Understanding the MSSP and Vendor Business Relationship

To build a successful business partnership, MSSPs need vendors who have best-in-class technologies supported by knowledgeable people and proven processes. VARINDIA spoke with Vishak Raman, Vice President of Sales, India, SAARC, SEAHK & ANZ - Fortinet to understand what an MSSP should look for while choosing a cybersecurity vendor - 

What are the key differentiators as service providers compete in an increasingly crowded MSSP marketplace?  
To differentiate themselves, in an increasingly crowded marketplace, managed security service providers (MSSPs) need integrated security platforms that can protect their customers' network and yet be agile enough to respond to their various business needs.

Partners often build their reputations on the services and technologies they offer. For MSSPs and partners looking to expand their offerings as part of their revenue goals, cybersecurity mesh platforms, like the Fortinet Security Fabric platform, can help them reduce their overhead while also giving customers the solutions they need. The Fortinet suite meets MSSPs demands for convergence, vendor consolidation, ease of management, and can be delivered as hardware, software, in the cloud, or as a service. And all of our solutions run on a single operating system, FortiOS, which improves operational efficiency and provides consistent security no matter where users or applications are located. 

How does the Fortinet Engage Partner Program benefit MSSPs?
The Fortinet Engage Partner Program enables MSSPs to take advantage of our tightly integrated, highly automated, and high-performing technologies and improve their profitability by offering them technical training, marketing, and sales support. With Fortinet Partner Specializations, partners can focus on high business demand areas, and once a partner organization becomes eligible for designation as a Specialized Partner, they benefit from visibility as they are listed on the Fortinet Partner Locator for their region.

Fortinet is committed to and continues to invest in our partners, whether they are integrators, managed security service providers (MSSPs), or cloud partners. We’re continuing to provide the tools and support Fortinet partners need to maintain a competitive edge. As part of this commitment, we have updated our Engage Partner program to help ensure that all of our partners have what they need to differentiate, grow, and expand their businesses.

What should MSSPs look for in their cybersecurity vendor? 
Just as MSSPs partner with their customers, the security vendor should partner with them. Cybersecurity vendors act as the foundation of the services and offerings an MSSP provides. To build successful business strategies, MSSPs need vendors who have best-in-class technologies supported by knowledgeable people and proven processes.

A vendor who understands an MSSPs business will provide technologies that are integrated and integratable. While an integrated solution incorporates multiple tightly-connected technologies that work together, an integratable solution fits seamlessly into a multi-vendor business technology solution stack.

A vendor’s technology services should be flexible, delivering a solution in multiple ways across multiple platforms and should be scalable, combining different features, like converging networking and security, to ensure future growth. When a vendor provides well-defined technology standards, it proves their commitment to MSSPs. By reducing the operational overhead cost per customer, the MSSPs business is made more profitable.

What makes Fortinet the vendor of choice for MSSP partners?
Fortinet empowers partners by providing a robust set of technologies and services that enable long-term strategic business goals. With our broad portfolio of integrated and automated security tools for MSPs and MSSPs, supported by a dedicated Offer Development process and team, partners can offer their customers a broad, single-provider solution that increases average revenue per user.  The Fortinet Security Fabric is an integrated and integratable solution, providing the security, performance, visibility, and control that partners need.

In addition, Fortinet provides additional enablement at the technical level, including channel sales engineers (SEs) who are responsible for technical enablement with our partners, with the goal of helping them maximize opportunities and building revenue-generating solutions.

To achieve business success what is the kind of solution checklist a Managed Security Provider should include in their portfolio?
Beyond providing the right services and technologies, MSSPs must also demonstrate their business value. Many customers recognize their security problems but cannot articulate where the MSSP fits into solving them. To demonstrate the vital role they can play in securing customer networks and enabling the business, MSSPs should consider offering services that works as a Mesh to detect, remediate and respond to threats across hybrid networks. 

Actionable Alerts As-a-Service
Information overload and alert fatigue is a common problem facing security teams so the ability to address security monitoring is a key requirement.  To help address these problems, MSSPs must provide customers with aggregated alerts enriched with context that reduce false positives. MSSPs who can enable prioritization based on severity levels with technology that streamlines task assignments and automate response can differentiate themselves from other providers.

Advance Threat Detection As-a-Service
In addition to alerts, advanced threat detection is also tied to the MSSP’s ability to incorporate advanced threat intelligence into their offering. With threat actors continually improving their tactics, techniques and procedures customers want a provider with real-time access to robust threat intelligence that can quickly detect attacks at machine speed. When combining actionable alerts with high-quality threat intelligence in a single pane of glass, an MSSP can help customers respond to zero-day attacks and other emerging threats, thereby reducing the likelihood of a data breach.

