MSPs: 4 Keys to Delivering the Best Data Protection for Your Customers’ Small Businesses

Data is quite simply the lifeblood of any modern business. It is the foundation for digital transformations that drive competitive differentiation and growth. And, for forward-thinking organizations, it is a business accelerator because it helps leaders understand and measure business activities across departments and initiatives. For MSPs, data is the foundation for driving new revenue streams and attracting new customers. MSPs that provide digital transformation services to their clients will thrive this year, according to MSP Today.

With digital transformation comes massive data growth and new vulnerabilities and threats, with ransomware being at the top of the list. And small businesses are the biggest target, making up more than half of ransomware victims per a Forbes account of a recent Senate Judiciary Committee meeting. At the same hearing, another senator pointed out that 51 percent of small businesses don’t have any resources for cybersecurity.

With more data to manage, more data to protect—and more data to recover—it’s time for MSPs to pull out all the stops and bring the best ransomware defenses to your customers. But the reality is, there is no silver bullet for keeping ransomware at bay. That’s why you need to work with your customers using a multi-pronged approach primarily comprised of three components:

1. Strengthen cybersecurity measures

Layering has been the name of the game in this first-stage defense against ransomware. As an MSP, you're used to providing antivirus, anti-spyware, antispam, single sign-on (SSO), identity and access management (IAM), and more to deliver the best possible security protection. But, here’s the rub. Even your most prepared customers—those with plenty of security software and hardware—can, and likely will, get hit. All it takes is one click by an employee on a malicious link or the opening of a single infected PDF, and your customers' data is locked up. So what's next?

2. Ensure orchestrated recovery

You must help your customers put a solution in place that lets them recover their data and systems in a prioritized order. That ensures their most critical systems can be up and running quickly so their businesses can get back in action. While many of your customers likely have backup and disaster recovery (BDR) solutions in place, you should also be offering the same security layers for their backup systems. That’s because backups are the new target for ransomware villains. And by solutions, we don’t simply mean anomaly alerting because we know that's not enough. That’s why Arcserve and StorageCraft, an Arcserve company, have partnered with world-class security vendor Sophos, integrating Sophos Intercept X Advanced to secure your customers’ on-premises, cloud, and SaaS-based backups.

3. Put data protection processes that work into place

Helping your customers keep their data safe starts with ensuring they train their employees to recognize social engineering and other cyber scams and always keep their guard up. Ensure they have multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other means to limit access to data and applications. And work with your customers to test those processes, so everyone is confident they will work if (or when) a disaster strikes. Helping your customers create a strategy for these critical components and offering the best solutions available today to combat ransomware will differentiate you from your competitors. That’s where immutable storage comes in.

4. Make sure your customers’ backups are immutable

When backups are immutable, any written data can't be modified or deleted. That's one very high-value feature of StorageCraft OneXafe, our scale-out storage appliance that brings immutability to the table in a differentiated way. For your customers, scale-out storage means they only need to add—and pay for—capacity as they grow. OneXafe also incorporates two-factor authentication for an added layer of protection. And, because OneXafe backups are object-based, your customers can see all their data in one place. OneXafe is simple, too, functioning as standard network-attached storage (NAS) device that you can set up swiftly—without dealing with proprietary standards.

Become a Partner

Read this case study to learn how one SMB worked with its MSP to deploy OneXafe for BDR. 

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