CRaaS Is The Tool MSPs Need In The Accelerating Security Arms Race
By Ahsan Siddiqui, Director of Product Management at Arcserve
There's a security arms race going on. As technology advances, so do the weapons and tactics of cybercriminals. Organizations must constantly raise their game and develop better ways to protect themselves against attack. The stakes are high. A recent report by Cybersecurity Ventures predicts cybercrime will cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from $3 trillion in 2015.
That's a trend in the wrong direction. It shows that organizations need new strategies—defenses and disaster-recovery methods—to protect their sensitive data and critical systems against attack.
One of the most promising new strategies is cyber-recovery as a service (CRaaS). This service enables businesses to recover data and restore systems after a cyberattack rapidly. It is explicitly designed to repair the damage caused by a cyberattack, unlike traditional disaster-recovery tools primarily built for floods, fires, and hardware failures. CRaaS creates a secure and isolated environment where an organization can quickly restore its critical data and systems in case of a breach.
The old scenario: a cyberattack hits your business, compromises your data, and panic sets in as you realize that your business could collapse. The new scenario: it won't because CRaaS has your back.
A Crash Course In CRaaS
As mentioned, traditional disaster-recovery solutions resolve physical server failures or clean up after a natural disaster like a fire or flood. CRaaS provides a more modern, more comprehensive recovery. It enables businesses to restore their data after an attack and find and fix the security gaps that allowed the attack to happen in the first place.
But offering cyber-recovery as a service and delivering it are two different things. Even MSPs specializing in disaster recovery may not have the resources and expertise in IT security and forensics necessary to provide adequate cyber recovery as a service. Because recovering data after a cyberattack is just the beginning, MSPs must also be able to implement new security policies and solutions to prevent future attacks and keep their clients' data safe.
Cyber-recovery as a service can be lucrative, so many MSPs consider adding it to their arsenal. But robust CRaaS requires the correct skillset and technological solutions to meet customer service-level agreements. It also requires MSPs to stay updated with the latest cybersecurity threats and provide the solutions to stop them.
CRaaS-competent MSPs ensure that their clients' systems are secure, resilient, and protected against the cyberattacks of tomorrow. Cyber-recovery as a service is an ever-evolving field, and good MSPs know this. In turn, they know that ongoing collaboration with vendors is essential.
No one solution can completely solve the issue. Many tools and techniques are required to protect customers, get them back on their feet as soon as possible, and defend them against future threats. Top MSPs have those tools and the ability to get customers up and running fast after a cyber incident, find security gaps and fix them, and implement measures to prevent incidents in the future.
Another capacity that distinguishes CRaaS-competent MSPs is understanding how to work with cyber insurance companies and, if worse comes to worst, how to negotiate with cybercriminals in the event of a successful ransomware attack. Negotiating with the attackers is sometimes the only way out, and it requires a fine-tuned skillset and detailed knowledge base that MSPs need to keep updated.
CRaaS Could Soon Become An Essential Offering
Cyber-recovery as a service offers many benefits to both MSPs that can effectively provide it, and to end customers that buy it. For the customer, CRaaS assures continuity and, possibly, survival itself. A competent MSP partner can monitor their customers' data and networks around the clock and handle any incident promptly and efficiently, giving customers confidence in the service. Furthermore, customers can focus on running their businesses because the MSP does the heavy lifting when drawing up a comprehensive cybersecurity plan.
On the MSP end, those that deliver effective CRaaS can differentiate themselves from the pack, leading to more business and healthy revenue streams. Indeed, with the exploding threat of cyberattacks, MSPs that don't offer cyber-recovery as a service may fall behind their competition.
By going the extra mile and offering cyber-recovery as a service, MSPs can create stickier relationships with their customers and open new growth opportunities. But they must do it right. They must have the correct skillset and technological solutions in place. And they must provide comprehensive cyber-recovery as a service, which means restoring data in the event of a cyberattack and continuously delivering the new products and policies needed to take on tomorrow's threats.
CRaaS Enables Customers And MSPs To Go Forward With Confidence
Cyber-recovery as a service is quickly emerging as a viable—necessary—alternative to traditional disaster-recovery methods. In the ongoing security arms race, CRaaS is a win-win. For customers, it provides data security and peace of mind. For MSPs, it opens new revenue streams and helps them stay ahead of the competition.