, Hassle-Free Security Solutions
Much of the challenges that MSPs deal with when creating email security offerings come down to three primary considerations:
- Seamless product unification
- Cost-effective but high-quality products
- Easy-to-integrate solutions designed to reduce management overhead
Unified Security: DNS Filtering, Email Security, and Awareness Training in One
The three core components of an effective approach to closing the door on email-borne security attacks are not isolated entities. Each works in harmony, building successive layers of protection. Like an increasingly fine-grained filter, using an integrated approach to delivering email security services to clients benefits an MSP on many levels:
- Complexity of configuration and management is reduced.
- Interoperability between different measures improves efficiency and closes security gaps
- Simplified architecture reduces management overhead
Unifying compatible and complementary email security solutions allow an MSP to provide a comprehensive offering.
Cost Savings Without Compromising on Quality
A recent study into vendor consolidation found evidence that 95% of IT executives plan to consolidate software to simplify system architecture and cut costs. A vendor who offers a unified solution that covers the three pillars of email security can help an MSP cut costs, reduce management overhead, and deliver advanced security services to multiple clients using a single-pane-of-glass interface.
To move forward in delivering cost-effective, advanced email security, an MSP must consider the following:
- Analyze your current pricing of a multi-product stack vs. a unified solution set.
- Evaluate the features of your current email security products:
- do they offer multiple layers of protection
- Are the solutions AI-enabled to capture emerging and zero-day threats?
- Do the solutions offer easy, integrated management and centralized deployment and control?
- What are the spam and phishing catch rates?
- Does the unified solution set scale without increasing costs?
Flexible Deployment and Seamless Integration
MSPs must use solutions that work with them, not against them. Deployment is at the top of mind when choosing a unified email security suite. Unified solutions must be able to be deployed efficiently. Deployment methods must not interfere with network adapters.
Remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools that use PowerShell commands will streamline implementation. Microsoft Intune is an ideal tool for uploading PowerShell scripts. Solutions that use these deployment tools will reduce the implementation overhead, allowing an MSP to service more customers.
Integration with Microsoft 365 is essential as cybercriminals target the brand. Microsoft's built-in security is known to have security gaps. A unified email security suite should deeply integrate and augment the built-in security in M365, catching phishing and spam and preventing navigation to malicious websites.
Why MSPs Should Offer A Unified Solution to SMBs
Unified solutions have evolved because of the lack of efficiency and complex management of non-interoperable multi-vendor product stacks. Unified email security solutions transform MSP operations and management through remote monitoring and endpoint management. An MSP that offers a unified email security solution benefits themselves and their customers in three important ways:
Higher Margins and Competitive Pricing for MSPs
Choosing a unified email security solution to replace a multi-product security suite will save an MSP money. A single-vendor approach removes the need for:
- Management of multiple unrelated products that may not work seamlessly.
- Multi-vendor multi-license renewals and contract management
- Training costs for each platform
- Multiple platform integration maintenance overhead
All of the above reduce the profit margins of an MSP. Operational inefficiencies emerge as efforts are duplicated, non-interoperable products cause broken workflows, and report generation is dispersed.
Unified email security removes all of the issues of a multi-vendor solution suite. As a result, an MSP sees higher margins and can offer competitive pricing to their customers.
Email Security That’s Easy to Sell and Manage
Unified email security solutions are modern, next-gen products that use advanced technologies. Email security is a challenging area to operate in as AI-assisted attacks proliferate. Email security solutions must handle the onslaught of intelligent tech-led cyberattacks. Email security solutions that fight AI with AI can take on this zeitgeist in security. However, for an MSP, the email security solution must also be easy to sell and manage. A Secure Email Gateway (SEG) part of a unified solution
must demonstrate exceptional phishing and spam catch rates. The SEG must use automation to make threat detection efficient. Remediation must also be streamlined for ease of management and fast response to incidents.
For an MSP, a unified solution that provides API-integrated phishing protection for Microsoft 365 ticks the easy-to-manage and sell checkboxes. A centralized console offering easy configuration and an at-a-glance view of the platform in operation simplifies management. The centralization of the platform components also means that reports covering the capabilities of the unified platform are easily generated.
The above image shows an example of an ease management interface, showing an at-a-glance view of protection stats. Customer reports should be able to be auto-generated to show progress and success rates. Source:TitanHQ
For further details check out the TitanHQ Standard Plan
Security Awareness Training Made Simple
Secure email gateways and AI-assisted threat detection are essential components but must be shored up by security awareness training. An MSP delivering security awareness training must be able to do so simply and controllably. Unified email security platforms that offer security awareness training as part of the offering should include the following:
- Phishing simulations with automated reporting
- Continuous training for SMB employees
- 14-30 day trials for risk assessments and upselling opportunities
For more details see TitanHQ’s security awareness training modules.
The Bottom Line for MSPs: More Revenue, Less Effort
In a highly competitive market, an MSP must offer exceptional solutions. However, behind the scenes, these leading products must also provide excellent returns for the MSP. The holy grail of the MSP is to generate more revenue with less effort. This may seem like a contradiction, but it is achievable by moving to a unified email security stack designed for precisely this scenario.
Before moving to a unified email security stack, however, an MSP must ask the following questions:
- Does the vendor offering unification have experience dealing with an MSP’s specific needs?
- Does the unified solution offer all three pillars of email security?
- Is integration into the existing technology stack simple? Do APIs exist for integration? Can common deployment tools be used to make integration efficient?
- Can the unified solution offer intelligent automation for seamless scaling as customers are onboarded?
- Is the pricing structure set up to maximize the profits of an MSP?
- Does the unification vendor offer free trials for an MSP to assess the solution?
- Will the unification vendor offer ongoing support and training?
- Is there a centralized console to generate global and local views and customer security status reports?
Transition Customers from Existing Security Vendors
The process of transitioning from multi-vendor solutions stacks requires organization. As contracts end, an MSP must be ready to replace the vendor solution. Assessment of your current tech stack is where the transition begins. Understanding your customer needs is next. These assessments provide the framework for evaluating a unified email security suite. By using a systematic approach, an MSP can phase out legacy tools and replace them with a cost-effective and modern unified email security solution. The move to a unified email security stack will benefit MSPs and their clients by providing future-proof security and making operations efficient.
How to Get Started
An MSP can evaluate a unified email security solution using TitanHQ's free trial. This ensures a simple onboarding process with engineering support. There is no long-term commitment, and you'll have immediate access to TitanHQ's platform for deployment and evaluation.
The TitanHQ standard plan provides email perimeter and mailbox protection at the same time. Our seamless M365 integration delivers 360-degree email protection, ensuring proactive defense against phishing, malware, and evolving threats. Safeguard your inbox against internal and external threats before, during, and after an attack.
For further details and how to start your evaluation and move to a unified email security solution, check out the TitanHQ Standard Plan
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