In our recent post on the Top 4 Business Benefits for Service Provider Adoption of an EAP, we outlined how Exposure Assessment Platforms enable MSSPs to deliver comprehensive Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) programs while driving revenue growth and operational efficiency. But there’s an urgent reality we need to address head-on: according to a recent Secure World report, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) aren’t just service providers delivering security—they’re prime targets sitting at the center of a massive attack surface.
The business case for CTEM is compelling, but the threat landscape makes it essential.
The Numbers Tell a Stark Story
The data paints a clear picture of escalating risk:
- Third-party breaches have doubled from 15% to 30% of all data breaches, with MSPs representing a particularly attractive attack vector
- 61% of all data breaches in 2025 were due to compromised credentials; weak or reused passwords are common points of entry
- 50-61% of newly disclosed vulnerabilities are now exploited within 48 hours, collapsing traditional patch windows into near-instant threat timelines
- 32% of SMBs would hold their MSP solely responsible in the event of a breach, with 79% open to legal action
And here’s the multiplier effect that makes MSPs such lucrative targets: When attackers compromise an MSP, they don’t get access to one company’s data—they get a master key to dozens or hundreds of customer environments simultaneously.
Why Service Providers Are the Target of Choice
Think about what an MSP or MSSP represents from an attacker’s perspective. You manage privileged access to multiple customer networks. You handle sensitive data across diverse industries. Your tools – RMM platforms, PSA systems, backup solutions, and monitoring software – have elevated permissions by design. You’re trusted implicitly by clients who rely on your infrastructure to keep their businesses running.
You’re not just a service provider for clients. You’re a force multiplier for adversaries.
The 2021 Kaseya VSA incident demonstrated this reality with brutal clarity: a single compromised RMM platform spread ransomware to an estimated 1,500 organizations worldwide. One attack. Thousands of victims. That’s not a hypothetical scenario—it’s the documented business model for modern cybercrime.
More recently, the 2025 landscape has reinforced this pattern:
- The Salesforce/Salesloft-Drift compromise affected over 700 organizations through stolen OAuth tokens, becoming the largest SaaS supply chain breach on record
- Cleo Communications attacks exposed customer data at Hertz, Sam’s Club, Kellogg, and multiple other major brands when threat actors exploited vulnerabilities in widely-used file transfer systems
- Change Healthcare suffered prolonged outages affecting 192.7 million individuals, disrupting pharmacy claims, clinical workflows, and billing across the United States
Each incident shares a common thread: attackers exploited trusted third-party access to cascade compromise across entire customer bases.
The Operational Reality: You Can’t Defend Your Customers When You Can’t See
Here’s where the disconnect becomes dangerous. For years, Five Eyes intelligence agencies—including CISA, NSA, and FBI—have explicitly warned that state-sponsored APT groups, and other malicious cyber actors, are targeting MSPs to exploit provider-customer network trust relationships.
Yet many MSPs and MSSPs still operate with:
- Fragmented visibility across an average of 76+ security tools
- No consolidated view of assets across multi-tenant environments
- Limited insight into which customers are fully covered versus partially blind
- Reactive patch management that can’t keep pace with same-day exploits
- Tool sprawl that creates coverage gaps attackers exploit routinely
When your customers ask if they’re protected, can you give them a definitive answer backed by complete visibility and live data? Or are you making an educated guess based on dated and incomplete data?
The Hidden Exposure: 15-20% More Assets Than You Think
We mentioned in our previous post that deploying the Sevco Exposure Assessment Platform for initial assessments typically reveals 15-20% more assets than what’s currently visible in client environments. Those previously unknown assets aren’t just billing opportunities. They’re an unmanaged attack surface.
Every device that’s not in a managed asset inventory is a potential entry point you’re not monitoring, not patching, and not protecting. Attackers are looking for (and finding) the devices your tools don’t see, the endpoints your EDR doesn’t cover, the cloud workloads your vulnerability scanner doesn’t reach, and more.
With vulnerabilities being weaponized within 48 hours of disclosure, you don’t have time to discover coverage gaps after an incident. You need continuous, comprehensive visibility as the foundation of your security posture—not just for billing accuracy, but to reduce risk for your customers and your business.
From Fragmented Services to Unified CTEM: The Strategic Imperative
CTEM and Exposure Assessment Platforms directly address the operational and security challenges that make MSPs and MSSPs vulnerable.
Traditional approaches treat asset discovery, vulnerability management, patch management, and penetration testing as separate services. That fragmentation mirrors the tool sprawl that creates operational complexity and security blind spots. When you’re trying to aggregate data from dozens of point solutions, you’re always faced with partial visibility, delayed insights, unresolved conflicts between data sources, and the expenditure of valuable resources.
The Sevco Exposure Assessment Platform consolidates that fragmented infrastructure into a single source of truth. It provides the comprehensive, real-time visibility that enables you to:
- Identify your entire managed attack surface across all customer environments—including the 15-20% of assets you didn’t know existed
- Understand which security tools are actually running on every device, revealing coverage gaps before attackers exploit them
- Prioritize vulnerabilities based on business context, actual threat intelligence, and exploit availability, not just CVSS scores
- Track remediation progress across your entire customer base, not just within individual accounts
- Prove security posture to clients, insurers, and regulators with unified visibility and audit trails
The M&A Angle: When Your Customers Become Instant Targets
There’s another dimension to this threat landscape that’s often overlooked. When your customers undergo M&A activity, they instantly become more vulnerable. Newly merged environments mean disparate tools, disconnected inventories, incompatible security stacks, and—most critically—distracted security teams focused on integration rather than defense.
Attackers know this. They actively target companies during M&A transitions.
Your customers need rapid support during these periods, and your ability to deploy visibility across new environments in minutes rather than months becomes a competitive advantage. More importantly, it becomes a lifeline for clients who are otherwise exposed during their most vulnerable operational periods.
The Bottom Line: Security Is More Than a Revenue Play
Premium service offerings based on CTEM, improved billing accuracy, license optimization advisory services, and M&A expansion opportunities are all legitimate drivers of MSP and MSSP profitability.
But they’re secondary to the fundamental reality that you and your customers are under sustained attack by adversaries who view you as a high-value, high-impact target.
The Five Eyes warning wasn’t academic. The 431% increase in supply chain attacks between 2021 and 2023 isn’t slowing down. The shift to same-day vulnerability exploitation isn’t going to reverse itself. And the attackers targeting your RMM platforms, backup solutions, PSA systems, and privileged access aren’t going to stop just because market conditions change.
Your customers trust you to protect them. That trust creates both a business opportunity and an operational imperative. You can’t deliver on that trust with fragmented visibility, reactive patching, and tool sprawl that even your own team struggles to manage.
Ready to See Your True Exposure?
If you’re a service provider who’s serious about understanding your true exposure across customer environments, the Sevco Exposure Assessment Platform can help. The Sevco EAP was built specifically for service provider business models—multi-tenant, API-first, deployed in minutes, and integrated into your existing service delivery frameworks.
Contact us to see what you’re missing in your managed environments and the risks—and opportunities—that they deliver.