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Monitoring can reveal an alert; it cannot, by itself, contain an incident, restore a customer’s systems, or keep people informed. Because managed service providers (MSPs) often hold privileged access across multiple customer environments, a compromise can create risks beyond the provider itself. MSPs and their customers need to plan together for prevention, response, and recovery—not treat monitoring as the whole security strategy.
Why an MSP’s security affects its customers
An MSP’s administrative accounts, tools, and connections can reach systems belonging to several organizations. That reach makes the provider a potential path into customer environments as well as a source of operational support. CISA Director Jen Easterly noted in a 2022 joint advisory that attacks on MSPs can significantly increase downstream risk to the businesses and organizations they support; the advisory calls on providers and customers to protect their networks together: CISA joint advisory AA22-131A.
That is why resilience is broader than detecting suspicious activity. CISA describes resilience generally as the ability to prepare for threats and hazards, adapt to changing conditions, and withstand and recover rapidly from adverse conditions and disruptions. It is a useful framing, not an MSP-specific certification or guarantee: CISA resilience services.
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Four operational priorities beyond monitoring
1. Limit and review privileged access
Require multifactor authentication (MFA) for provider access where possible, and give each account only the permissions it needs. Review provider-to-customer connections and the systems they can reach rather than assuming a single network boundary is enough. These practices reduce unnecessary exposure; they do not eliminate the possibility of compromise. The joint government guidance sets out access-control and architecture-review considerations for MSPs and customers: CISA joint advisory AA22-131A.
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2. Protect backups from the systems they must recover
A backup is less useful if an attacker or compromised administrator can alter or delete it through the same access paths as production systems. CISA recommends keeping backup data isolated, updating backups regularly, and testing them. Backup frequency should reflect the organization’s recovery point objective (RPO)—how much recent data it can afford to lose. Relevant guidance includes CISA’s StopRansomware Guide and the joint MSP advisory.
MSPs should maintain backups of their own data and, where contracts and responsibilities call for it, customer data. A disconnected external drive can be one offline medium, but a drive alone is not a backup strategy: coverage, isolation, who can access it, encryption, retention, and successful restoration all matter. NIST NCCoE’s guide discusses data integrity and recovery considerations for backups: NIST SP 1800-11, Volume A.
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3. Exercise response and recovery plans
Plans should explain how the provider and customer will identify an incident, make containment decisions, restore systems, and communicate. Assign roles in advance across technical teams, executives, procurement, customers, and other relevant stakeholders. Exercise the procedures: a written plan does not establish that the right people can make decisions or that restoration will work under pressure. Joint MSP guidance recommends developing and exercising incident-response and recovery plans with clear roles: CISA joint advisory AA22-131A.
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Customers should understand the MSP’s update policy and which party handles updates, backups, incident notification, and recovery tasks. The joint advisory recommends that customers include appropriate response and recovery requirements in contracts. Clear responsibility does not replace technical safeguards, but it helps avoid gaps when several organizations share control of systems.
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What customers should keep and ask their MSP
CISA advises organizations to keep their own offsite backups of essential records and network activity logs. Independent logs can help authenticate vendor activity and support forensic investigation. CISA also recommends involving key vendors, including MSPs, in incident-response and business-continuity planning, and updating plans when vendor relationships change: CISA customer risk-management considerations for MSP customers.
Use a service review or planning meeting to get specific answers to these questions:
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- Which critical systems, data, and configurations are included in backups—and which are not?
- Who controls backup accounts and encryption keys? How are backups isolated from production access?
- When was a restoration last exercised, and what did the test actually restore?
- What RPO and recovery time objective (RTO)—the target time to restore service—are covered for each important system?
- Who contacts whom during an incident, and who has authority to contain or restore systems?
- What is the MSP’s update policy, and how are update, backup, notification, and recovery responsibilities divided?
- Does the customer retain independent offsite copies of essential records and activity logs, and are those records accessible if the MSP is unavailable?
These questions help customers compare commitments on meaningful grounds: coverage, isolation, access and key control, retention, restoration testing, and alignment with recovery objectives. Government guidance identifies practices to consider; it does not rank MSPs or endorse a particular backup product.
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Choose one scenario that could interrupt a critical service—for example, loss of access to a business system—and work through it jointly with the MSP. Identify decision-makers, confirm how each party will communicate, locate the relevant backups and logs, and attempt a restoration in a controlled test. Compare the result with the customer’s RPO and RTO. Record any gaps, assign an owner to each, and agree when to revisit the exercise. This turns broad resilience goals into a shared, testable plan.
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