SOC As-a-Service
The cybersecurity talent gap leaves many companies struggling and customers turn to an MSSP to act as their security operations center (SOC) or support their current team. Delivering a range of services from their own SOC, specifically those that can be offered at particular service levels or tailored to individual customer needs. With a fully managed or co-managed SOC service, MSSPs can fill the talent gap by providing the skills customers need.

Automated Response As-a-Service
Some customers may have SOC teams that need augmentation because they are bogged down by manual, inefficient, error-prone, and time-consuming procedures. These customers need automation so that their teams can effectively filter repetitive tasks and focus on more critical issues. .By offering Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) with updated playbooks, MSSPs can offer services featuring enhanced detection and accelerated incident investigation and response.

Visibility & SIEM Access As-a-Service
Customers have multiple point products that create gaps in visibility and control. To gain that visibility, many work with an MSSP who can cost-effectively provide them with a cohesive Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solution. One of the keys to SIEM effectiveness is the ability to ingest large volumes of data from a wide range of vendor products.  The ability to provide centralized management and customization options using API integrations is one-way MSSPs can distinguish themselves in the market. 

How important is MSSP-Vendor business relationship?
Choosing a vendor is a strategic business decision for managed security service providers, because profitability, growth, and service quality rely on well-defined technology standards. As the foundation for these business outcomes, vendors need to provide the breadth and depth of product offerings that enable MSSPs to address various customer use cases. Simultaneously, a security vendor must offer the flexibility that ensures MSSPs can respond to evolving customer needs. An integrated solution with multiple technologies that work together enables long-term scalability and growth opportunities for MSSPs.

When evaluating a security vendor, MSSPs need to consider their customers’ security needs as well as their own business objectives. For MSSPs to add new customers and increase their footprint at existing ones, cybersecurity vendors who offer integrated mesh platform enable them to achieve their business goals.  To begin with an MSSP’s initial business strategy may have been to provide security operations center (SOC) services. However, as customer needs change, the company may want to add new services like SD-WAN or extended detection and response. An integrated cybersecurity vendor provides all the technologies that an MSSP needs to build a long-term business growth strategy.

While many MSSPs focus on cybersecurity technology capabilities, they should remember that their customers come to them for services. Too often, MSSPs view their vendor relationship as a transactional agreement focused on products. However, when they incorporate cybersecurity vendor experience they can build a relationship that enables long-term business success.

What role should a vendor play in an MSSPs business?
On the other hand the vendors should understand the services portion of the MSSP equation. For MSSP customers, security is one part of a larger business model. For MSSPs, security is the business model. A vendor should corolate its technologies in ways that align with MSSP business and revenue objectives. 

 A vendor should help in quick business turnaround and time-to-revenue, the average revenue per unit (ARPU) the MSSP needs to generate to return a profit from a new service offering. It should include best practices to bring a consistent set of security policies to all customer deployments. And the vendor should also be part of the sales lifecycle that includes technology discussions, proof-of-concept and validation phase, trials with early adopters and pilot projects, and deployment.

The cybersecurity vendor acts as the MSSP’s intermediary between attackers and customers.  Thereby vendors must play a responsible role in an MSSPs business so that they in turn can provide their customers with the best security services possible.
 

MSSPs ‘ENGAGE’ in a partnership with Fortinet

Harsha Ram
Head - Network Business, Sify Technologies (India)

"Sify’s SD-WAN services are a major draw in the Indian Enterprise market due to a strong suite of services that maximize value for our customers. 

Being a leader in the managed network services space, Sify benefits from complementary solutions that easily integrate with our ecosystem that also add value to our customers' digital journeys. Fortinet’s integrated networking and cybersecurity offerings, including Fortinet Secure SD-WAN, combined with common management and analytics platforms across our SD-WAN, switching and wireless portfolio help us offer seamless solutions to our customers". 

Vishal Rally
Senior Vice-President, Product Commercial and Marketing, Tata Teleservices (India)

"Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) has collaborated with Fortinet to empower Indian enterprises with a secure and reliable connectivity solution that delivers exceptional end-user experiences. By incorporating Fortinet Secure SD-WAN into our portfolio of Core Connectivity, Business Communication, Cloud and SaaS, TTBS has strengthened the ability to meet the increasing demand for integrated and automated security solutions. SD-WAN supports enterprises in their digital transformation efforts by offering unmatched flexibility, scalability, and next-generation security features, along with valuable business intelligence capabilities."