A Guide for MSPs: Building a Profitable Security Service

The MSP Gold Rush: Why Security Is Your Biggest Opportunity in 2026

The time for you to create a full-fledged security offering has arrived. A compliance wave is sweeping through all companies, no matter the size. Startups with a few employees are now expected to have the same level of compliance as enterprise businesses. The alphabet soup of regulations; HIPPA, GDPR, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and the growing list of state regulations means every business could use some help.

Cyber insurance is not going to pay out unless your clients are meeting certain levels of proactive safety and have proof that they are doing their best. Multifactor authentication is now a common requirement, as are SIEM tools, security awareness training, endpoint protection, and a documented response plan, just to name a few.

As if that wasn’t enough, the cost of inaction is getting higher and higher. Most companies can’t afford a DDOS attack, with costly downtime, lost data from ransomware, or the legal exposure from systems that haven’t been hardened. With this trifecta of market forces, it's vital for MSPs to find the right set of security tools that provide real value for their clients, without sacrificing the profitability of your business. 

Defining Your SIEM-Powered Service Offering

As an MSP, the key to growth in this new environment is moving beyond monitoring basics and into proactive security management. A SIEM-powered service will get you real-time detection, automated responses, and the compliance reporting that your clients are increasingly expected to need. 

The Service You'll Sell: A Managed SIEM Service for Your Client

A Managed SIEM service can be a subscription based offer where you are offering 24/7 visibility, detection, and responses across all client environments through a centralized system.

• Real-time threat detection and automated alerting: Identify and stop suspicious activity before it becomes an escalated midnight call. Also, get quick response times for when it is a red alert, all-hands on deck situation.

• Compliance and audit reporting: Find all the holes that could make your client susceptible to litigation for everything from HIPPA to SOC 2 and give explicit instructions on how to make everything watertight.

• Expert oversight: Your team of talented professionals will be trusted advisors for your client by interpreting alerts and making knowledgeable recommendations tailored to their company and systems.

The Platform You'll Use: A Managed SIEM Like Blumira

Building this kind of system from scratch could consume your team’s time and resources for years, not to mention the need for a whole new workforce. That’s where Blumira comes in. Our cloud-native SIEM is purpose-built for MSPs, giving you a centralized, intuitive platform to monitor, detect, and respond across multiple clients, backed by our team of security experts.

With total visibility across your environments, our solution integrates easily through cloud connectors, on-prem sensors, and a lightweight agent you can deploy at scale via script for full endpoint coverage. Our out-of-the-box detections are pre-built, pre-filtered, and prioritized, grouping related findings to reduce alert noise by up to 99% compared to traditional systems. That means your team can focus on what matters, without drowning in false positives.

When it’s time to respond, Blumira enables efficient and effective action with AI-assisted investigation, step-by-step response playbooks, and 24/7 on-call support which helps your team build security expertise while keeping clients protected. We also streamline your workflow efficiency with pre-built compliance reports, executive summaries you can share with clients, and an open API that delivers the right information to the right tools at the right time.

As your partner, we’re here to help you grow your security offerings at every stage. We provide multiple tiers of our solution, so you always have the right fit—whether your client is just starting out or maturing their security posture. Our simplified, predictable pricing model includes month-to-month contracts, along with discounts, rebates, and sales accelerators to support your growth.

We also invest in your success with comprehensive training—not just on using Blumira, but on broader security best practices and how to effectively sell security solutions. You'll have access to co-marketing collateral and campaigns, plus marketing development funds (MDF) to help you generate demand and close more deals.

The Partnership: How Blumira's Backend Management Empowers Your MSP

Hiring an additional team of security analysts to support your security service is expensive, time-consuming, and not necessary if you get a good SIEM. Quality and tuned automated systems can keep your team up to date without overwhelming them with too many alerts, no need to have a person manually monitoring 24/7. When something does happen and you need help investigating deeper, here at Blumira, we have backend SOC experts to help you get deeper insights and provide ideal next steps.

