If you have been assuming that compliance remains outside your clients' immediate concerns, current market behavior suggests otherwise. Small businesses are actively navigating a changing regulatory landscape: Corporate buyers, insurance carriers, and prime contractors are requiring documented evidence of compliance with frameworks like CIS Controls, NIST CSF, CMMC, and others. IT managed service providers (MSPs) routinely observe clients struggling with their complex compliance inquiries that extend beyond standard helpdesk support.
All this means that compliance and security services are one of the fastest-growing service areas for MSPs right now. Your clients either already need it, or they likely will soon. And if you aren’t proactively discussing it, a competitor or compliance specialist may answer their questions first.
In this article, we’ll explore the opportunity MSPs have now to be trusted compliance partners for their clients: the pressures clients are feeling, the possibilities this opens for MSPs, and the practical steps you can take to get started.
The Pressures Clients Are Already Experiencing
The compliance pressures on small businesses are real, even if they don't call it that yet. These businesses are being pulled into compliance not because they chose to, but because their operational ecosystem is demanding it. This pressure is coming from multiple directions all at once through their customers, contracts, and insurance providers. We’ll break down each of these below.
1. Customer Requirements
Vendor due diligence has become a standard part of the B2B sales pipeline, not just an occasional extra step. PwC's Global Compliance Survey polled 1,802 executives worldwide about their compliance needs. The survey found that cybersecurity and data protection now rank among the top 5 compliance priorities for 51% of respondents. An additional 76% said rising compliance complexity has made it harder to establish and maintain third-party relationships. For a small business without documented controls, a single security questionnaire can stall a procurement deal for weeks.
2. Contract Requirements
Major stakeholders, such as prime contractors, large customers, and industry partners, are including compliance requirements in their contracts. These requirements are then passed on to smaller vendors and subcontractors. The defense contracting industry clearly demonstrates how this works. For instance, the U.S. Department of War halted mandatory third-party certification within the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) 2.0 framework, pending an official review. However, federal information self-assessment requirements remain mandatory, and some major contractors are already transferring certification duties to their subcontractors ahead of the government's schedule.
3. Cyber Insurance Requirements
Many SMBs don't yet have cyber insurance, and for those that do, renewals have gotten dramatically more detailed and demanding. One study found just 22% of Canadian SMBs carry cyber insurance of any kind, and only 12% have a dedicated policy. Additionally, 74% of US cyber insurance claims in 2024 closed without payment (this figure includes claims below the deductible and policyholder withdrawals, not just formal denials). For a growing number of clients, qualifying for insurance is becoming a compliance exercise in its own right.
4. Industry and Supply-Chain Requirements:
A shared set of controls is emerging from both insurance requirements and supply chain mandates, effectively setting a compliance standard that small businesses must meet to conduct business, win bids, and remain insurable. Even clients outside of heavily regulated sectors can experience this. This type of scenario occurs when a larger entity, such as a prime contractor or insurer, sets a standard that the client is expected to meet, regardless of whether a regulator was ever part of the process.
These regulatory requirements are constantly shifting, leaving small businesses scrambling to keep up—and those exact pressures are creating an opportunity for MSPs. In the next section, we’ll break down what this means for MSPs and the steps they should take next.
The Compliance Opportunity for MSPs
Recent industry data backs up what many MSPs are already experiencing in client conversations. According to our 2026 MSP Trends Report, compliance and GRC services grew from 24% to 36% adoption among MSPs in a single year—the fastest-growing service category tracked in the report. Cybersecurity management has also moved from the fourth most-commonly offered MSP service to the top spot, with 55% of MSPs now offering it.
One key takeaway from this data: Those 36% represent early adopters, and most MSPs haven't begun offering compliance services. This means your MSP can confidently seize this growth opportunity before the market becomes crowded, giving you a competitive edge.
If that weren’t enough, compliance-focused MSPs are more likely to project revenue growth of over 50%—the clearest signal that this is a growth lever and not just a service add-on. MSPs who view compliance as "extremely important" also report higher revenue, ARPU, recurring revenue, and growth rates than those who are neutral about it, and 90% of MSPs surveyed believe compliance will be extremely or somewhat important to their business over the next three years.
For those unsure about where to begin, the report provides a solution. The most commonly offered compliance services among MSPs already in this space are data protection, risk assessments, employee security awareness training, and endpoint and network monitoring. MSPs should evaluate their existing security offerings and team capabilities to identify gaps and opportunities for expanding compliance services. These are services that can be integrated into your current service catalog without a complete overhaul, leveraging your existing expertise.
You're More Ready for Compliance Than You Might Think
Clients who need compliance support now are finding it elsewhere, outside of their current managed providers. Once clients trust a provider for that service, the relationship tends to grow. However, if a client relies on both an MSP and a compliance provider, the MSP's role as the primary strategic partner may diminish. By developing compliance expertise now, MSPs can cultivate institutional knowledge and client trust in an evolving market. This helps them establish a referral reputation that's hard to match once clients have secured another trusted provider.
Getting started with compliance doesn't have to be an enormous undertaking. MSPs have already been implementing and advising clients on the requested controls, such as two-factor authentication, access management, backup policies, endpoint protection, and incident response procedures.
Ever answer one of those security due diligence questionnaires? Congratulations, you’ve already translated compliance requirements into a list of technical to-dos. Compliance readiness just means doing this work proactively—with documented evidence to prove the work you’ve done.
The part that's genuinely new sits in the administrative layer. It’s in the structured evidence collection, policy documentation, audit trails, and ongoing control monitoring that is new. These are process problems, and that's exactly what compliance workflow tools are built to solve. Your clients already trust you with their most sensitive IT infrastructure. Compliance is just putting a framework around the work you're already doing and being able to say, "we can prove this."
One way to ease into it is to apply your framework of choice to your own MSP, working through its controls and evidence requirements before deploying it to clients. You can also choose not to build your own compliance service yourself. Some MSPs are instead establishing referral partnerships with specialist compliance companies or offering the service under a partner's brand—allowing them to retain a revenue share without direct involvement.
We have an on-demand webinar built around exactly this decision: MSP Crossfire: Compliance, Build, Partner, or Pass? In it, MSP leaders debate when building in-house makes sense, where partners and specialists fit, and the liability questions worth settling before you tell a client you'll handle their compliance.
The MSPs Winning in Compliance Aren’t More Qualified—They Just Started Earlier
Timing and a willingness to step into unfamiliar territory are what separate the MSPs building compliance revenue today from the ones still on the sidelines. Neither of those things requires a new credential or a six-figure specialist. It just requires deciding to start.
Your clients' compliance requirements will persist even if you are unprepared to address them. They'll just find another person who is. Many of the MSPs winning in compliance right now got there by deciding to stop waiting for the right moment and start building toward it.
If you want to see what a structured compliance workflow looks like before committing to a full build-out, the free version of ControlMap is a low-lift way to explore one. For a closer look at building advisory services focused on security and compliance, the vCISO webinar series is worth a watch, too. Whatever path you choose, just make sure that you’re proactively making a decision about how you want to engage with compliance services—and not waiting on your clients to make the choice for you.