Does this sound familiar?
“Managing many channel customers has become increasingly inefficient. Navigating between them is time-consuming, especially when attempting to view status updates, apply policy changes, or manage subscriptions on a large scale. The lack of centralized controls for tasks such as policy configuration, alert review, and reporting slows our internal operations and, more importantly, impacts our ability to deliver timely and consistent service to our clients.
Additionally, the current structure does not provide flexibility to implement global changes or monitor performance across all clients without significant manual effort. We often find ourselves repeating the same configurations and adjustments across each client, which increases the risk of inconsistency and administrative error.”
According to surveys, 32% of MSPs receive more than 100 security tickets each month per average client, and can exceed 500 tickets for their busiest clients. Additionally, 43% say they serve more than 300 clients. That means some MSPs are handling approximately 30,000 tickets every month. Keeping up with this volume of alerts prevents analysts from focusing on proactive measures for their clients. The resulting alert fatigue can negatively impact an MSP’s finances, stability, and the overall security posture of its clients. A high alert volume means more risk, as critical alerts could get lost in the noise.
Effective cybersecurity should not come at the expense of manageability. MSPs risk being replaced by their customers if they fail to prevent a breach. According to two out of three SMB owners, they were likely or highly likely to replace their service provider if dissatisfied. For Managed Service Providers (MSPs), the ability to support customers effectively relies on having efficient tools to organize, monitor, and secure their customer environments. For technology vendors, the top priority is to simplify platform management for channel partners. Partners can concentrate on protecting their clients when day-to-day administration is more efficient.
Top-performing MSPs know that operational efficiency, flexible management, centralized visibility, and strong access control are important when choosing an effective cybersecurity platform. These core capabilities enable MSPs to support their customers effectively and respond rapidly to their evolving needs.
Channel workspaces bring structure and visibility for MSPs to manage their customers’ cybersecurity environments. MSP admin users can create, view, and manage their customer workspaces through the Manage Workspaces portal, ensuring they are protected and properly configured.
The portal presents a clear, filterable view of active workspaces, enabling partners to locate any customer environment based on workspace status, module usage, or type. MSPs can start or stop subscriptions from a single interface, update workspace settings, and monitor overall health without logging in and out of individual environments.
Channel hierarchy gives MSPs the flexibility to build a structure that aligns with how they manage their customers. At the top is the Root Channel workspace, which serves as the foundation for all other channel and child workspaces.
Each Channel workspace functions as a focal point for managing its own group of customer environments. These can include additional Channel workspaces and child workspaces. This hierarchy ensures that each parent workspace maintains control over its descendants without overreaching into unrelated areas.
The structure is especially valuable for MSPs with complex business models, as it allows for scalable oversight without compromising security or clarity.
The global view gives MSP admins a unified dashboard to monitor all customer workspaces. This includes information from their protected devices, users, and tickets. It provides real-time visibility into activities across all workspaces, quick access to workspace-level details, CSV exports for external reporting or analysis, and workspace labels to help organize and manage large sets of workspaces.
The MSP global action board aggregates data from all the workspaces within an MSP channel workspace and presents it in clear dashboards to summarize their channel workspace and all its descendant workspaces.
MSP admins can access a global ticket log and lists of devices and users, allowing them to view information from all associated workspaces in one location. They do not have to waste time moving from workspace to workspace to resolve issues and tickets.
Access control is critical in a shared management environment. It provides granular roles and permissions that allow MSP admin users to assign the proper access levels to each team member.
These roles define who can view, edit, or manage various functions, including workspace creation, module configuration, user access, and ticket management. Each set of permissions ensures that only authorized individuals can perform sensitive actions, thereby reducing risk and maintaining accountability.
These controls are not static. Admins can update, duplicate, or retire custom roles as teams evolve, with safeguards in place to prevent the accidental removal of essential permissions.
The Channel workspace model reflects a core principle: making cybersecurity easier and more effective for those who manage it on behalf of others. By combining a clear hierarchy, centralized controls, and detailed permission settings, channel partners have the tools to operate efficiently and securely at scale.
For MSPs, that means less time managing tools and more time protecting customers while achieving higher margins and lowering operational costs through centralized administration.
