What a professional MSP onboarding and offboarding process should include — from security baselining to documentation handover and exit planning.
Moving to or from a managed service provider can feel risky. This guide outlines what a professional onboarding should include, what a clean exit plan looks like, and the red flags to watch for so your firm stays secure and operational throughout the change. Why Onboarding and Offboarding Matter So Much Many of the worst IT and security incidents we see happen during transitions - when a firm is leaving a legacy provider, merging, or modernizing systems. These are the moments when responsibilities blur, documentation goes missing, and security gaps widen. A credential that should have been revoked stays active. A backup policy that was supposed to be in place never gets configured. A critical application dependency goes undocumented and surfaces only when something breaks. Clear onboarding and offboarding processes reduce these blind spots and ensure your team always knows who is responsible for what. When both sides understand the scope of the transition and commit to a structured handover, the risk of something falling through the cracks drops significantly. The principles in this article apply to any MSP. You can also pair it with our guides on selecting an MSP and questions to ask before you sign. What a Professional MSP Onboarding Should Include Good onboarding is more than installing agents and changing passwords. It should be a structured program that gives your new provider the context and access they need to support you properly. A thorough onboarding begins with discovery and asset inventory across devices, servers, and cloud services, followed by detailed documentation of networks, applications, and key dependencies. From there, the provider should conduct a security baseline covering essentials like MFA, EDR, and backup configuration. Backup validation and test restores confirm that your recovery capabilities actually work. Finally, user communication, training, and change-management activities ensure your staff