Let’s face it, today’s cyber threat landscape is a daunting one, and it can be taxing for any IT department to keep up with it along with their other job duties. In times like these, it makes sense for banks and other financial institutions to outsource their IT needs to a third-party vendor known as a Managed Service Provider, or MSP for short.
In this article, we’ll look at some of the technology-specific benefits of using an MSP.
The Tech-Specific Benefits of an MSP
An MSP can literally become your second IT Department. As such, they provide your company with the following benefits:
- You will be able to keep up with the rapid changes of technology. New Cyber threat variants emerge every day, and your existing IT department probably doesn’t have the bandwidth to keep up with all of it. However, many MSPs have highly trained Cyber professionals on their staff who are keenly aware of what is transpiring. Thus, an MSP can fully ensure that your lines of defense are as beefed up as possible.
- An MSP is always available. In today’s virtual world, technology never sleeps. But human beings need to. While your IT team is off-the-clock, the staff of your MSP will take over to make sure that all of your IT assets are running at optimal levels from a cyber standpoint. As a result, you have an IT team at your disposal 24/7.
- You’ll stay on top of compliance. The banking and financial industries are much more heavily scrutinized by regulators than ever before. This is driven, in part, by the recent passage of the GDPR and the CCPA, especially when it comes to data privacy. Chances are your bank has not been able to come “up to snuff” with these new laws. But, when you outsource to an MSP, they will have the resources you need to conduct a full audit to find out where the gaps and vulnerabilities lie in your IT- and network-based systems. An MSP can also advise you on how to implement new controls (or optimize existing controls) to avoid a time-consuming audit and possibly some harsh financial penalties.
- You’ll recover faster after a security breach or natural disaster. If your bank is ever shut down due to a large-scale security breach or even a natural disaster, you will of course want to resume mission critical processes as quickly as possible. But this can be a daunting task to accomplish if you don’t have the right plans and procedures in place. An MSP will ensure that you have these documents in place and that they are put into practice. Your MSP can also help you resume operations in the fraction of the time it would take for your IT department to do so.
Conclusion:
MSPs clearly offer banks and financial institutions many valuable technical benefits. They also provide some broader, “bottom line” benefits, which we will cover in our next article.
Ravi Das is a Cybersecurity Consultant and Business Development Specialist. He also does Cybersecurity Consulting through his private practice, RaviDas Tech, Inc. He also possesses the Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) cert from the ISC2.
Visit his website at mltechnologies.io