Today’s organizations face a constantly evolving threat landscape that can potentially jeopardize their sensitive data, operations and reputation. Demand for our managed cyber services has increased steadily, driven in part by a need to combat the ever-increasing array of threats while simultaneously navigating tech transformations, talent shortages and shrinking budgets.

While organizations have improved at defending against various threats in the past year, there’s no quick fix and businesses need the agility to adapt to whatever comes next. Based on what we’re seeing in the market, organizations are taking that step in a few different ways. Some are migrating from a collection of disparate tools to a “security platform” approach to drive efficiencies and automation through interconnectivity. Others are also leveraging sustainable, integrated solutions to support evolving cybersecurity needs.

That’s where managed services come in. By harnessing emerging technology and a talent pool of skilled, improvement-focused consultants to align with an organization’s specific needs, PwC’s Cybersecurity Managed Services model offers a proactive and comprehensive approach to reducing cyber risk and allowing an organization to shift its focus from managing these operational challenges to managing outcomes that steer the business’s strategic direction.

That’s because managed services shouldn’t simply address an organization’s “mess for less” in the form of a one-time boxed solution. They must work with each client to determine the level of support needed and improve the service over time to meet changing business needs.

Our approach is two-fold: We improve an organization’s risk reduction capabilities cost-effectively and deliver sustainable solutions that can be continuously improved. We enable organizations to navigate escalating risks alongside business challenges, emerging technology adoption and budgetary and talent shortages, as all of these factors continue to take shape and evolve.

How Managed Services Can Accelerate and Sustain Cyber Maturity

With organizations increasingly moving their businesses to the cloud, they must consider whether their security operations and wider cyber risk governance processes are fit for the new environment and pace of change. The approach that worked to secure on-premise assets may not be as viable in the cloud, so managed services providers must understand the skills, processes and technologies required to secure cloud-based assets and help organizations maximize their cloud-first strategies securely.

Another well-known factor is expense pressure. As macroeconomic conditions have changed, CISOs are asked to justify their budgets. More often than not, they’re considering outsourcing strategies to potentially do more with the same resources, or do more with less. Cybersecurity-managed services can help organizations develop better, more sustainable capabilities than they had in-house while saving them both time and money.

Taking the long view is key. When evaluating potential service providers, an organization should understand exactly what they need and determine what service can address their immediate ask. On the other end of the partnership, service providers should develop a roadmap for their services’ efficiencies and how they can evolve. At PwC, we take our managed services partnerships with our clients one step further. We commit to increased automation and delivery efficiencies through reduced year-over-year fees that share the efficiencies we gain with our clients.

Organizations are also wrestling with the availability of talent. According to our latest Global Digital Trust Insights survey, executives flagged an inability to fill talent gaps in organizational security as a significant challenge in the past year. Cybersecurity-managed services can help fill that gap, and organizations are willing to invest. Managed security services are second only to network security as a top investment priority for cyber in 2023, according to the survey.

Managed service providers also face a need for human capital. PwC uses diversification in our delivery model, with Centers of Excellence across the globe allowing us access to the broadest talent pool all delivered through a flexible operating model to align with each client’s specific needs.

Building a Sustainable Managed Services Partnership

Organizations shouldn’t view support from managed services as merely ticking a box, as if providers come in to fix their business problem, pack up and leave. This is an ongoing alliance, and business leaders should treat it as such. Set expectations from the start so that years down the line, your provider is continually evolving to meet your changing business needs and can help you mitigate the threat landscape impacting your organization.

That should be a provider’s goal: To offer continued improvement that’s predictable and scalable over time. The last thing they want to do is set a client up for unexpected runaway expenses at the onset of the partnership. At PwC, we avoid this issue by offering predictable fee structures.

We also work more closely with clients to augment their team in a partnership fashion, instead of viewing it as a full outsource. Taking the example of security monitoring, many providers ingest logs into their remote multi-tenant SIEM and act as an “alert reflector” service that puts the heavy lifting back on your already-stretched resources. In contrast, our Threat Detection & Response managed service operates your technology in your environment and actively embeds our resources within your team to create a “one team” mindset that delivers true detection and response capabilities.

The Bottom Line

There’s always a new technology or solution in the cyber world that organizations can leverage. As they try to keep up with the evolving threat landscape, it can be tempting to chase these bells and whistles to try and solve new business problems without proper governance in place.

What’s important is having the operational discipline and wrapping your people and processes around these new technologies. That’s where managed services can come in and provide structure to your operations. With a host of technical capabilities and a commitment to continuous improvement, the best providers can deliver sustained outcomes to meet each client’s needs.

Aiden Lynch, Partner, PWC, Cyber Managed Services, co-wrote this article.