We recently published the results of our 2024 MSSP Survey, which received close to 2000 responses. In the survey, we asked professionals in the managed security services provider (MSSP) industry about many important topics, including of course, automation.

We were encouraged by the survey’s findings around automation, which echoed what we have seen and heard while working with our MSSP partners. The survey found that automation is widely used by MSSPs, that SOAR is the most common primary tool for automation, and that almost everyone sees it as having a positive impact. Importantly, none of these gains come at the expense of employees. Only 4% of respondents said automation had been used to replace existing staff, and most respondents said automation had improved their job satisfaction.

We also learned about how MSSPs intend to grow their businesses over the coming years and how automation is supporting those plans. Let’s dig into the data and learn more.

How MSSPs Use Automation

To determine how automation supports MSSP growth, we first need to ask, what are MSSPs automating? The answer, it turns out, is quite a lot! 51% of respondents said their company used a medium amount of automation and 31% said they used a high amount of automation. Not a single respondent said they used no automation. The most common primary automation tool is SOAR (33%), followed by ITSM (29%) and XDR (20%).

Automation is part of many important MSSP services. In the charts below, you can see what services the MSSPs represented in our survey offer, compared to the services that automation helps them deliver.

How Does Automation Affect MSSPs’ Plans for Growth?

The participants in our survey were cautiously optimistic about growth. Roughly half thought their customer base would more than double in the next two years, and the other half expected less. 80% said that new services sold to existing customers would drive revenue growth, ahead of the 69% that said growth would come from net new customers. So, is automation a part of those growth plans? It seems so.

According to the chart below, automation currently helps approximately two-thirds of MSSPs achieve three important goals: revenue, margins, and competitive differentiation.

Automation has many ways of enabling these positive business outcomes. The simplest way is through improved efficiency. Automation enables MSSPs to deliver services at scale and at speed by automating time-consuming tasks like alert triage and incident response.

Our survey also found that many of the biggest timewasters for MSSPs are administrative, such as reporting, client onboarding, and communication. Automation can help reduce these burdens as well, by generating reports and notifications for clients, or even streamlining the onboarding process.

Automation can also drive profits and differentiation by enabling high-value services. Our MSSP partners use Smart SOAR as the basis for MDR, managed XDR, managed threat hunting, and other services. These offerings give MSSPs access to a larger share of their customers’ security spends, creating opportunities to grow revenue without competing for new customers.

How Does Automation Impact the People who Work for MSSPs?

A common myth about automation is that it will be used by greedy business owners to replace hardworking employees. In our experience working with security teams, that is not true at all. Almost every SOC team is overworked, so letting a good employee go is the last thing they want to do.

That observation is supported by our survey data, which found that only 4% of MSSPs used automation to replace existing staff. The much more common outcome was keeping the same workforce but using automation to support increased output (67%). That helps explain why 87% of people said automation had a positive effect on their job satisfaction, compared to just 2% who said the effect was negative.

MSSPs’ customers are also fully on board with automation, which wasn’t always the case. It used to be that some old-fashioned stakeholders were skeptical of automation, but a finding in our survey suggests that has changed almost completely. When asked what the primary reason was that their company didn’t use more automation, only 2% said it was because their customers weren’t comfortable with it.

Get Your Copy of the 2024 MSSP Survey

The complete survey has a ton of interesting insights on the state of the managed services industry. We haven’t even covered the findings on AI or the surprisingly most-cited pain points. You can download the 2024 MSSP Survey here to read about that and more.

Research like the MSSP Survey helps us to better understand how security teams use automation and how we can deliver the best possible technology to help solve their problems. Our Smart SOAR platform drives SecOps and business outcomes for MSSPs around the world, thanks to its advanced automation and powerful, MSSP-specific features. Learn more about Smart SOAR for MSSPs in this case study video with High Wire Networks.

The post How SOAR Automation is Boosting MSSP Revenue Without Replacing Human Workers appeared first on D3 Security.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from D3 Security authored by Walker Banerd. Read the original post at: https://d3security.com/blog/soar-automation-boosting-mssp-revenue/