How secure is your business from cyber threats? Take a look at some of these latest cybersecurity statistics: As of late 2021, the number of malware infections against individual computers and business networks has increased by over 2000% since a decade ago. Roughly 93% of these are delivered via email, and neither of these stats even cover other rapidly growing threats like ransomware. This vicious new threat type has seen an increase in attacks of 62% just between 2019 and early 2021. What all these stats mean more than anything else is that your business absolutely needs strong IT security–and a Managed Services Provider (MSP) may be the answer.
What is a MSP?
In basic terms, a managed service provider delivers the full power of a professional, 24-hour data security and network protection monitoring service on an outsourced basis. Managed services can be contracted to take over the whole of your daily IT needs or just those that you delegate to them. They offer a whole menu of IT services that include network security, data backup, ransomware protection, communications monitoring and many others.
You as a business owner can decide on the level of integration you want. On the one hand, this could mean simply obtaining basic but professional monitoring of your IT security and that you and your own IT department is notified when a threat is detected. Or you could sign up for full-scale managed services in which your MSP acts as a functional extension of your company, handling both monitoring and defensive responses.
For example, Great Lakes Computer’s managed services include the following IT solutions:
- Desktop and laptop computer administration
- Cloud storage services for data protection and backup
- Computer network management
- VoIP Phone solutions for communication between your employees
- Server management solutions
These are just the key managed services options, but a MSP can also offer a powerful range of IT and data security options, such as data backup and recovery, Security Operations Center as a Service, email protection and cybersecurity regulations compliance services. Taken together, these solutions can protect your business against a wide range of threats.
Why Hire a Managed Services Provider?
A MSP solves many in-house issues. In the first place, a highly professional MSP should have an established history with other businesses to show it has the professional expertise and hardware/software resources to handle almost any threat.
Secondly, an MSP can do all of this with its own internal IT resources that you don’t need to directly invest in for a similar level of protection. These two factors alone allow for enterprise-level security without enormous equipment and infrastructure investments.
As a third benefit, there are the enormous savings in human resources costs: By delegating your IT security and network management to a MSP, you need pay only for the essential costs of the services rendered. With this, you avoid all of the payroll and other hiring difficulties that come with having your own in-house staff on call at all times.
Final Recommendations
If you’ve decided that MSP support can offer your business a secure, reliable exit from the potential nightmare of self-managed IT security, then make sure to hire the right provider. Aim for a MSP with the reputation, menu of offerings and robustness necessary to deliver high-caliber IT management for your needs. Great Lakes Computer Corporation can deliver the weapons you need against today’s digital threat landscape with its deeply experienced staff and enterprise-level tools.
