4 Things to Look For in Your IT and Cybersecurity Service Provider

In every industry, technology has become critical to the way we do business, but for many companies, managing their own IT and cybersecurity is beyond the scope of their resources. In these circumstances, businesses have the option to partner with a managed services provider. Choosing which IT and cybersecurity provider to work with is an important decision that can impact the productivity and profitability of your business. When you’re searching for the right IT and cybersecurity provider for your business, there are a few things you should look for.

Check for Cybersecurity Certifications

One of the best indicators of whether or not an IT and cybersecurity service provider is qualified or not is their certifications. The three key certifications you want your managed services provider to have are CISSP, CCISO, and Security Plus. These three certifications let you know that your cybersecurity service provider is appropriately trained in their field and will maintain compliance.

Ensure Sufficient Experience

You need a cybersecurity and IT service provider that has material experience in all of the core capacities of their fields. Those core capacities include:

Risk Assessment

It’s important that your service provider has a protocol for assessing an organization’s cybersecurity posture, risk level, and compliance readiness. This process should include questionnaires, external scans, and internal scans of the organization’s IT environment.

Vulnerability Mapping

One of the key things you need from your cybersecurity partner is an understanding of your vulnerabilities. They should be able to map your organization’s vulnerabilities and then provide your team with full visibility into the gaps that need to be closed.

Security Planning and Policy-Making

Be sure your company is working with a cybersecurity service provider with the ability to create a plan that will bring the organization to the desired level of protection, risk, and compliance. This can include generating security policies in accordance with the frameworks, regulations, and requirements of the business. They must also have experience creating prioritized, actionable remediation task lists to translate the policies into action. CyberTeam uses the NIST framework to guide security policy generation.

Measurements and Analytics

It’s important to partner with a cybersecurity and IT service provider that has an established process for taking measurements of a client organization’s risk level, cybersecurity posture, and compliance readiness on an ongoing basis. They should be able to generate periodic reports tracking cybersecurity progress, comparing against industry benchmarks, and analyzing the data that has been obtained through their monitoring.

Response Time Promise

Your technology is critical to your company’s operations which is why it’s imperative to partner with an IT and cybersecurity service provider that understands the urgency of downtime. Shop around for a service provider with a 30-minute response time promise for incidents or critical down scenarios.

Openness to Questions

When you’re searching for a cybersecurity service provider to support your business, you’ll want to ask a variety of questions about their offerings and the details of your contract. If a potential service provider isn’t cooperative when you try to ask questions, that may not be a provider you should work with. Be sure to ask for specifics about what their services include, such as:

• if SOC services are included
• if risk assessments are included (and, if so, at what frequency)
• if vulnerability scanning is part of the contract
• if they use Next Generation Endpoint Protection rather than the mill antivirus
• if they will monitor cloud application activity (i.e. Shadow IT)
• if they provide application allowlisting and, if so, whether it’s included in the contract

Look for detailed and concrete answers that indicate transparency and trustworthiness on the part of the provider.

At CyberTeam, accountability and transparency are two of our core values. Our team of experienced IT and cybersecurity experts works hard to put our clients first. To learn more about working with CyberTeam, you can contact us today.