A new survey has found that four out of every five businesses across the US and UK will change how they deal with security in the coming 12 months.

The report, “The Path to MSSP”, examined the views of more than 400 SMEs and enterprises in the US and UK and explores the opportunity for MSPs in security.
             
The five types of IT security opportunity the report has revealed over the next 12 months are:

• Businesses currently handling security internally but now want to outsource their security primarily due to cost (25% of the market)
• Businesses currently handling security internally but now want to outsource it to improve performance (24% of the market)
• Those currently outsourcing but considering taking security back in-house in the next 12 months (10% of the market)
• Businesses considering switching service providers due to poor performance (9% of the market)
• Businesses considering changing providers to reduce costs (8% of the market)

“Every day brings news of a new security hole that needs to be patched, a massive data breach, or new strain of ransomware that businesses need to watch out for,” said Tim Brown, vice president, security architecture at SolarWinds MSP. “Understandably, this creates nervousness amongst enterprises and SMEs and greater scrutiny of the IT security measures in place. Where there is market turbulence, there is also opportunity, and the good news for IT service providers is that this has resulted in almost half of all businesses planning to outsource their security needs to specialists. However, IT service providers need to remember that more opportunity inherently means more competition,” warns Brown. “Providers need to be able to prove their knowledge, capabilities, and available resources to take full advantage.”