The options at Blumira can help you make your existing teams a robust solution for your clients without adding unnecessary headcount. Partnering with us means you are supported by a robust and expert security team; you’re not in this alone. We handle the backend management, maintenance, and the continuous research required to stay ahead of the game in threat research. This means you get to focus on your relationship with your clients and continued growth.

The Blueprint: Key Steps to Building Your Security Practice

The MSPs who thrive in the security space are the ones who do more than just pick a good partner. They set up systems to support their teams, teams that they get fully trained on triage, responses and these MSPs create multitiered packages for their clients to choose from and build off of a proven framework. Here is your action plan for becoming the place to be for security. 

Developing Your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for SIEM Management

SOPs, the least flashy and exciting part of business, but guaranteed to get you the best reputation. If every customer has a consistently high-quality experience when they interact with your teams you are on the road to repeat business and referrals. Remember, getting a new client is way more expensive than keeping the ones you have.

• Have a Solid Framework: Build off global best practices by creating your program around NIST Cybersecurity Frameworks. The five essential functions are identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. 
• Onboarding and Configuration: Define how your team will connect and onboard with your client. Create a list of usual suspects for configuring software connections. For example, ensuring data flow from criteria sources like Microsoft 365, logs from firewalls, and any storage points they may have. 
• Alert Review Cadence: Set up timeframes for when alerts will be reviewed and escalated, points of contact, and establish what that escalation path will look like. Will you plug into their ticketing system, email threads, or chat functions? All are good to establish from the start.
• Compliance Reporting Cadence: Set up regular cadences for reviewing compliance update needs and a prioritization system to keep them in the clear.
• Wins Reporting: Create a monthly or quarterly report, as well as an annual report, highlighting the wins that you have accomplished keeping clients safe and compliant.

When your team follows SOPs, you make repeatable success and reduce risk for you and your client.

Training Your Team for Security Triage and Response

While we all love technology and automation, human expertise can not be beat. Your technicians must be equipped to interpret alerts and help your customer understand what to do during a security event.

• Invest in Security Education: Ensure everyone on your client facing team has the base knowledge needed from phishing scams to incident response protocols. A good first step can be found at the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.

• Hands-on SIEM Training: Use your SIEM management platform like Blumira to simulate detections and walk through the response workflows.

• Tiered Response Model and Cross-Training: Have experts in triage, remediation, and forensics, but don’t forget to cross-train so that your clients are supported no matter the staffing situation.  

• Client Communication: Make sure your team members know how to communicate the complexities of security situations in plain language. All the knowledge in the world isn’t helpful if it can’t be communicated.

Packaging Your Service: From Basic Monitoring to Full Incident Response

Providing package options can increase your ability to scale quickly. Customers have different levels of risk tolerance and budgets, so having a tiered service will get more clients onboard at the get go.

Example of tiered packages:

1. Essential Security Monitoring
   • Centralized log collection
   • Real-time automated alerting
   • Basic firewall and endpoint protection
   • MFA setup and monitoring
   • Monthly reports and recommendations
   • Coordination with cyber insurance and law enforcement

1. Advanced Threat Detection and Response
   • Includes all services from the Essential Security Stack
   • 24/7 monitoring with prioritized alerting
   • Advanced firewall configuration and monitoring
   • Guided remediation support
   • 1-year of data retention for compliance needs
   • Compliance reporting and audit prep (HIPAA, CMMC, etc.)

1. Comprehensive Security and Incident Responses
   • Includes all services from Advanced Threat Detection
   • Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) integration
   • Regular phishing simulations and user training
   • Access to co-branded reporting and compliance summaries
   • Full-time incident response support
   • Quarterly security strategy reviews

Choosing Your Foundation: What the Best SIEM for MSPs Looks Like

It’s important to find a platform that understands the needs of an MSP and will make your job easier, not eat up valuable resources, and chip away at your margins. There are three non-negotiables that will directly impact your ability to deliver the results you’re looking for.

