How Managed Compliance Services Can Help Your MSSP Achieve Its Goals

Managed service and security providers are increasingly dipping their toes into the business of compliance — first out of necessity because their clients either inquire about or demand it, but now more so out of opportunity. 

Compliance is an opportunity for providers to add formalized compliance management service offerings, which helps clients satisfy regulatory requirements or prepare for audits. Aligning their security services to best practices compliance frameworks can also help providers validate those services, show their return on investment, and prove they're doing what they should.

Apptega’s 2024 State of Continuous Compliance Report surveyed 115 security providers, showing an incredibly bullish trend for the MSP and MSSP business world:

• 3 out of 4 respondents view compliance as a “high growth” business. ݁ 
• 86% of security leaders have a strong desire to turn one-off projects into recurring revenue. ݁ 
• 70% of providers have at least double-digit revenue growth targets.

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For MSPs and MSSPs, compliance is an opportunity to achieve these growth goals: gaining differentiation, finding a competitive edge, accelerating their sales cycles, and establishing confidence with investors and clients — all of which can help grow margins, revenue, and retention.

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What Are Managed Compliance Services?

Managed compliance services involve the handling and supervision of processes, policies, and tools that go toward fulfilling the controls of regulatory, privacy, and security frameworks. For businesses, the work without proper tools usually proves painstaking and tedious: carried out in formula-heavy spreadsheets, folders littered with redlined documents, and scattered legal evidence in unprotected repositories like cloud drives or collaboration hubs like Slack. 

That’s why companies rely on expert-managed security providers to keep an eye on everything, make sure they're always up to date, prepare them for audits, assess risks, and jump in when there's an incident.

According to Grand View Research, the global enterprise, risk, and compliance market (a slice of the overall compliance and security posture management pie) hovers around $55 billion and is projected to grow 14% annually through the end of the decade.  

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The Compliance Opportunity: Bundling Services for Greater Impact

Apptega’s 2024 Compliance Report also shows that today, providers package their compliance offerings in three main ways:

1. Using Compliance As a Proxy (7%) Providers use compliance frameworks as a proxy for best practices. They are not necessarily aligned with a standardized best practice framework. 
2. Offering Á La Carte Compliance Services (Nearly 50%) Many providers offer services addressing key framework controls like network detection, vulnerability management, and Log/SIEM detection. This approach provides a more formal compliance offering, helping to validate the effectiveness and ROI of their security services. However, compared to bundled services, they are still leaving value on the table.
3. Bundling Compliance Services (46%) These providers bundle entire end-to-end compliance programs and manage them through a technology platform. This creates a broader offering with greater value, recurring revenue, and customer stickiness. 

Since less than half of providers bundle compliance services, there is a significant opportunity for differentiation and increased recurring revenue. By bundling compliance services with security offerings such as network detection, vulnerability management, and Log/SIEM, providers can address key framework controls and demonstrate the value of their services through compliance outcomes. 

This bundled approach allows providers to stand out in the market with a comprehensive and integrated service. However, providers must be ready to invest in the necessary technology and expertise to deliver these advanced offerings effectively. Let's explore how in the next section.

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Managed Compliance Helps Providers Achieve Aggressive Revenue Goals

Managed compliance as a service provides a competitive advantage for service providers. Those who choose to incorporate managed compliance into their service offerings can:

• Expand products and services revenue from existing clients.
• Address the latest compliance requirements and expand to new industries & markets.
• Increase and accelerate new client acquisitions.
• Facilitate and expand the scope of quarterly business reviews (QBRs).
• Manage multiple clients on one centralized platform (when services are delivered through Apptega).
• Remotely manage their clients’ cybersecurity programs (with Apptega).

What remains to be seen is whether managed service and security providers can fully capitalize on the opportunity. According to the findings in our State of Continuous Compliance report, 85% of providers face “significant challenges” delivering compliance. Let’s look at those in more detail. 

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Why Security Providers Hold Back From Offering Compliance

Many providers miss out on offering compliance services, but not due to a lack of awareness of their value. Their key challenges involve a lack of resources, knowledge, and tools, all while having to ferociously justify the hard-to-quantify ROI of their services to demanding clients:

• More than half of providers (59%) lack the know-how to offer managed compliance.
• Almost half (47%) cite a lack of resources as a reason for not having a compliance offering. 

The good news for MSPs and MSSPs is that incorporating a compliance management automation tool can provide the know-how, resources, and integrated capabilities to successfully manage compliance for your clients. 

Ultimately, your margins should get better if you’re using the right tools and technologies and have the right partners. That’s why with Apptega, both MSPs and MSSPs are adding value by helping their clients build, monitor, and report on their cybersecurity programs. 

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How Apptega Compliance Management Automation Software Helps MSSPs Crush Revenue Goals

Apptega is a market-leading cybersecurity management platform for security providers. Our platform helps providers automate manual compliance work, turning their compliance offerings into high-growth opportunities for their businesses as well as their clients. Here’s how:

• ‍Framework Crosswalking: Apptega allows you to easily build, manage, and report on your customers’ compliance programs with 30+ frameworks mapped to your services. This saves time and money and helps avoid duplicate work. ‍
• Productized Compliance Management: Apptega helps you capitalize on services you’re likely already offering. In particular, Apptega allows you to bundle the entire end-to-end compliance program and manage it through a technology platform to deliver greater value, recurring revenue, and customer stickiness.‍
• Faster Risk Assessments: With Apptega, you can fire up automated questionnaire-based templates to quickly identify risks and produce status reports 2-3X faster for each of your clients' frameworks.‍
• Centralized Reporting: The Apptega platform allows you to deliver real-time visibility and proof of success with persona-based dashboards and reporting. Monitor all of your clients’ progress in a single, intuitive view specifically designed for security providers.

Apptega is trusted by hundreds of MSSPs and security-focused MSPs that are growing lucrative compliance practices, creating stickier customer relationships, and winning more business from competitors.

Want to learn more about Apptega? Click here to discover how Apptega can help you deliver end-to-end compliance programs tailored to your existing services.