For MSPs and other partners, one of the biggest lessons of 2026 may be that helping customers adopt artificial intelligence is only part of the opportunity. As organizations embed AI into everyday operations, partners are also facing questions about how to secure those systems, manage increasingly complex vendor portfolios and prepare for disruptions.
Jason Beal, North American president of Exclusive Networks, believes those challenges should shape MSP planning for 2027, particularly as AI introduces new risks into business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
His warning is unusually stark: a catastrophic AI-related incident could occur within the next 6 to 12 months.
But beyond that prediction, the broader lesson for MSPs is a practical one. AI security cannot end with governance policies or initial deployments. Partners increasingly need to consider how customers will identify failures, contain compromised workflows and restore critical operations.
Rapid AI adoption changes the security conversation
One of the defining characteristics of 2026 was the speed at which businesses and their technology partners embraced AI, creating new demand for security expertise alongside implementation services.
“I’ve never seen a megatrend get adopted so quickly at both the end-user and the partner level that we’ve seen with AI,” Beal said.
That pace has changed the role cybersecurity plays in technology adoption. Unlike in the early days of cloud computing, when organizations often addressed security concerns after deploying new services, Beal said partners are incorporating security into AI strategies from the outset.
“Cybersecurity is at the very beginning of a partner’s AI strategy. It’s clearly being designed in from the start,” he said.
For MSPs, that shift creates an opportunity to move beyond securing individual AI tools and help customers understand their broader exposure. Discovering where AI is being used, identifying what information those systems can access and establishing governance policies can become foundational services rather than projects undertaken after deployment.
Exclusive Networks has seen that demand firsthand, according to Beal, who said partners increasingly sought assistance with AI discovery, governance and security strategy throughout 2026. The distributor has responded by expanding AI-focused professional services through its Cloudrise business, providing technical resources partners can use to support customer implementations.
The challenge heading into 2027 is turning that early involvement into ongoing security management as customers expand their use of AI across business operations.
Vendor complexity creates new challenges for MSPs
Meanwhile, increasing vendor complexity creates new challenges for MSPs
As cybersecurity vendors expand their platforms through acquisitions and new AI capabilities, MSPs face increasing pressure to keep their technical expertise up to date while maintaining existing customer relationships.
For partners, that creates a business challenge beyond simply learning new products. Expanding portfolios can mean additional certifications, more complex service delivery and greater investments in training before new capabilities can generate revenue.
Heather Allen, senior director of vendor management and marketing at Exclusive Networks, said the distributor has focused on accelerating technical training as vendors roll out innovation across the stack.
“We’re really working with the partners to help accelerate getting to those certifications,” Allen said.
While those enablement efforts aren’t new, Allen believes the pace of innovation has made them more important. Her priority for partners heading into 2027 is simple: “Getting from opportunity to outcome faster.”
AI disaster recovery could become a new MSP opportunity
As businesses become more dependent on AI, Beal believes MSPs should prepare customers for disruptions that traditional business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategies may not fully address.
“If I’m a partner, I’m designing a BCDR service for a potential catastrophic AI event, and what we would do the day and the day after,” Beal said.
For MSPs, that could mean assessing how customers would respond to compromised automated workflows, unauthorized access to sensitive information, or outages affecting critical AI services. Recovery planning may need to extend beyond restoring systems and data to identifying affected AI-dependent processes, containing failures and determining when automated operations can safely resume.
Shadow AI adds another dimension to that challenge. Beal noted that employees are already using unauthorized AI tools, creating opportunities for partners to identify which applications customers rely on, what information they share and where additional governance is needed.
The potential business opportunity extends beyond one-time security assessments. MSPs could incorporate AI risk evaluations, incident response exercises and recovery planning into recurring managed security offerings, helping customers adapt their defenses as AI adoption expands.
For partners planning their 2027 service portfolios, the distinction is increasingly important: Securing AI adoption is one opportunity, but helping customers maintain business operations when AI systems fail could become another.