MSPs and Public Cloud: Key Cybersecurity Strategies

MSPs: Strategies to Secure Public Cloud Environments

The public cloud offers managed service providers (MSPs) many benefits, including scalability, flexibility, and the ability to offer more comprehensive clients services. However, these benefits also come with significant cybersecurity challenges that MSPs must navigate to protect their clients’ data and maintain trust. This blog explores the top concerns MSPs face when moving to the public cloud and provides strategic insights to help address these challenges effectively.

1. Increased Attack Surface

 Transitioning to the public cloud significantly expands an MSP’s attack surface, which includes not only front-end environments but also critical backup environments. According to the 2024 Data Protection Trends Report, a top driver affecting change is the desire to integrate cyber technologies with backup.

Unlike traditional on-premises setups, where access can be more easily controlled, public cloud environments are inherently more exposed to external threats due to their internet-facing nature. This increased exposure means that MSPs must be vigilant in securing every endpoint, ensuring secure configurations in production environments, and protecting backup environments from potential threats.

Key Concerns:

• Data exposure: The cloud’s interconnectedness, with multiple applications, users, and backup systems accessing shared resources, increases the risk of data being exposed to unauthorized parties. Even minor misconfigurations can lead to significant vulnerabilities.
• Complex security landscape: The shared responsibility model of cloud security — where responsibilities are split between the cloud provider and the MSP — can lead to gaps if not clearly understood and managed. This model applies to both the primary and backup environments, requiring comprehensive security measures across the entire infrastructure.

Strategic Approach:

MSPs should prioritize a security-first approach by implementing strong access controls, regular audits, and advanced monitoring systems for both front-end and backup environments. It’s also critical to educate clients about the shared responsibility model to ensure they understand what aspects of security they need to manage versus what the MSP will handle. This holistic approach ensures that all facets of the cloud environment, including backups, are safeguarded against potential threats.

2. Compliance and Regulatory Challenges

Operating in the public cloud often means navigating a complex web of compliance and regulatory requirements. For MSPs managing sensitive client data, ensuring that these requirements are met across different jurisdictions is a significant challenge.

Key Concerns:

• Data sovereignty: Public cloud environments often involve storing data and backups in multiple locations across the globe, each with its own regulatory requirements. Ensuring compliance with laws like GDPR in Europe or HIPAA in the United States can be complex and time-consuming.
• Audit preparedness: MSPs must be able to demonstrate compliance through regular audits and detailed reporting for production and backup environments including the ability to specify geographies, which can be challenging in a dynamic cloud environment.

Strategic approach: To manage these challenges, MSPs should adopt compliance management tools that offer detailed audit trails and robust reporting capabilities. Regular compliance checks and updates to security policies are essential to keep pace with changing regulations. MSPs should also consider collaborating with legal experts to ensure all regulatory obligations are met for production and backup environments.

3. Visibility and Control

One of the biggest challenges for MSPs in the public cloud is the potential loss of visibility and control. Traditional on-premises environments allow for direct oversight of infrastructure, but in the public cloud, much of this control is abstracted away, making it difficult to monitor and manage effectively. This challenge extends to backup environments, which are often logically separated from production environments for security purposes, leading to further abstraction and potential blind spots.

Key Concerns:

• Limited visibility: Public cloud providers typically control the underlying infrastructure, limiting the MSP’s ability to fully monitor and manage these resources. This lack of visibility can hinder the MSP’s ability to detect and respond to security incidents promptly, particularly in backup environments where data is abstracted away from production such as dedicated accounts for storing backups.
• Dependency on cloud providers: Relying on the cloud provider’s built-in security measures may not always align with the specific needs of the MSP or its clients, especially when it comes to managing backups that require different oversight.

Strategic Approach:

MSPs should deploy third-party monitoring tools that integrate with public cloud platforms to enhance visibility across both production and backup environments. These tools can help MSPs gain deeper insights into their cloud environments, enabling them to detect anomalies and respond quickly to potential threats. Additionally, maintaining visibility into backup environments is crucial, especially when following best practices like logical separation from production environments. MSPs should establish clear protocols for managing cloud resources and ensure that their teams are trained in cloud-specific security practices, ensuring comprehensive oversight of all data, including backups.

4. Security Misconfigurations

Security misconfigurations are a common issue in public cloud environments and can lead to severe vulnerabilities. These misconfigurations often arise from the complex nature of cloud services and the difficulty in managing them, particularly when multiple services and applications are involved.

Key concerns:

• Misconfigured access controls: Inadequate access controls can allow unauthorized users to access sensitive data, leading to potential breaches.
• Insecure storage settings: Improperly configured storage services can result in sensitive data being publicly accessible, a risk that has been highlighted in numerous high-profile data breaches.

Strategic approach: To address these concerns, MSPs should implement automated configuration management tools that help detect and correct misconfigurations in real time. Regular security audits and adherence to cloud security best practices are also critical to preventing these vulnerabilities from being exploited.

5. Data Breaches and Insider Threats

Data breaches remain one of the top cybersecurity concerns for MSPs managing customers’ public cloud infrastructure, exacerbated by the potential for insider threats and cyberattacks. Whether through malicious intent or accidental actions, insiders can cause significant damage if proper controls are not in place including backup environments.

Key Concerns:

• External threats: Public cloud environments are attractive targets for cybercriminals due to their accessibility and the valuable data they store including: financial information, personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets, intellectual property, and more.
• Insider threats: Employees or partners with legitimate access to cloud resources may inadvertently or intentionally cause data breaches. These threats are particularly difficult to detect and prevent.

