KPIs and Frameworks for Measuring Cyber Resilience

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. That’s especially true in cybersecurity, where the stakes—client trust, data integrity, and business continuity—are high and the threat landscape changes daily.

For managed service providers (MSPs), installing security tools isn’t enough. You need to know if those tools are effective, how quickly your team responds, and whether your clients can recover when an attack happens. That means moving beyond vanity metrics and tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect real resilience.

Measuring cyber resilience turns security from a promise into a measurable service. It gives you the data to optimize operations, prove value to clients, and make informed decisions about where to invest next.

What to Measure: Actionable Insights vs. Vanity Metrics

Big numbers like “10,000 firewall hits blocked” may sound impressive, but they don’t tell you if your clients are truly secure. Real resilience metrics focus on outcomes and efficiency. They answer critical questions:

• How fast can we detect and stop an attack?
• How quickly can we restore operations?
• Are preventative measures consistently applied?

The goal is to measure the gap between an incident occurring, your team detecting it, and resolving it.

The Essential MSP Scorecard

Here are the KPIs that matter most for cyber resilience:

1. Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR)
   • MTTD: This measures the average time it takes for your team or tools to identify a security threat. A lower MTTD means you are catching bad actors before they can dwell in the network and cause significant damage.
   • MTTR: Once a threat is identified, how long does it take to neutralize it? This includes investigation, containment, and remediation.
2. Backup Success Rate and Recovery Test Frequency
   • Backup Success Rate: Aim for near 100%. Even one failure can be catastrophic.
   • Recovery Test Frequency: Having backups is useless if they are corrupted or take too long to restore. You must track how often you test these backups. Are you verifying recoverability monthly? Quarterly? The metric here is the percentage of clients who have had a verified successful recovery test in the last 90 days.
3. MFA Coverage and Risky Sign-ins
   • MFA Coverage: What percentage of user accounts (especially privileged admin accounts) have Multi-Factor Authentication enabled? The goal is 100%. Any gap here is a vulnerability.
   • Risky Sign-ins: Monitor flagged authentication attempts for signs of targeted attacks.
4. Patch Compliance
   • Critical Patch Latency: Measure the time between a critical vendor patch release and its deployment across your fleet. If your SLA is 48 hours for critical updates, what percentage of endpoints meet that standard? This metric holds your team accountable to the « rapid response » promise.
5. Mean Time to Isolate (MTTI)
   • When an endpoint shows signs of infection (like ransomware encryption behavior), how fast is it operationally cut off from the network? In a co-managed IT environment, this metric demonstrates immense value—showing the internal IT team that you stopped the spread before it took down the server.

Aligning KPIs with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework

You don’t need to overwhelm your clients (or your techs) with heavy compliance jargon, but your internal metrics should align with industry standards like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF). This ensures you aren’t missing a phase of the lifecycle.

• Identify: Asset inventory accuracy. (Do you know what you are protecting?)
• Protect: MFA coverage, patch compliance, backup success rates.
• Detect: MTTD, risky sign-ins.
• Respond: MTTR, Mean Time to Isolate.
• Recover: Recovery time vs. objectives, backup verification frequency.

This alignment ensures you’re not missing critical phases of resilience.

Your Starter Scorecard Targets

Ready to start measuring? Use this checklist to baseline your current cyber resilience operations. If you can’t pull these numbers today, that is your first action item.

• MTTD: < 1 Hour (Target)
• MTTR: < 4 Hours (Target)
• Backup Success Rate: > 99%
• Recovery Test Frequency: At least 1 per quarter per client
• MFA Coverage (Admin): 100%
• MFA Coverage (User): > 95%
• Critical Patch Compliance: 100% within 48 hours
• Endpoint Isolation Time: < 15 Minutes

From Data to Action

Collecting data is only the first step. The value lies in analyzing these trends to drive continuous improvement. If your MTTR is increasing, you may need to look at automation or staffing levels. If backup failures are spiking, it might be time to evaluate a new vendor or storage configuration.

For MSPs managing growing complexity, these KPIs provide clarity and scalability. They show clients you’re not just “doing IT”—you’re actively managing risk and ensuring continuity.

Don’t leave resilience to chance. Start measuring what matters today to protect your clients from tomorrow’s threats.

Measuring cyber resilience is the first step toward mastering it, but data without action is just noise. N‑able transforms these critical metrics into manageable outcomes by providing a unified security ecosystem designed for visibility and speed. Our integrated Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solutions work in tandem to drastically reduce Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Respond (MTTR), while providing the granular reporting you need to prove value to clients. Meanwhile, Cove Data Protection automates the backup verification process, ensuring your recovery metrics aren’t just targets, but guarantees. By consolidating your stack with N‑able, you gain the clarity to track every KPI and the power to improve them continuously.

Ready to stop guessing and start measuring true resilience? Discover how the N‑able Security Ecosystem can help you hit your targets every time.