The Heartbleed vulnerability affecting millions of users on the internet is creating a lot of buzz in the media. What’s important about the media covering this, you may ask? It’s not just the channel media but the non technical news outlets giving this story coverage.
While this web vulnerability is no laughing matter, it does present a great chance for managed service providers to talk about cloud security with their customers. I’ve put together just a few ideas I had involving how Heartbleed can help MSPs help their customers.
Begin a discussion
Sometimes MSPs feel awkward about approaching their customers and prospects about anything. Having a good reason to talk to any sales prospect is a good thing. Use this opportunity to at least begin a dialog with your customers.
Security Analysis
For some managed services customers, security may not be a service currently being delivered by the MSP. If this is the case, there’s no better time than now to begin offering general managed security services.
I’ve heard many MSPs talk about how their customers do not believe security is relevant to them. “It’ll never happen to me”, or “I don’t have anything worth stealing” are common phrases. However, Heartbleed has shown that it does not discriminate about the type of users it can affect.
BYOD and MDM
Oddly enough, I actually have read a lot of articles talking about the virtues of using single sign on and multi-factor authentication technologies as useful tools to help prevent exposure to Heartbleed. MSPs have been, in my opinion, not pushing mobile device management and BYOD services. There are many reasons why this is so but with Heartbleed, there is no better time to start talking to customers and prospects about a BYOD and MDM service.
If you have any ideas on how MSPs should be using this web vulnerability to engage with customers, I’d love to hear from you.