Simplifying Cybersecurity: How MSPs Can Support Their Customers

Organisations today face mounting challenges in securing their networks, applications, and sensitive data. Attackers are now using generative AI to automate and scale their efforts, increasing the sophistication and volume of attacks. The availability of “as-a-service” tools further lowers the barrier to entry for cybercriminals.

To protect against new and escalating threats, many organisations are acquiring an ever-growing stack of security tools. Managing these disparate tools – often from different vendors – creates a further drain on the internal IT team’s time and resources. 

The need for support from partners in managing this complexity was one of the key findings in our MSP Customer Insight Report 2025. This explored the challenges facing organisations, what they need from partners and how MSPs can evolve – through their own skills and service offerings - to support their customers’ growing requirements in building cyber resilience. 

The demand for MSPs’ security services

Protecting an organisation from cyber threats requires a combination of tools and expertise. Organisations need around-the-clock monitoring, management and mitigation capabilities, as well as a deep understanding of the threat landscape. 

The reality is that few organisations can meet all these needs in house. 

As such, we found that the majority of organisations surveyed, 73%, outsource security services to an MSP and a further 18% are currently evaluating providers. 

The research also highlights the importance of partners as organisations grow. As IT environments expand, internal teams often struggle to maintain the same level of visibility and rapid response needed to stay ahead of evolving threats, making outside expertise increasingly valuable.

We found that 52% of the organisations surveyed want MSPs to help them manage a growing number of disconnected security tools and vendors, and 51% turn to MSPs to evolve their security strategies as the business expands.  

For partners that can support customers with this growth there are clear commercial opportunities. The vast majority of respondents, 92%, are willing to pay more for support with security tool integration, which underlines the high value placed on managing this complexity.  

The expanding customer base 

The demand for cybersecurity support is growing across all business sizes. We are seeing ever larger organisations seeking the assistance of MSPs to help them with specific IT security challenges. This may reflect the growing scale and sophistication of security stacks in larger organisations, which require greater expertise and oversight from IT teams.

The larger organisations surveyed were more concerned than smaller ones about the growing complexity of their security environment (42%) and the growing complexity of cyberattacks (46%).  These concerns highlight that the demand for MSPs services is extending well beyond their traditional SMB customer base. 

It’s not only the customer base that is widening: the expectations from customers of the cyber security services they need from partners is also growing.  

Strategic Partners 

MSPs are being viewed not just as service providers for technical delivery, but also as strategic partners that can help enterprises navigate and manage the escalating demands of cybersecurity operations. 

As security and regulatory demands multiply, customers are looking for providers who can deliver a wider range of capabilities, such as incident recovery, regulatory compliance support and proactive resilience planning. They need forward-looking security advice as well as strategic security insight that scales with their own business growth and emerging threats.

Many are also turning to MSPs for expertise in next-generation capabilities such as Zero Trust, secure access service edge (SASE), and artificial intelligence (AI). For example, we found that 39% of organisations expect to need MSP support with AI and machine learning in the next two years. 

What this means for MSPs 

The findings reveal that organisations of all sizes now depend on MSPs for their security expertise and managed solutions. And as demand for advanced technologies and security continues to rise, MSPs will remain central to the success, resilience, and growth of businesses worldwide. 

To capitalise on these opportunities, MSPs must expand their expertise and evolve into strategic security partners. In the coming years, they must strengthen their own operations - from talent and expertise to risk resilience - while continuing to meet evolving customer needs in an increasingly challenging cybersecurity landscape.

At the same time, providers face their own challenges managing multiple clients whilst keeping pace with these new threats.  

This is where vendors can support, through simplifying how MSPs manage their own IT environments: integrating management, response, and reporting through centralised dashboards and product consolidation.

Working with vendors, with managed SOC capabilities can also reduce the burden on delivering 24/7 monitoring and response, enabling MSPs to focus on strategy, innovation, and building their customer relationships.