How MSPs protects clients from email-based threats without portals

Managed service providers (MSPs) are outsourced partners responsible for network monitoring, data backup, cybersecurity, and system maintenance under formal service-level agreements. A study from the Scientific World Journal notes the provisioning of resources within these organizations, stating, “Resources are hosted as software, database services, virtual servers (virtual machines), hardware, complete workflows, or complex configurations of distributed computing systems and applications for provisioning.”

This arrangement allows organizations, including those in sensitive and regulated fields such as healthcare, to benefit from expert IT management without the cost and complexity of operating extensive in-house technical teams. MSPs provide continuous oversight, proactive issue resolution, and up-to-date technological defenses tailored to their clients’ specific risks and compliance needs.

Their partnership with HIPAA compliant email platforms focuses on deploying automated threat filtering, enforcing email authentication protocols, managing secure encryption and key storage, and providing continuous monitoring. All these measures collectively protect sensitive communications without relying on potentially vulnerable portals or password-based user authentication.

The problem with traditional email

A major concern is email’s status as a default attack vector. Across industries, but especially acute in healthcare, email is the primary delivery method for phishing attacks, malware, and ransomware campaigns. This is especially problematic in healthcare because staff often assume that emails and attachments from known contacts are safe, which is a dangerous misconception. Attackers leverage this trust through increasingly sophisticated phishing strategies, embedding malicious links or files that can bypass generic filtering or awareness measures. 

A study from BMJ Health & Care Informatics found that hospitals received nearly 860,000 emails in a single month, of which roughly 2% (about 19,000) were classified as potential threats, an unacceptable exposure rate considering the high stakes of healthcare data breaches. Healthcare workers’ limited awareness of cyber threats and inconsistent enforcement of cyber hygiene practices increase the risk of successful attacks.

According to our research, Only 5% of known phishing attacks and 4% of known HIPAA email violations are reported to security teams.

Statistical analyses show an accelerating trend in email-related breaches. According to the journal Healthcare, between 2016 and 2019, there were 570 reported breaches at healthcare organizations directly involving email, with nearly 80% of those incidents occurring in the last four years of that interval. 

Weak or poorly managed credentials, including passwords that are not complex or are reused across platforms, increase susceptibility to brute-force attacks and credential theft. The analyses found that many breaches can be traced to simple failures, such as unprotected or minimally protected email servers and lax password policies.

Email-based threats facing MSP clients today

Phishing is the most prolific and dangerous email-based threat confronting MSP clients. Phishing attacks use deceptive emails that appear legitimate to trick recipients, often employees or executives, into clicking malicious links, downloading infected attachments, or divulging sensitive credentials. These attacks have grown in sophistication, using bulk email templates and tailored spear-phishing (targeted at specific individuals or organizations) and “whaling” attacks (targeting high-level executives).

Ransomware is often introduced through phishing links or trojan-laden attachments in emails, leading to the encryption of business data and infrastructure until a ransom is paid. Credential theft remains a persistent risk, as attackers utilize phishing and clone-email techniques to trick users into entering their login details on fraudulent sites. 

This stolen information can be used to escalate attacks, pivoting from email to internal network resources or leveraging compromised credentials to infiltrate additional clients in the MSP’s ecosystem. According to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, 57% of phishing emails are specifically designed to harvest credentials.

How MSPs act as strategic partners, not just IT fixers

MSPs enable resource complementarity by bringing specialized IT and cybersecurity expertise that many organizations cannot afford or maintain in-house. This expertise includes advanced threat detection, regulatory compliance management (such as HIPAA in healthcare), and strategic IT planning that collectively help organizations optimize operations and reduce risks. 

A Systematic Review of the Factors Influencing Multisector Alliances notes, “While almost all factors reportedly enabled synergy, some factors were more frequently associated with synergistic alliances, including clear purpose and positive coordination, information sharing, and evaluation of project outcomes.”

By offering these capabilities, MSPs allow clients to focus on their primary mission, such as patient care in healthcare or core business functions in other sectors, without being bogged down by the intricacies of IT management and security. Strategic MSPs tailor their solutions to match clients’ specific operational contexts.

How MSPs can manage multiple clients from one dashboard

Dashboards serve as the command centers for MSPs, displaying key performance indicators (KPIs), security events, system health metrics, compliance statuses, and user activity logs aggregated from disparate client systems. By connecting remotely to clients’ IT environments, including email platforms, networks, endpoints, and cloud services, MSPs obtain near real-time data feeds that populate the dashboard with actionable insights. A study on the centralized multipatient dashboards' from Applied Clinical Informatics notes, “Presenting information from all patients in the unit in a format that can be viewed from a distance facilitates effective communication of data, promotes swift responses…”

Functional attributes of MSP dashboards include customization and role-based views. These dashboards are often designed with dynamic interfaces, allowing MSP teams to filter by client, data type (e.g., security, performance, compliance), geographic region, or service category. Security analysts might focus on phishing alerts and intrusion attempts across clients, while system administrators monitor patch statuses and uptime metrics. Advanced dashboards incorporate drill-down capabilities so a high-level alert triggers exploration of event logs, endpoint statuses, or user activity for root cause analysis, all without leaving the dashboard environment.

FAQs

What is a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP)?

An MSSP specializes in delivering comprehensive cybersecurity services to organizations. MSSPs monitor, manage, and defend IT systems against cyber threats around the clock through advanced tools like firewalls.

Can an organization use both an MSP and an MSSP?

Yes. Many businesses use both: the MSP for general IT management and the MSSP for advanced security. This combination ensures their infrastructure is both well-maintained and robustly secured against modern cyber threats.

Are MSPs and MSSPs only for large companies?

No. Organizations of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, use MSPs and MSSPs. Services are scalable and often customized to industry and organizational needs.