Cybersecurity – 3 Things Every MSP Should Know

What’s up everybody? David Carothers, the principal of Florida Risk Partners and founder of Cyber Chevron. Cyber Chevron is a badge of protection for all managed services providers in Florida. I wanted to come to you in cybersecurity month to talk about things you need to be looking at when you’re looking at your insurance renewal.

Cybersecurity – Cutting Corners to save Money

Listen, it’s not a secret. Attorneys are expensive, so people often tend to shy away from using the more costly attorneys to save money. The reality is that the more expensive the attorney, the more money you save in the long run. I’m getting at your contract, your master services agreement with your clients. You need to have a rock-solid master services agreement drafted by an attorney. This will ensure that you have all the correct language to be protected if one of your clients does something that gives a malicious attacker access to your systems. Cybersecurity should always extend to the requirements you have of your clients.

Cyber Insurance Policies

The other thing you need to do is have a good cyber insurance policy. Now, these things are all over the board. There are many moving pieces and parts to them, and you need a professional who understands precisely how to write cyber, but not just cyber, cyber specifically for managed services providers, and can explain all the different coverage triggers, but more importantly, the limitations of those policies. I promise you that in this day and age, there are limitations to those policies.

So pull it out, and dust it off. This is the year you need to allow somebody to review it because this landscape has changed dramatically over the last several years. Also, you should be aware that the purchasing of an insurance product alone is not a good approach to cybersecurity.

Resourcing your Clients

The third thing I want you to do is look at your master services agreement. See if it requires your clients to carry cyber insurance. It’s extremely important that they do. That is your first line of defense. It’s not a secret. Getting insurance from a managed services provider in today’s environment is nearly impossible. But if you have good controls in place, you can not only get coverage, but you can still get better than average rates. One of the best things you can do is mitigate your risk by having controls in place. A master services agreement is a great one. Multifactor authentication, which we all know about. Endpoint detection is a huge buzzword at this point, but one I think that is often overlooked is getting certificates of insurance from your clients because you have required them to carry their cyber limits as well.

Relax, we’ve Got you Covered

Now, there’s a litany of other things that I could talk about with regard to insuring managed services providers in the great state of Florida. But at the end of the day, we only have so much time on these videos and blogs. Let’s set up a time for us to talk. I’m happy to walk you through all the things I’ve seen in working with this class of business for over 20 years here in the great state of Florida.