Perfect security is unachievable—it’s sad, but true. Therefore, the goal should be to make necessary improvements to guarantee the utmost level of protection possible. Office Protect was designed to help managed service providers (MSPs) and their clients reach that goal.
The logic behind Office Protect (and Office Protect Alliance) is to offer a complete service, help with configuration and also to monitor and detect threats impacting Microsoft 365 security. While the capabilities of Office Protect software can go beyond the Microsoft ecosystem, it makes sense to focus on Microsoft 365 security given its popularity with MSPs and other businesses.
How does Office Protect work?
Office Protect Core, our baseline security add-on for Microsoft 365, is put in place to perform an initial assessment. Sherweb security experts then provide recommendations to improve the client’s cybersecurity configuration settings for Microsoft 365.
Round-the-clock monitoring is a crucial part of the service because it guarantees that every alert we receive from Office Protect about an MSP’s Microsoft 365 tenant will be addressed by our system and our team of experts. After that, we go through Microsoft 365 audit logs and gather as much information as possible to have a clear picture of what’s going on for a specific tenant. At this point, we process a large amount of data and set up alerts that both the automated system and our analysts review.
Once analysis is performed and everything that was done is documented in the system, we don’t contact the client unless there’s something specific or urgent to address. This last point is essential because it spares MSP clients from the distraction of going through thousands of entry logs.
When we find something that needs to be looked into, we provide all the available data and actionable recommendations either to the client or to the MSP, depending on the agreed-upon SLA. In most cases, after we provide guidance and support on how to address relevant concerns, the MSP retains ownership of the end-client relationship; we only take limited action and let you have control over deciding what solutions to implement.
Q&A
Let’s cover some FAQs we get about Office Protect, Office Protect Alliance and how they can improve security posture for MSPs and their clients.
Is Office Protect available for clients that don’t have Microsoft 365?
Yes! It was important to us was to make sure that Office Protect be made available to anybody. Even if your MSP business doesn’t resell licenses with Sherweb but is still interested in Office Protect, we can start the relationship first and discuss licenses later.
Does Sherweb use its own in-house experts, or does it sell someone else’s service?
Many service providers use third-party services to deliver Microsoft 365 security and other managed security solutions, which has its disadvantages. Our goal was to build our service completely in-house, and to do that, we built up our staff with Microsoft 365 experts and hired cybersecurity analysts so as not to engage with additional external organizations.
Can you mix and match the Office Protect Core and Alliance services?
Mixing and matching Office Protect Core and Alliance services isn’t possible for a single tenant; a provider must choose one or the other. This is because we cannot monitor a tenant halfway— we have to provide a full range of services. However, an MSP can mix and match plans can if they have a situation where one client needs to be monitored thoroughly with an additional managed service (using Office Protect Alliance) and another that only requires basic monitoring, alerting and reporting to enhance their Microsoft 365 security.
Has Sherweb considered selling cybersecurity insurance as additional protection against breaches?
Yes, selling cyber protection insurance is something we’ve considered, and is a potential service we may offer in the future. However, selling insurance is complicated. We never want to provide something that’s only half baked, so to speak, or that we can’t fully support with our own infrastructure and expertise. If Sherweb does break into the cybersecurity insurance game, our partners will be the first to know!
Are there any minimums with Office Protect?
There are no minimums if you currently resell Microsoft 365 with Sherweb. If your MSP doesn’t offer Microsoft 365 licenses throw us, there’s a 10-user minimum. Anything less than 10 users is $1 a month per user, minus any discounts. This is not a base fee but a minimum amount of users; the reasoning behind this is that if your company doesn’t offer any products from Sherweb’s cloud marketplace, it doesn’t make sense for us to charge $2 a month for services. On the other hand, if your company does offer Microsoft 365 through Sherweb’s partner program, we strongly recommend offering Office Protect as an add-on product to augment your clients’ Microsoft 365 security, which is $1 per user.
Sherweb gives a great amount of consideration to the importance of keeping costs to a minimum, especially for smaller companies that might not have the resources to provide enterprise security solutions for their clients. We take great pride in the fact that Office Protect is essentially the most affordable cybersecurity product available for MSPs and their SMB clients.
It might beneficial to know that if you are a Sherweb partner and use Microsoft 365 internally for your MSP business, you can use Office Protect for free on your own tenant through our not-for-resale (NFR) program.
Improve your Microsoft 365 security and get started with Office Protect today
Sherweb is committed to ensuring MSP success through Office Protect’s 24/7/365 alert monitoring, threat analysis and actionable recommendations for responding to cybersecurity incidents and potential attacks impacting your or your clients’ business. Our team of security experts and analysts is ready to support you and provide guidance best suited to reaching your organization’s goals.
Click here to learn more about Office Protect and Office Protect Alliance, or feel free to explore our Partner Guide for more information about how Sherweb can help your MSP business. Additionally, you can download our Office Protect product sheet below.
