By Debashish Mukherjee, Country Director- India, SAARC, SonicWall
According to research, the global Managed Security Services Partner (MSSP) market size is projected to grow from USD 22.8 billion in 2021 to USD 43.7 billion by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.9% during the forecast period.
Security threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and organizations are looking for proactive ways to secure their IT environments. Whether their environment is in the Cloud, on-premise or a hybrid, organizations look to managed security services providers (MSSPs) to provide the best-in-class security to protect their business and mitigate future risk.
We are witnessing that large enterprise and SMBs (Small Medium Businesses) are facing issues with their cyber security management – be it lack of internal skilled resources, bandwidth to constantly monitor threat loopholes or protection gaps, budget constraints etc. Therefore, there is a great need to have partners bring in their wholistic expertise and bridge this need-gap. Partners are expected to create layers of services such as back end support, remote implementation, constant monitoring, provide regular auditing and feedback, offer suggestions etc. The shift from just a transactional association to a consulting / partnership model is the big ask from partners today.
To be able to service this huge expectation, OEMs and partners need to skill up and/or bring in talent to meet the requirement. We are witnessing huge gaps in availability of specialized resources in the industry. Either the skill sets don’t match or they come at a huge cost. OEMS will have to work closely with partners on a twofold strategy to address this situation. One- to identify and develop subject matter specialists from within the teams ( ZERO trust, advance threat protection, end point protection etc.) and the other to collaboration with other partners to provide a comprehensive service package to customers.
