Challenges for Government and MSPs Implementing Essential 8

Implementing the Essential Eight can be difficult in practice, especially for government agencies and managed service providers. Below are some key challenges these organizations face:

• Mandates and Compliance Pressure: In the public sector, E8 isn’t just guidance – it’s increasingly mandatory. For example, the NSW Cyber Security Policy requires all state agencies to achieve at least Maturity Level 1 across all eight controls . At the federal level, the government has signaled that compliance with the full Essential Eight is expected to bolster national cyber resilience . This creates pressure to meet specific maturity targets by set deadlines. Agencies must undergo audits and report their E8 maturity status annually, meaning non-compliance can result in scrutiny or penalties. MSPs that serve government clients also feel this pressure, as they may be contractually required to uphold E8 controls to protect client environments. Failure to comply can risk contract loss or legal liability.
• Complex, Legacy IT Environments: Government departments often maintain large, heterogeneous IT environments with legacy systems, proprietary applications, and outdated hardware. Such complexity makes it hard to uniformly implement controls like application allow-listing or timely patching. Legacy software might not support modern security features (e.g. enforcing MFA or disabling macros), yet cannot be easily replaced due to operational needs. Similarly, MSPs manage multiple client networks, each with different architectures and legacy issues. Ensuring Essential Eight controls are applied consistently across this diverse landscape is challenging. Custom configurations and one-off exceptions abound, which can create gaps in the security baseline. Without careful management, an MSP or agency could have certain business units or client sites well-protected while others remain at Level 0 due to legacy constraints.
• Resource and Skill Constraints: Another major challenge is the limited cybersecurity personnel and resources in many public sector organizations. Government IT teams are often small and stretched thin, making it difficult to continuously monitor compliance (e.g. checking every machine’s patch status weekly) or respond rapidly to new threats. Skilled security professionals are in high demand, and public sector salaries can make it hard to attract/retain talent. MSPs, on the other hand, might have security expertise but must spread their team across many clients, which limits the time spent on each client’s security maintenance. Both face the risk of “framework fatigue,” where keeping up with Essential Eight (and other frameworks) becomes a full-time job in itself. In practice, without automation, teams resort to labor-intensive processes (spreadsheets, manual audits) that are error-prone and hard to scale.
• Visibility Gaps and Asset Management: A foundational challenge for both government and MSPs is simply knowing what you have. It’s impossible to secure or patch devices you don’t know about. Many organizations lack a complete, up-to-date asset inventory – shadow IT systems, forgotten laptops, or new IoT devices can fall through the cracks. This undermines several E8 controls (application control, patching, etc.). Manually maintaining asset lists via spreadsheets or periodic audits often leaves gaps. One agency noted that closing compliance gaps used to take weeks of chasing spreadsheets and still missed things . Without continuous visibility, an organization might think it has patched all systems or removed admin rights, only to be blind-sided by an untracked device or account. This is especially tricky for MSPs juggling many client networks; keeping comprehensive visibility in each environment is a tall order without centralized tools.
• Maintaining Continuous Compliance: Achieving E8 compliance once is not enough – the real difficulty lies in sustaining it. Systems are dynamic: new vulnerabilities emerge monthly, users install software or change settings, staff turnover leads to permission changes, and so on. In a government setting, an agency might reach Maturity Level 1 this year, but without ongoing effort could slip back as new gaps appear (e.g. a critical patch is missed on a new server). Essential Eight requires continuous enforcement: patching within specified time frames, ensuring macros stay disabled, verifying backups run every day, etc. For MSPs, the challenge multiplies across clients: they must keep every customer’s systems in compliance, every day. This is difficult without automation and centralized monitoring. The need to detect drift (when a system falls out of compliance) and remediate quickly is paramount. Many organizations struggle here – they might perform well in a one-time assessment, but day-to-day drift leads to non-compliance by the next review . Building processes and procuring tools that enable continuous compliance is a significant hurdle.
• Balancing Security with Usability: Both government IT departments and MSPs must implement the Essential Eight in a way that doesn’t disrupt business operations. Controls like application whitelisting or disabling Office macros can generate user pushback or productivity hits if done bluntly. Agencies face internal resistance if security measures impede business workflows (for instance, an analyst needing a macro-enabled spreadsheet). MSPs similarly must balance client user experience with security – if their security service is too restrictive, clients may complain. Thus, the challenge is finding solutions that harmonize with existing workflows: e.g. phasing in application control gradually, using technology to automate exceptions, and educating users to reduce frustration. This cultural and operational aspect can be as challenging as the technical implementation.

In summary, public sector organizations and MSPs have strong incentives to adopt the Essential Eight, but they encounter significant obstacles around complexity, resource constraints, visibility, and maintenance. Overcoming these challenges requires smart planning and the help of automated, integrated tools – which is where FirstWave’s solution is targeted. The next sections will describe FirstWave’s layered defense approach and how its capabilities directly address these pain points, enabling government and MSP customers to achieve and sustain Essential Eight compliance more easily.