Batman has always been my favorite superhero. If the car isn’t enough, his dark brooding persona solidifies it. I think I pretty much nailed it in 2011. Just look at those glasses.

The coolest thing about him is that he was just a regular guy with a sick cape. He wasn’t an alien, he wasn’t bit by some radioactive spider, he was your above-average-but-still-kind-of-run-of-the-mill guy. He had incredible technology and definitely aligned chaotic good which caused some issues… but all in all, you can’t argue that Bruce Wayne was an impressive dude.

What I thought was especially impressive is his response time to the bat-signal. For those of you who either live under a rock or don’t like comics, the bat-signal was projected into the sky which was an “SOS” from the Gotham community to let Batman know they needed his help. (It helps that bats do their work at night so he could see it.)

Now, I’m one of those nerds who likes to have existential thoughts and conversations about the comic worlds that I enjoy, and one of them hit me on the subway the other day.

True to form, here I am. What would happen if Batman was taking a quick nap or “just needed to unplug for the night?” Obviously, it’s a comic, so there’s an innate suspension of disbelief in general – but IT has become our Gotham. Alerts are our bat-signals. So what happens to our network when we’re not available to see them?

Easy. MSSPs are your Batman.

Regardless of your organization’s size, a second and maybe third pair of eyes is always a good idea when it comes to your tech environment. The fact that we even use the word environment to describe our infrastructure says it all! It’s an all encompassing ecoystem that’s ever-changing and growing, and the IT team is its police force. They’re the first responders, the crime-fighters, the life-blood of the community. Everything that we have come to expect with technology is maintained by these people.

Superheroes have been an obsession in pop culture for quite some time, because they possess skills and talents that are fantastical – and not human. They’re what we dream about being, doing things we dream about doing, and on top of that, do insanely great things 24/7/365.

This is why MSSPs are the superheroes of the IT world. They are super-conglomerates of experts working 24/7/365 to ensure that the good switches of Techtham are protected from the evil hacker screen-named the Joker. To ensure the task-force that they are reinforced in a time of need when they are at home enjoying their families or hobbies. They aren’t there to displace the task-force, they’re there to jump on the Batphone, in the BatVPN, whatever is needed to save the day (or night.)

MSSPs are more than partners, they’re superheroes.