Security Assessments Are the Highest-Value Service You Can Offer
If you are an MSP still competing on break-fix pricing or per-seat managed services margins, security assessments represent your biggest opportunity to increase revenue and client retention.
Here is why: security assessments deliver immediate, visible value. A client can see their risk score, understand their gaps, and appreciate the expertise required to identify and fix those issues. Compare that to “we kept your servers running this month” — security assessments make your value tangible.
The Three Ways to Offer Security Assessments
1. Lead generation tool (free initial assessment)
Offer a free initial M365 security assessment to prospects. This works because it delivers immediate value with zero commitment from the prospect, it reveals security gaps that naturally lead to remediation conversations, it positions you as a security expert rather than just another IT vendor, and the assessment report becomes a powerful sales document.
2. Quarterly recurring service (included in managed services)
Include quarterly security assessments as part of your managed services agreement. This increases the perceived value of your managed services package, creates natural QBR discussion topics, documents your ongoing security management, and justifies premium pricing.
3. Standalone security service (separate SKU)
Offer security assessments as a standalone service for clients who use another MSP for day-to-day IT but want independent security validation. This works particularly well for regulated industries where independent assessment is required or expected.
How to Price Security Assessments
Pricing depends on your market, but here are frameworks that work:
Per-assessment pricing (for standalone):
- Small tenant (under 50 users): $500-1,000
- Medium tenant (50-250 users): $1,000-2,500
- Large tenant (250+ users): $2,500-5,000
Recurring pricing (quarterly assessments):
- Add $200-500/month to your managed services agreement
- Position it as “Managed Security Posture” or “Continuous Compliance Monitoring”
- Include the assessment plus remediation of identified issues
Free assessment (lead gen):
- Cost to you: minimal when automated
- Expected conversion rate: 40-60% of prospects who see their risk score will want remediation
- Average deal size from assessment-to-client conversion: varies, but MSPs report $1,500-5,000/month in new MRR
The Assessment-to-Remediation Pipeline
The real revenue is not in the assessment — it is in the remediation. Here is the pipeline:
- Run the assessment — identify gaps and risks
- Present findings — walk the client through their report
- Prioritize remediation — create a phased remediation plan
- Execute remediation — fix the issues (billable hours or project fee)
- Re-assess — run another assessment to prove the improvement
- Establish recurring cadence — quarterly assessments to maintain posture
This creates a natural cycle of value delivery that clients can see and measure.
What to Include in Your Assessment Report
Your report needs to be client-facing, not technical jargon. Decision makers need to understand risk in business terms.
Effective report elements:
- Executive summary with an overall risk score and top 3 findings
- Risk categories (identity, email, data, compliance) with individual scores
- Specific findings with business impact explanations, not just technical descriptions
- Prioritized remediation plan with estimated effort and timeline
- Compliance mapping showing which frameworks are satisfied and which have gaps
- Trend comparison (if recurring) showing improvement over time
Positioning Against Competitors
When prospects push back with “our current MSP says we are fine,” here is how to respond:
- Offer the free assessment — let the data speak for itself
- Most MSPs are not running formal security assessments; you are differentiating by doing it
- Reference industry statistics on breach rates for SMBs
- Emphasize that a security assessment is like a financial audit — even good companies get audited
- Position your assessment as an independent second opinion, not an attack on their current provider
Scaling With Automation
The unit economics of security assessments only work if you can run them efficiently. Manual PowerShell audits that take 4-6 hours per tenant limit your capacity and eat into margins.
365 Security Assessment lets you run forensic-level audits in minutes, generate professional client-ready reports automatically, and scale across your entire client base. The platform is built specifically for MSPs who want to offer security assessments as a service.
Start with a free assessment and see how it fits into your service catalog.