Non-Negotiable #1: A True Multi-Tenant Management Architecture

You don’t have time to juggle separate logins or each client dashboard and hope that you aren’t missing something critical. A true multi-tenant management architecture will give you centralized visibility on all of your clients from one console while also keeping strict data separation to maintain client privacy and compliance. This single view allows your team to respond faster, improve accuracy, and spend less time bouncing between systems.

Non-Negotiable #2: A Supportive, Channel-First Partner Model

Blumira was built on the philosophy that we are a partner, an extension of your team, and we understand your business model. To provide you with the best possible support we provide extensive training for your teams, hands-on support from real engineers who know your stack and playbooks for most situations. On top of that, we aim for revenue alignment with pricing to protect your margins and make you as successful as possible.

Non-Negotiable #3: Fast SIEM Deployment and Ease of Use

Time is money, especially in the world of security where every minute spent on tool deployment or chasing false alerts is time taken away from revenue-generating work. That’s why speed to deployment and ease of use aren’t just security benefits, they directly impact your margins. Your SIEM should be deployable in hours, not days, with preconfigured detections for common platforms like Microsoft 365, modern firewalls, and storage systems. And once it’s live, it should be intuitive and automated where it counts, with guided triage that minimizes manual effort and reduces alert fatigue. Think fast, easy, and immediately measurable outcomes for your clients and your business.

The Payoff: Achieving Profitability and Scale

At the end of the day your success hinges on how well you deliver value to your clients at scale. Your software solution should help you achieve this by minimizing your time spent making the tool work for you and using that time to align with your clients needs.

The right platform will reduce labor cost and increase recurring revenue. A good SIEM will have automated alert detection without all the noise. Too many alerts means technicians will start ignoring them, so easy tuning and prioritization is important. Context and tool switching can also balloon costs and risk that things get missed, so an all-in-one view can increase efficiency and team burnout.

Learn more about measuring a platform's ROI in How to Maximise Your SIEM ROI.

How to Explain the SIEM Benefits to Your Clients to Justify Value

Clients often view security as a cost, but if you can show them that it’s protection for their revenue and reputation, it feels a lot easier to say yes to your package. Reframe your service as risk reduction and compliance assurance.

Emphasise that they will:

• Meet their cyber insurance and compliance requirements with ease
• Have real-time visibility into potential threats 
• Something about building operational resilience and reducing business risk
• Gain access to guides through all incidents 
• Save costs in regards to reduced downtimes, reduced insurance premiums, and faster audits 

Future-Proofing Your Offering: Trends for 2026 and Beyond

The security landscape is constantly evolving, so staying ahead of the market with an integrated security platform and automated solutions that scale is key to future proofing your offering in 2026. 

The Shift From Traditional SIEM to Integrated Security Platforms

Many MSPs are being sold the promise of a single, all-in-one platform that claims to solve every security need. But the reality is that these bundled solutions often force tradeoffs in performance, flexibility, and control. At Blumira, we believe in a different approach: empowering MSPs to build a best-in-class security stack with tools that excel in their category.

Instead of relying on rigid platforms, you can offer clients a flexible, powerful SIEM like Blumira that integrates seamlessly with your services. We handle detection, response, compliance reporting, and automation while you layer in your expertise and support. This model gives your customers the benefits of a modern, automated platform, paired with the personalized, high-value services only you can provide.

Automation as the Key to MSP Scalability and Success

Automation in cybersecurity is one of the key ways to increase coverage for your clients and maintain excellence through employee shortages and rising client expectations. You can maintain 24/7 protection for more customers without paying for 24/7 staffing. This also provides excellent customer experiences by ensuring your technical teams are addressing escalations that have the most impact, not just tackling the mundane triage of alerts.

Blumira Can Help

With Blumira as your partner, you can turn security from a technical challenge into a sustainable, recurring revenue engine for your business.

Stop struggling with complex security tools that kill your margins. Blumira's easy-to-use, multi-tenant platform is built specifically for MSPs to deliver profitable security services. See how you can get your first client secured in minutes.

Learn more about our MSP Program and get free access to test it out for yourself.