Edouard von Herberstein, CEO & Founder | SPECTRA
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are now presented with the biggest opportunity in the history of their industry. Their expertise in managing cybersecurity and responding to breaches, their ability to adapt at speed and scale to technological innovation, their intimate understanding of their clients’ business and the trust they have developed with their clients over the last few decades, position MSPs as the only strategic partner for mid-market and SMBs as they leap forward with AI-powered solutions.
Virtually every business, however small, has adopted AI solutions across their operations, whether they realize it or not. Meanwhile, only few and often larger enterprises have allocated a budget to integrate, manage and govern AI powered technologies to mitigate the various risks that come with AI. These include data leakage, prompt injection, AI-enabled fraud, business interruption, runaway AI costs and agentic failure to name just a few.
Meanwhile, most insurers are either keeping AI specific coverages silent in their insurance policies, or filing for broad AI exclusions as they are left powerless to price this new risk without sufficient claim history, but also the lack of guardrails, governance, and even risk awareness from their policyholders.
Businesses adopting AI without governance, insurers keeping new and potentially critical emerging AI risks silent on their policies, or excluding them entirely, present a unique and significant opportunity for MSPs acting as the only trusted IT consultant to those millions of SMBs. It also presents a significant liability risk for MSPs not preparing themselves for the post-AI era.
Last month we announced the industry first framework for MSPs offering AI deployment and governance to their SMB customers. This report covers the 7 AI domains we identified and 20 controls that we believe will provide robust and foundational managed AI deployment and governance by MSPs. The framework received input from global cyber insurers and reinsurers, MSPs with mature AI offerings, and our cybersecurity advisors. We are in discussions with leading insurers and brokers to design affirmative coverage that will be available for AI certified MSPs and their customers.
We close the report with profiles of 3 SPECTRA-certified MSPs who were part of the first certified AI offering cohort of MSPs and are actively in the market with managed AI solutions.
This project was a team effort, collaborating across SPECTRA ecosystem of partners and advisors. We’re immensely grateful for their contributions and look forward to continuing our work together to better understand and manage risk in this rapidly changing environment.
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Download the complete report for the benchmarks, controls, and steps MSPs are using to make AI insurable.
