GTIA: AI Talk Is How MSPs Can Get Clients To Do Basic Security Like MFA

Lisa Person, director of cybersecurity engagement programs at GTIA, says MSPs can help their customers adopt ‘very basic’ security measures such as MFA on critical systems by emphasizing the threats posed by AI, whether it’s used by clients or malicious actors.

A recent survey by GTIA found that many MSP clients have not adopted “very basic” security measures such as multifactor authentication on critical systems.

But the IT channel trade association has a suggestion for how MSPs can get customers to embrace such fundamentals: talk to them about the security risks posed by the proliferation of AI, whether it’s used by clients or malicious actors.

This was one of the main points made by Lisa Person, director of cybersecurity engagement programs, during her Sunday keynote at the XChange NexGen 2026 conference hosted in Orlando, Fla., by CRN parent company The Channel Company.

Jeremy Hall, a business account manager at Dallas-based Qnet Managed Services, told CRN that the presentation showed how important it is for MSPs to consider bundling various security services and products together for clients.

“Instead of coming to them at different times with different stuff, it’s just showing them up front, ‘Hey, this will take care of your network. This will take care of your laptops.’ You just give it to them that way,” he said.

To underline the challenges and opportunities that MSPs face in getting customers motivated to adopt basic security services, Person cited remarks by Corey Kirkendoll, the vice chair of GTIA’s AI Advisory Council who is also CEO of Allen, Texas-based 5K Technical Services.

“Whereas people were tired talking about cybersecurity […] people were saying, ‘no, we don’t want to pay more for it,’ you start talking about AI and agents running around loose in your systems and all of a sudden it’s like, ‘OK, well, how do we control them?’ You get back to basics. You start doing those basic controls,” Person said.

The security survey GTIA conducted with more than 300 MSPs in North America in the third quarter showed just how much of an opportunity there is to talk to customers about how to improve their security posture in the age of AI.

For instance, MSPs said only 46 percent of their customers have DNS filtering deployed while just 42 percent have multifactor authentication (MFA) enabled for critical systems.

Customer adoption was even lower for managed detection and response (37 percent) and immutable backups (35 percent), according to the survey.

But while uptake of such security measures is low, MSPs reported in the GTIA survey that 75 percent of their customers are actually willing to pay more for cybersecurity services in the face of increasing costs.

“As you’re having those conversations, that’s the perfect time to go back to your clients and start fixing those security gaps that you haven’t seen before,” she said.

“MSPs are saying that their clients know AI is creating awareness. They know it’s out there. They’re hearing it in the news all the time. So now is the opportunity to do it,” Person added.