There are many reasons to outsource your IT services to a managed service provider. They can share the daily workload and manage large-scale projects.
However, one of the main reasons to hire an MSP is to leverage the skills and expertise that your team may lack.
Compliance, regulatory concerns, and cyber threats can make managing your IT environment feel like diffusing a bomb. All it takes is one wrong move to blow a hole in your business that you may be unable to repair.
Enter MSPs. We specifically hire specialists to help our clients navigate and mitigate their compliance, regulatory, and security risks.
Managing Compliance and Regulations
One of the first things an MSP will look at is whether you adhere to industry compliance and regulations. Part of this is to protect you from the fines or other legal actions that result from non-compliance. But it's also a start in shoring up your security needs.
Many compliance regulations focus on data and data privacy. By addressing compliance first, you protect yourself from regulatory bodies while jumpstarting your cybersecurity initiatives.
However, MSPs must also meet compliance standards because they have access to your servers and systems.
When vetting MSPs for outsourced IT services, make sure they're:
• HIPAA compliant
• SOC 2 compliant (preferably Type II)
• PCI compliant
• Compliant with any industry regulations
Building Policies
You may be subject to mandated policies if your business is in a regulated industry. Policies are a great way to protect your business ' data, even if you aren't subject to compliance regulations or requirements. They can help prevent breaches by enforcing good password hygiene, avoiding malware infections by blocking or addressing suspicious websites, and more.
All businesses should have standard policies to protect you, your business, and your customers' data.
• AUP (Acceptable Use Policy)• Security Awareness
• Information Security
• DR/BCP (Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Policy)
• Change Management• Incident Response• Remote Access
• BYOD
• Vendor Access
• Media Destruction, Retention & Backups
These policies help you educate your team about the security risks your business faces, how they should engage with technology and your business data, and how your team should respond in a crisis.
While this list gets you started, you may require additional policies because of your industry, the types of information you collect, or how you do business.
Reinforcing Technical Infrastructure
The third piece of an MSP's risk mitigation strategy will be reinforcing your infrastructure. That means shoring up your firewalls, auditing your account permissions, and securing your technical infrastructure.
It ensures your backups, server, and system configurations, spam filtering, malware protection, and other critical infrastructure pieces are in place and performing accurately.
It's an MSP's job to ensure you have the right tools implemented correctly to protect the people and data within your organization.
