For MSPs looking to stand out, providing Compliance as a Service (CaaS) might be the key. A survey by MSP Success shows that 73% of MSPs have seen increased demands for compliance services. Yet, most MSPs are struggling to keep up. Take GDPR and SOC 2 as examples: GDPR emphasizes strengthening data privacy and security for individuals in the EU, but only 32% of MSPs meet GDPR requirements; SOC 2 focuses on safeguarding customer data through ongoing, audit controls. Only 15.5% of MSPs comply, according to Infrascale.
For MSPs that keep up, compliance sets them apart. However, delivering Compliance as a Service is far from simple. MSPs must navigate through diverse regulatory requirements across clients, industries, and regions—often resulting in operational overhead. In this article, we outline the core compliance controls MSPs should prioritize and how ActiveProtect simplifies it.
Common compliance regulations MSPs face
Depending on the location and the client’s industry, the laws you must comply with may vary. The following are some of the most common regulations MSPs encounter:
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ISO 27001: ISO 27001 is an international standard for information security management systems (ISMS), applicable to organizations of all sizes, including MSPs. The standard focuses on establishing structured security controls to ensure information confidentiality, integrity, and data availability.
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GDPR: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive EU law that governs how personal data of EU residents is collected, processed, and protected. It applies to any MSP handling EU personal data, regardless of location, and emphasizes data integrity, confidentiality, availability, and accountability.
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HIPAA: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. regulation designed to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). It applies to MSPs that support clients in the healthcare industry, including hospitals, clinics, health insurance providers, among others. HIPAA requires administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to ensure data confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
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SOC 2: SOC is a compliance framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to evaluate how service providers manage customer data. SOC reports include SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3. Among them, most MSPs pursue SOC 2 for its broad market recognition. This audit is based on the Trust Services Criteria, which includes security, availability, confidentiality, privacy, and integrity.
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CMMC: The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) is a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) framework created to protect sensitive defense information within the supply chain. It applies to MSPs supporting DoD contractors and defines maturity levels with required cybersecurity practices focused on access control, incident response, and data protection.
Although each regulation is defined differently, they ultimately demand the same outcome. Using GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 as examples, the specific provisions vary, but the core control requirements largely overlap.
Simplify compliance with ActiveProtect’s all-round safeguards
Navigating these regulations can feel overwhelming, but it shouldn’t be difficult to stay compliant. Synology ActiveProtect provides multiple built-in capabilities that help MSPs address common compliance requirements across regulations:
1. Data Recoverability:
ActiveProtect uses a multi-layered approach to ensure recoverability. After each backup, recovery readiness is automatically validated through backup verification, with the process recorded as a video for compliance evidence. In addition, MSPs can run recovery drills against isolated backup copies using a built-in sandbox, allowing restore validation without setting up separate environments or impacting production workloads across multiple clients.
2. Backup Integrity:
To maintain backup integrity across all managed clients, ActiveProtect proactively protects data without requiring manual oversight. Self-healing mechanisms continuously detect and repair data inconsistencies. Native WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) can then be enabled via a single setting to prevent any unauthorized modification or deletion. Building on this immutability foundation, air-gapped protection further isolates backup copies, preventing ransomware attacks and preserving clean, trustworthy data for recovery. Click here to learn more about air gap.
3. Retention Management:
ActiveProtect simplifies retention management by extending WORM protection with a smart retention lock that automatically aligns with retention policies. For data requiring long-term retention, ActiveProtect supports tiering by automatically moving older backup data to lower-cost remote storage, helping MSPs reduce storage costs while meeting compliance. When the data no longer needs backup, such as when a client employee leaves and their account is deprovisioned, the system automatically stops further backups and securely cleans up the data after a period of time.
4. Access Control:
ActiveProtect integrates with Windows AD and LDAP and supports SSO-based authentication, enabling the use of authentication methods such as 2FA/MFA. After authentication, ActiveProtect enables MSPs to delegate access through granular role-based access control (RBAC), whether assigning permissions within the MSP team or granting controlled access to clients. This ensures that only authorized users can perform specific actions within their assigned scope.
5. Data Confidentiality:
ActiveProtect protects backup data with WORM to prevent unauthorized modification or deletion. For additional protection, backup copies transferred to remote storage are secured with AES-256 encryption both in transit and at rest, while remaining immutable. This layered design protects sensitive data from unauthorized disclosure, deletion, and modification, while meeting compliance requirements without compromising enterprise RTO objectives. Click here to learn how ActiveProtect integrates both.
6. Data Residency:
ActiveProtect gives MSPs full control over where client data is stored. With on-premises deployment and multi-geo management, the system automatically identifies workload origins and ensures data is stored on local servers—helping MSPs meet residency requirements without complex manual routing.
7. Accountability & Evidence Readiness:
ActiveProtect makes compliance evidence easy to produce and share. The system automatically generating and delivering detailed backup and restore activities, allowing MSPs to quickly provide verifiable evidence to clients or auditors. At the same time, comprehensive audit logs can be forwarded to centralized systems for analysis and retention, helping MSPs maintain traceability, investigate incidents, and demonstrate accountability.
As compliance requirements expand across industries and regions, MSPs can no longer treat compliance as an afterthought. Taking the first step toward success starts with choosing a compliance-driven backup solution—one that provides a scalable foundation for delivering Compliance as a Service and reduces operational complexity in a competitive market.
Click here to find out more about ActiveProtect.