Join your peers online Nov. 17–18 for MSSP Alert Live. Find out if your company made the Top 250 list and learn about the trends defining the future of the industry.
For many MSSPs, it’s a challenge to build businesses that can handle more customers, deliver better security and generate more revenue without adding employees at the same pace.
It’s a hot topic in the industry and a major focus of MSSP Alert Live 2026, a free virtual event taking place Nov. 17-18. Throughout the two-day online conference, industry leaders will share practical strategies for breaking the cycle of hiring to meet demand and build more profitable security businesses.
To get some additional perspective in preparation for the event, we spoke with MSSP Alert Top 250 honoree PDI Technologies and its Senior VP and GM of Security & Network Solutions, Ameer Karim.
Revenue is growing. But is your business getting healthier?
Ameer Karim
For MSSPs, growth can be a double-edged sword. More customers bring more revenue, but they also bring more endpoints to protect, more alerts to investigate and more pressure on security teams.
That’s why Karim believes MSSPs need to think about scalability long before they reach capacity.
“Because our customers at PDI are large organizations with many distributed locations, we design for scale from the start,” Karim said. “Our solutions are built to onboard and support thousands of new locations quickly, without affecting the tens of thousands that already depend on us.”
But supporting more customers is only part of the equation. MSSPs also need to make sure growth isn’t coming at the expense of service quality.
It’s entirely possible for revenue to climb while response times get longer, analysts become overwhelmed and customers grow less satisfied. On paper, the business looks successful. Behind the scenes, the cracks will start to show.
Karim recommends looking beyond revenue and focusing on three indicators of sustainable growth: service delivery KPIs and their trends, continued investment in research and development, and customer outcomes such as retention.
“Too many MSSPs skip past these and measure health by revenue growth instead, but revenue is a lagging indicator because it can keep climbing while service quality slips and capabilities fall behind,” he said.
The takeaway for MSSP leaders is simple: Growth isn’t just about how many new customers you can bring in. It’s about how well you can support them, keep existing customers happy and continue improving your services without overwhelming your team.
Stop hiring your way around broken processes
As an MSSP grows, so does the workload. More clients mean more security alerts, more investigations and more demands on technical staff. Eventually, hiring additional analysts or engineers can seem like the only way to keep up.
But before adding headcount, MSSPs should take a closer look at what is slowing down output.
“Avoiding bottlenecks starts with planning, standardization, and automation, not simply adding resources,” Karim said.
At PDI, that means building services that can support thousands of additional customer locations without disrupting existing operations. Rather than relying on employees to handle every new requirement, the company focuses on creating processes and systems that can adapt as demand increases.
“A next-generation MSSP is built so that when a known condition occurs, the service already knows how to adapt,” Karim said.
For other MSSPs, there are opportunities to apply the same thinking to everyday operations. Customer onboarding, routine investigations, configuration changes and responses to common security events are all areas where standardized workflows and automation can reduce manual effort.
The key is identifying which activities genuinely require human expertise and which can be handled more efficiently through technology and established processes.
Hiring will always be part of growing a security business. But MSSPs that address operational inefficiencies before expanding their teams will be in a better position to control costs, maintain service quality and support more customers without a corresponding increase in headcount.
Let AI do the heavy lifting, not the thinking
AI and automation can help MSSPs support more customers without adding headcount. But automating more tasks doesn’t automatically translate into better security or greater efficiency. At PDI, automation helps threat hunters identify critical events faster, SOC analysts investigate and respond more efficiently and engineers improve detection performance.
“We use automation and AI to strengthen our experts, not replace them. It handles the work that slows experts down, so they can focus on the judgment calls automation can’t make,” Karim said.
But automation can become a liability when it applies the same rules and responses to every customer. Karim points to PDI’s experience protecting fuel stations and automotive dealerships.
“Heavy network traffic at 2 am is normal for a station that never closes. At a dealership that locked its doors hours earlier, it’s a red flag,” he said. “If your automation can’t tell the difference, you’re relying on it too much.”
MSSPs need automated workflows that account for customer-specific operating hours, network behavior and business risks. Standardization supports scalability, but it shouldn’t compromise threat detection.
They should also track whether automation is improving response times, reducing unnecessary escalations and increasing analyst capacity without sacrificing service quality.
The goal isn’t to eliminate human involvement. It’s to make better use of human expertise while creating room to grow.
The next generation of MSSPs will be built differently
As AI becomes standard in managed security, simply adopting the technology won’t be enough to stand out. The competitive advantage will come from how effectively MSSPs use it to improve efficiency, service quality and profitability.
“The winners will be the ones that designed their services around it from day one, not the ones bolting it onto processes built around headcount,” Karim said.
For new MSSPs, that means building scalability into their services from the start, with automated workflows and repeatable processes that can accommodate growth without continually adding staff. For established MSSPs, the challenge is identifying inefficient workflows, automating repetitive tasks and modernizing services that depend on manual effort.
In either case, the goal is the same: Build a business where revenue can grow faster than staffing costs without sacrificing the quality of protection customers expect.
Sometimes the best way to move forward is to step away
Running an MSSP doesn’t leave much time to think about the bigger picture. Between supporting customers, responding to threats, managing employees and growing the business, it’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day operations.
“Running an MSSP keeps you in the weeds, so events like MSSP Alert Live are one of the few chances to step back, look at the bigger picture, and see where best practices are heading, how customer expectations are changing, and where the industry is moving,” he said.
Of course, growing an MSSP will sometimes require hiring more people. Running a lean operation is one thing, but stretching employees too thin can compromise service quality, increase burnout and create security risks.
The goal isn’t to build the smallest possible team. It’s to build a business where people, processes and technology work together to support sustainable growth. MSSPs that get that balance right will grow their revenue for years to come.
Learn more at MSSP Alert Live
Want to learn how leading MSSPs are using AI, automation and advanced security services to reduce customer risk and drive profitable growth? Join us for MSSP Alert Live, Nov. 17–18, a free virtual conference featuring practical strategies for scaling security operations and expanding services.
Jonathan Browning is executive director of content and engagement for The ChannelPro Network. He has been a leader in the IT channel for close to a decade. He’s an avid fan and early adopter of technology. He believes that the managed services industry is the most important driver of economic growth and human innovation in today’s world.
Images: Andrii — stock.adobe.com, Ameer Karim
