Recent Data Breaches Offer Opportunities For MSPs

Target, Home Depot and iCloud are all brands that have been tossed around headlines more recently as a result of largescale data breaches and hacking that led to the release of valuable information.

But with these breaches comes a potential opportunity for MSPs to make money, according to Stuart Itkin, chief marketing officer at ThreatTrack Security. Itkin pointed to ways IT providers can find opportunity in the SMB market on the raised cybersecurity concerns while speaking before conference attendees at Continuum’s Navigate conference in Boston this week.

’Target is able to withstand that type of an impact but think about your clients. Think about the impact a breach like this is going to have on them,’ he said, ’in terms of their reputation, in terms of the brand, in terms of the trust customers will place in them, whether someone will go back and do business with them ... You really have to question what size of the data breach and what type of impact can your customers weather?’

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Itkin pointed to Bartell Hotels, a San Diego hotel chain that recently discovered its customers’ credit card information was stolen, affecting as many as 55,000 clients. Data was reportedly siphoned off of five of the company’s San Diego hotels including Days Hotel near SeaWorld in early September.

Itkin said a recent study from the Ponemon Institute on cloud breaches speaks to the dangers for SMBs.

’Your clients are in trouble,’ he said. ’Most of them don’t know they’re in trouble, and they need your help.’

USB hard drives and out-of-date email systems can be to blame for these breaches, he said, allowing malware to enter a company undetected. Small businesses, Itkin said, are becoming easy targets for criminals. He noted MSPs can guide businesses to safety by not only physically protecting endpoints and ensuring updates are utilized, but by helping SMBs develop policies and best practices that will keep them secure.

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Kyle Cebull, chief marketing officer for Fort Myers, Fla.-based MSP Entech, said recent news of data breaches is driving awareness around the subject of security and making the subject more tangible for his clients.

’Now our clients understand it a little bit better. It’s like an example of, ’Here’s what can happen if you don’t do these things,’’ he said. ’From a current client perspective, it reinforces what we’re doing for them. In some cases, it allows us to bring in more advanced solutions to environments that were traditionally maybe a baseline approach. Now they want to put in employee policies.’

Cebull said SMBs primarily make up his company’s focus and his smaller retailers are getting the message. He said maybe those businesses don’t store 10 million credit card numbers, but they do have valuable information to protect.

’Maybe [they] do store this list of people’s Social Security numbers or … employees’ Social Security numbers and bank account numbers,’ he said. ’That’s the business everyone can relate to.’

Owner of Miami-based Vital Systems Support Felipe Vidal attended Itkin’s presentation at Navigate earlier this month and said the recent breaches could be a boost to his MSP practice down the line but on his end at this time, he’s not seeing it.

’I think it makes the general public a little more paranoid about this,’ he said. ’But they still think they’re too small for anyone to be after them.’

He noted he believes there will be more of a shift in awareness in the SMB market but he doesn’t feel well-positioned to handle the threats that exist. Vidal said there are few tools available to him at a company his size that handles smaller SMBs. He said his clients are companies with three to 20 employees. He hopes providers like Continuum may have new offerings in the future to help partners of his size.

’I think Continuum’s uniquely positioned to help MSPs,’ he said. ’It’s too difficult for small players like myself [now]. That’s just completely out of our league.’

PUBLISHED SEPT. 26, 2014