Mohamed El Yahya, Managing Partner, Global Infrastructure Services, Middle East & Africa at DXC Technology
FEATURE MSP
There is further potential in Microsoft 365 protection and management, cloud infrastructure services and AI governance.
“ There is further potential in Microsoft 365 protection and management, cloud infrastructure services and AI governance. The strongest proposition is often a coordinated service covering protection, detection, response and recovery. This allows providers to expand their role with existing customers, while generating predictable recurring revenue.”
Compliance is becoming equally important. Sophos found that 99 % of surveyed MSPs provide at least one cybersecurity compliance service, while 58 % offer full compliance programme management. Yet only 6 % provide the full range of compliance services examined by the research.
Compliance also influences half of customer cybersecurity purchasing decisions on average, suggesting that regulatory requirements are increasingly shaping security investment.
But delivering these services at scale remains challenging. Only 33 % of MSPs are completely confident in their ability to continuously monitor, manage and document compliance across multiple customers.
Fragmented tools add another layer of complexity. While 36 % use a single platform to centrally manage cybersecurity compliance or CISO-type activities, 53 % rely on multiple tools. MSPs estimate they could save 53 % of their time if customer security posture, compliance management and reporting could be handled through a single unified platform.
AI transforms the SOC Artificial intelligence is now changing both what customers expect from managed security providers and how those services are delivered.
Mohamed El Yahya, Managing Partner, Global Infrastructure Services, Middle East & Africa at DXC Technology, said:“ Speak to any SOC leader today and you will hear the same frustration. Their teams are facing a flood of alerts while attacks are becoming faster and harder to connect across cloud, identity, endpoint and network environments. People simply cannot keep pace on their own.
“ That is why we at DXC see autonomous alert triage and enrichment becoming a core requirement for the modern SOC. AI agents can assess signals across domains in parallel, establish the real risk and help teams respond far sooner. This capability therefore represents a strong revenue opportunity for MSPs and MSSPs, but perhaps just as importantly, is also becoming the foundation for everything else they offer. Without it, a SOC will struggle to remain effective against AI-driven threats.”
The implications extend beyond alert management. AI is increasingly taking over repetitive security tasks, potentially allowing analysts to concentrate on more complex investigations.
“ For me, the real change is in what happens to the nature of service delivery. Customers come to us for an outcome. They want to be protected, and they expect us to find the best way to deliver that. AI is helping us do that faster, more consistently and at a scale that was not possible before.
“ We have proved this inside DXC’ s own global security operations. Our Agentic SOC automated 99 % of alerts, reduced investigation time by 67.5 % and achieved more than 95 % remediation accuracy. It also gave more than 225,000 hours back to our SOC analysts. That last figure really matters. It means our people can spend less time on repetitive investigations and more time on complex cases, threat hunting and the decisions where their experience makes the greatest difference.”
Raad added:“ AI is taking away a lot of manual work and helping teams respond faster. But there’ s another side to it, customers also need guidance on how to introduce AI into their business, without creating new security risks.”
The result is a managed services market increasingly defined by outcomes rather than technology management alone. As MSPs assume greater responsibility for compliance, cyber risk and AI-enabled security operations, their role is shifting closer to that of a strategic security partner, with the opportunity to build deeper customer relationships and highervalue recurring services. •
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA 27