Acronis: MSP opportunities continue to grow in Southeast Asia

At the Acronis TRU Security Day Malaysia 2025, partners share how they are enabling customers to take a more proactive approach in cybersecurity.

The demand for managed service providers (MSPs) continues to increase in Southeast Asia especially when it comes to cybersecurity. As businesses embrace and deploy more emerging technologies, ensuring this is done securely is imperative.

According to statistics, revenue for MSPs in ASEAN is expected to be US$8.2 billion this year, growing at a 12% rate year on year. However, MSPs are also challenged in knowing which solutions they should focus on for their customers.

Speaking to distributors and partners at Acronis TRU Security Day Malaysia 2025, Yanko Dzhukev GM SEA and Director, APJME Distribution & Channel believes MSPs can increase productivity through consolidation by 50%.

Dzhukev pointed out that MSPs will not only have reduced training costs and maintenance and updates through consolidation but also have lower technical overhead, native integration and enable more workloads to be handled by per technician.

Highlighting the capabilities of the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Natively, the solution is integrated and built for MSPs offering ease of use, operational efficiency and works as an integration platform. Put simply, MSPs will have integrated cybersecurity, data protection and management in one complete security solution.

Local partners pushing for a proactive approach

In a discussion at the event, three local partners also shared their concerns about organizations in Malaysia, especially when it comes to organizations moving towards a more proactive approach in cybersecurity.

Systems Management Services is an MSP that offers a comprehensive suite of IT solutions tailored to meet the demands of today’s fast-paced business environment. For Nicholas Leong, Chief Operating Officer, System Management Services, Sdn Bhd, as a hardware company that has transitioned over to the cloud, they play a bridging role in the infrastructure.

“From our services, we look at what we can provide. From our experience, a lot of times customers have these issues, where they are unable to standardize their policy, and their data protection across the board, from infra to cloud. We look at this from how we are able to have one platform that is able to centralize their monitoring and management. There's a lot of policy management that companies can standardize across the board, and we see that our service is to standardize that between the infrastructure and the device as a service,” said Leong.

Leong also pointed out that many organizations continue to run legacy applications on Windows and are either afraid to upgrade or unsure of what the repercussions are. While most of these customers are SMEs, Leong feels the main reason for this is because their IT is not part of the business.

“A lot of times they are more focused on what they are trying to generate, what can generate revenue for them. So that is also another part that we see is lacking. A lot of times when we go out there and speak to customers, it's a lot of education and then telling them that these are all your vulnerabilities that we need to help you protect and resolve. And even big organizations can have vulnerabilities like this. So that's why we are talking about how to move from reactive to become proactive,” Leong added.

For Leong, when it comes to turning from reactive to proactive, cybersecurity is like an onion. There are multiple layers to it. And he believes there has be a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity.

“A lot of times when we go into SMEs, we maybe want to solve the current problem that they have. Let's say they have a backup problem, or let's say they have a DLP problem. We work with Acronis, who are able to deliver that. But the advantage that Acronis also gives partners like us is that we are able to provide more than just that. We are able to provide layered security for our customers. So, it's not just backup or disaster recovery. We can go down to M365 now, which is where a lot of SMEs are running on hybrid methods. We are talking about M365 backup. We are talking about email security, and we are talking about DLPs, vulnerability assessment, which can then lead to automated patching and things like that. So, it's a multi-layered approach and that can turn from a reactive posture to a proactive posture after that,” Leong explained.

Echoing his views is Kee Siak Chan, Founder and CEO of Exabytes Network Sdn Bhd. The Malaysia web hosting company provides domain registration, web hosting, VPS, dedicated servers with 24 hours hosting support services.

According to Chan, Exabytes also operates cybersecurity divisions, which not many are aware still of. At first, they started the cybersecurity divisions with an SOC to monitor their own infrastructure, servers, and such. Today, Chan pointed out that Exabytes also offers as a service to its clients and the public.

“We can definitely fit in quite well because we are also a long-term Acronis user and are very familiar with the Acronis environment. We have already invested and have our SOC running 24-7 and that really can complement the customers if they need more advanced services to monitor their endpoint devices or even solve their workloads. They can basically just press a button and turn on the services,” Chan said.

Chan also highlighted that being proactive in cybersecurity is extremely crucial for Exabytes because a lot of businesses rely on their infrastructure and environment to run day-to-day.

“Our engineering team have all the proactive measures, instant response to those zero-day incidents, and cope with our SOCs. Also, almost all the devices and endpoints right now have XDRs installed. So, all these come together to create that additional residence that can protect our end users. And often also we deal a lot with very low-end small businesses as well. We also act as a platform or channel to educate customers. We release useful advisories or information to guide the customers in a more layman term, not like the typical cybersecurity guides for those people that are very technical. You need something that's easier for the SMEs to understand in very simple terms,” Chan explained.

Meanwhile, Joshua Chin, Founder and Ceo of SmartRental.asia said that customers still feel cybersecurity is very difficult to cope with. SmartRental.asia is a sustainable technology subscription service committed to transforming how businesses and individuals access high-quality IT solutions.

“Most of our customers say cybersecurity is not their cup of tea. So, with Acronis coming in with this entry to hack under the basic protection, that is a very strategic solution. And then I think the education part is we use Acronis at our entry, and then at the back we have upsell, the advance and the ETR. When we provide the security dashboard to all our subscribers, this is a good selling point, and this equips the SME with a very,” said Chin.

Chin also pointed out that they run quarterly maintenance on-site or online on the devices.

“Basically, we check their desktop to see their attack and then we would do the patch on-site. This is something that I think most of the SME don't have. I mean normally when you buy a computer, you don't have a relationship. Whereas in the subscription model, this is a SLA that we put in. So quarterly, we send our maintenance team to either go on-site or online. We help them to look into the individual machine, and this has helped all the SME tremendously,” Chin added.

Cybercriminals targeting MSPs

At the event, Alexander Ivanyuk Senior Director, Technology Acronis also shared findings from the latest Acronis Cyberthreats Report for the first half of 2025. According to the report, MSPs continue to be targeted by cybercriminals with phishing (52%) unpatched vulnerabilities (27%) and abuse of valid accounts/credentials (13%) among the key vectors of attacks.

The number of publicly known ransomware victims from January 2025 to June 2025 increased nearly 70% compared to the same period in both 2023 and 2024. The report also revealed manufacturing as the most targeted industry by ransomware gangs, representing 15% of all recorded cases in Q1 2025.

Collaboration apps attacks are also on the rise. Specifically, phishing in collaboration apps rose from 9% to 30.5% and advanced attacks increased from 9% to 24.5%. Also, in examination of Microsoft 365 email backups in Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, 1.47% (20000+ emails) of the scanned resources were affected by malware. Forty percent of URLs in the email backups were phishing links and 30% were malicious links.