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In a crowded market, how do you tangibly prove your MSP’s commitment to security? For Managed Service Providers in the UK and Australia, the answer lies in government-backed frameworks that turn security best practices into a powerful business differentiator.
Frameworks like the UK’s Cyber Essentials and Australia’s Essential Eight can seem like just another compliance hurdle. But what if you viewed them as a blueprint for standardising your security stack, building client trust, and unlocking new revenue?
This guide breaks down what these frameworks mean for you, how they compare, and how you can leverage them to build a more secure and successful MSP.
The UK Standard: Demystifying Cyber Essentials (CE) and CE Plus
For UK-based MSPs, Cyber Essentials is the NCSC’s foundational cybersecurity standard. It’s designed to protect against the most common cyber threats and is built on five key technical controls: firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, and patch management.
- Cyber Essentials (CE) is a self-assessment, allowing you to certify that you have the essential protections in place.
- Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) takes it a step further. An independent auditor conducts a hands-on technical audit to prove your controls are effective, offering a much higher level of assurance.
Why does this matter for your MSP? It’s not just about you… you clients care too.
For your clients, CE is a clear sign of security diligence. For your MSP, it’s a strategic tool. It provides a clear, reputable baseline to standardise your security offering, streamline operations, and build undeniable trust. Crucially, it’s often a mandatory requirement for businesses in the UK Government and Ministry of Defence supply chains, opening doors to valuable new contracts.
The Australian Benchmark: Understanding the Essential Eight
Down under, the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) offers the Essential Eight. It’s not a one-time certificate but a maturity model, advising organisations to implement its eight controls at one of three maturity levels.
The Essential Eight is highly regarded for its practical, real-world focus on mitigating the most prevalent threats, from opportunistic ransomware to sophisticated targeted attacks.
What UK and Aussie MSPs Can Learn from Each Other
While developed on opposite sides of the world, these frameworks share the same DNA. Both prioritise critical controls like patching vulnerabilities, securing configurations, and restricting administrative privileges.
However, the real insight comes from their differences. The Essential Eight places a strong emphasis on three areas that UK MSPs can adopt to create an even more resilient service offering:
- Application Control: Preventing unapproved or malicious programs from executing.
- Microsoft Office Macro Settings: Blocking or vetting macros from the internet, a common attack vector.
- Regular Backups: Mandating the daily backup of important data, software, and configuration settings, ensuring you can recover quickly from any incident.
By adopting these principles, MSPs in both countries can build a “best-of-both-worlds” security posture that goes beyond simple compliance.
Your Toolkit: How to Achieve and Maintain Compliance Efficiently
Understanding the frameworks is one thing; implementing them across your entire client base is another. This is where a unified platform becomes essential for efficiency and enforcement.
Enforcing Compliance Across Every Endpoint
Achieving compliance requires consistent policy enforcement across every device, regardless of its location or OS. Using a centralised device management solution, you can enforce security settings like disk encryption, OS updates, and screen locks, ensuring every endpoint aligns with framework requirements.
Securing User Access and Privileges
Both frameworks heavily emphasise controlling who can access your data. A modern approach combines identity and access management (IAM) to enforce the principle of least privilege. By centralising control, you can implement strong password policies, mandate Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), and ensure users only have the access they absolutely need.
This is where MSPs see the most immediate benefit, as noted by one of our partners:
“JumpCloud integrates identity and device management, which are two of the five controls within the Cyber Essentials framework. We can align our partners to the Cyber Essentials Framework quicker than ever, and we know they will be secure and compliant.”
Chris Pearson, The Light
Moving From Compliance to Competitive Edge
Cyber Essentials and the Essential Eight are more than just a certificate or a checklist. They are strategic frameworks that empower you to standardise your offerings, educate your clients, and prove your security credentials in a tangible way.
By embedding these principles into your service delivery, you don’t just tick a box—you build a more secure, resilient, and successful MSP.
“JumpCloud helps both their MSP partners and those partners’ customers to initially become accredited, but crucially too, stay secure!”
Chris Notley, Fifum
Ready to Turn Compliance into Cash Flow?
You’ve seen how frameworks like Cyber Essentials and the Essential Eight are not just hurdles to clear but a blueprint for growth. They provide the definitive, globally recognised standard for the security services you already deliver, transforming your commitment into a powerful, tangible differentiator.
But translating that blueprint into seamless, day-to-day enforcement across dozens—or hundreds—of client environments is the true challenge. You can’t afford a patchwork of disparate tools that create complexity and compliance gaps.
This is precisely where JumpCloud for MSPs shines.
As the article highlights, JumpCloud’s focused platform integrates Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Device Management into a single, unified solution. This lets you efficiently enforce the most critical controls of both Cyber Essentials (like user access and patch management) and the Essential Eight (such as application control and privileged access) from one pane of glass.
JumpCloud is your essential partner for turning a regulatory checklist into a standardised, streamlined, and highly profitable security stack. If you’re ready to simplify compliance, bolster client security, and unlock new contracts, explore how JumpCloud for MSPs can become the foundation of your competitive edge today with a personalized demo today.
The MSP Compliance Quickstart Guide
Learn how to become a knowledgeable resource, whether you’re getting started today or just preparing for the future.