Strategic approach: MSPs must implement comprehensive access controls, including multi-factor authentication (MFA) and strict role-based access controls (RBAC), to minimize the risk of insider threats. Continuous monitoring for unusual activity and regular training for employees on security best practices are also essential components of a robust cybersecurity strategy.

6. Vendor Lock-In

Vendor lock-in is a significant concern for MSPs moving to the public cloud. Once committed to a particular cloud provider, it can be difficult and costly to switch providers, especially if proprietary technologies or services are involved.

Key concerns:

• Limited portability: Applications and data that are deeply integrated with a specific cloud provider’s ecosystem may be difficult to migrate to another provider.
• Cost and complexity of migration: Moving to a new provider can involve significant costs and potential disruptions to services, making it a less attractive option even if a better solution becomes available.

Strategic approach: MSPs should adopt a multi-cloud strategy that leverages services from multiple providers, reducing reliance on any single vendor. Additionally, when designing cloud architectures, MSPs should prioritize the use of open standards and technologies that support portability and interoperability.

7. Cost Management and Optimization

Managing and optimizing costs in the public cloud can be challenging for MSPs, particularly given the dynamic nature of cloud services. Without proper oversight, costs can quickly escalate, impacting the MSP’s profitability and its ability to invest in necessary security measures.

Key concerns:

• Unpredictable costs: Cloud providers often charge based on usage, which can lead to unexpected expenses if not carefully monitored.
• Balancing costs with security: Implementing robust security measures, such as encryption and advanced monitoring, can add to the overall cost of cloud services.

Strategic approach: To manage costs effectively, MSPs should use cloud cost management tools that provide detailed insights into usage patterns and expenses. Regularly reviewing cloud resource allocations and rightsizing services can also help optimize costs while ensuring that security measures remain effective and within budget.

8. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) in clients’ public cloud environments is a critical concern for MSPs. While the cloud offers robust options for backup and recovery, these solutions must be carefully configured and tested to meet client needs.

Key concerns:

• Downtime costs: The financial and reputational costs of business downtime can be significant, particularly in the event of a disaster or cyberattack.
• Meeting recovery objectives: Achieving the necessary recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) is essential for maintaining client trust and ensuring business continuity.

Strategic approach: MSPs should implement comprehensive BCDR plans that include regular testing of backup and recovery processes to ensure they meet client expectations. These plans should also consider the unique challenges of public cloud environments, such as the need for rapid scaling and the potential for cross-region recovery.

Veeam: The Comprehensive Solution for Public Cloud Data Protection

As MSPs face increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges in customers’ public cloud environments, Veeam service providers stand out as a leading provider of Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solutions. Veeam’s offerings are designed to empower MSPs with the tools needed to protect their clients’ data across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, ensuring that their services are secure, compliant, and resilient.

Comprehensive Data Protection

Veeam’s BaaS and DRaaS solutions provide end-to-end protection for data in public cloud environments. These services are built to handle the unique demands of modern cloud infrastructure, enabling MSPs to offer their clients seamless protection across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more. With Veeam, MSPs can feel confident their customers’ backup environments are safeguarded against cyberthreats — including ransomware and insider threats — thanks to features like immutability, encryption, and advanced access controls.

Visibility, Multi-tenancy, and Control

Veeam delivers unparalleled visibility and control over cloud-based data protection through Veeam Service Provider Console. This centralized multi-tenant management platform allows MSPs to monitor and manage their clients’ data protection services efficiently, ensuring that all backup and recovery processes are running smoothly. The console also provides detailed reporting and billing features, allowing MSPs to optimize their services while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements.

Enhanced Security for Backup Environments

Backup environments are increasingly becoming targets for cyberattacks. As highlighted in the 2024 Ransomware Trends Report stating backup environments are targeted in 96% of attacks. Veeam’s solutions address this by offering secure, immutable backups that protect against unauthorized access and ensure data integrity. With Veeam, MSPs can offer their clients the peace of mind that comes with knowing their backups are safe from evolving threats.

Scalable and Flexible Solutions

Veeam’s solutions are designed to scale alongside your business. Whether you’re managing data protection for a small business or a large enterprise, Veeam’s flexible, pay-as-you-grow licensing model ensures that you can expand your services without compromising on quality. This scalability is crucial as more organizations adopt hybrid cloud strategies, which require robust, adaptable protection mechanisms.

Industry-Leading Expertise and Support

Veeam’s ProPartner network offers unparalleled support and expertise. This allows MSPs to leverage Veeam’s extensive technical, sales, and marketing resources to deliver high-quality services that meet the most stringent industry standards. Veeam’s commitment to innovation and customer success ensures that MSPs have the tools they need to stay ahead.

Veeam provides MSPs with the comprehensive tools and support needed to protect public cloud environments effectively. By integrating Veeam’s BaaS and DRaaS solutions, MSPs can ensure that their clients’ data is secure, compliant, and always available — regardless of where it’s stored. The Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) program is free to join and provides the technology, resources, and licensing to efficiently scale your services revenue. Discover how Veeam can help you enhance your cloud protection services and deliver unmatched value to your clients.

Conclusion

The public cloud offers MSPs numerous opportunities to expand their services and provide greater value to their clients. However, these opportunities come with significant cybersecurity challenges that must be carefully managed. By understanding and addressing the concerns outlined in this blog — from increased attack surfaces to the risks of vendor lock-in — MSPs can better protect their clients’ data and maintain trust.

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