This is the first blog in what I expect will become a series of blogs on methods I have come up with for securing the SMB company with limited resources.
Diamonds from Dust will be written primarily from an MSP's point of view. I firmly believe that every small business needs a partner with some technical resources in order to remain secure. This isn't about an onsite person's technical abilities at all, it's about economies of scale.
This post is about selecting a vendor. This will be the only post written from a customer's perspective.
Here we go!
The 5 things your MSP must have:
1. Technical Certification: Any MSP that has been around a while will have certified engineers on hand. This is to meet requirements for vendor recognition programs. Vendor recognition drives prices down and service up. You want that ability in your MSP.
2. A Monitoring Solution (with custom rules): Monitoring is critical, and a robust monitoring solution is critical for insight. A well tuned monitoring solution is key to your success and security.
3. A Security Focus: Your MSP must be interested and immersed in security. It must care and it must respond to threats.
4. A Customer Notification System: You need to be kept in the loop when things are bad and a way to rapidly notify customers is critical.
5. A Solid BCDR Solution: This will be the subject of at least 2 more posts in the coming weeks and months.
Next Post: Minimum Firewall Settings
Other Topics Coming:
BCDR
Monitoring Rules
Managing AV
Incident Response
Planning