Organizations of every kind face a diverse and ever-expanding range of serious threats as they implement more technology—and thereby become increasingly technology-dependent. These threats include ransomware, data theft, insider malfeasance, and failure to fulfill regulatory mandates regarding the protection of customer information. So every organization must defend itself against these threats if it is to survive and thrive.

There are, however, at least three obstacles standing between every organization and its goal of maintaining a reasonably effective defense against the threats that put it at risk:

• Organizations don’t yet have the necessary tools, processes, and policies in place
• There is a global shortage of people with the skills and experience organizations need
• Organizations don’t have anybody to lead their risk mitigation efforts at the executive level

These obstacles obviously represent a huge opportunity for MSPs. If you can help organizations reduce their risks by delivering the security and compliance capabilities they need, you can grow your business with recurring revenue streams and healthy margins.

Most MSPs, however, only focus on the first two bullet points above. They leverage their technology partners-of-choice to deliver the security capabilities their clients need—and they hire the very best talent they can find to execute the work their clients require: vulnerability management, incident response, penetration testing, etc.

Unfortunately, as more and more MSPs pursue the business opportunities represented by those first two bullets, the market for that kind of security housekeeping is becoming more competitive and more commodified. That commodification means that MSPs are increasingly being forced to compete on price.

Every MSP therefore faces a choice:

1. Try to grow by competing on price for a bigger piece of the low-margin/high-churn pie.

-or-

2. Move up the value chain to address the third bullet above—thereby establishing competitive differentiation, achieving higher margins, and more effectively protecting client relationships over the long haul.

If you want to make the second choice, now’s the time to do it. And the way to do it is by building a virtual Chief Security Officer (vCSO) program.

What’s a vCSO?

A vCSO is a trusted advisor who is capable of understanding, talking about, and proactively managing risk at an executive level. If you decide to build a vCSO program, you will be offering your existing clients and your future prospects several high-value benefits that are not part of the typical MSP security offering.

These benefits include:

A proactive, strategic approach to mitigating organizational risk
MSPs in the security business handle the day-to-day technical tasks that their clients need to avoid getting hacked, ransomwared, DDoSed, or insider-sabotaged. But organizations need more than that. They need someone to address the broader issue of business risk—including operational, financial, reputational, regulatory, and legal risk—and how it needs to be either mitigated, accepted, transferred, or avoided completely. A vCSO plays this crucial role.

Factoring security and compliance rick into executive-level decision-making
A VP of Sales is evaluating a cool VR tool to take their organization’s sales presentations into the 21^st Century. A CFO is considering a facilities outsourcing deal that could save their organization millions over the next five years. Without a CSO, these executives will likely make these decisions without fully factoring in the potential impact on their organization’s threat surface—and, by extension, the concomitant new exposures to risk. The result: Security, IT, and other operational stakeholders will have to clean up whatever mess they make after the fact.

With a vCSO to consult with as a trusted advisor at a peer level, on the other hand, executive decision-makers can avoid unexpected costs, unforeseen dangers, and missed project milestones by being much smarter about factoring the potential risk implications of their decisions before they make those decisions.

Get maximum value from internal and external resources
As a security MSP, your job is to do the best you can with the budget you’re given. But you may have little or no insight into or control over all the other realities that impact your clients’ risk posture. How much are they investing in employee security and compliance policy training? How are spotting employees whose behaviors may inadvertently be exposing them to avoidable risk? Do they have an adequate internal and external communications plan in place? Have they invested the time and effort required to run through a truly realistic tabletop exercise that will help ensure that their plan is a viable one—and that everyone truly understands what they will have to do if and when the manure collides with the air-circulation device? MSPs can do little more than make the occasional suggestion about these issues. vCSOs help organizations appropriately prioritize these vital allocations of time, effort, and budget. And they get well-compensated for doing so.

A significantly improved insurability profile
Insurance is a key component of every organization’s risk management strategy. But insurance companies have very demanding criteria for determining 1) an organizations’ premiums and deductibles, 2) coverage limits and exclusions, and 3) whether they want to write a policy at all. One common item on their underwriting checklist is executive leadership of a risk management program. Having an MSP does not address these underwriting criteria. Having a CSO can.

Positive impact on audit/regulatory scorecards
The same principle holds true when it comes to regulatory audits and other third-party risk assessments. Having a CSO scores much higher than having risk management fall under the aegis of a CFO or CIO with other primary responsibilities. In fact, if and when an organization does experience a compliance issue, having a CSO who can document and attest to that organization’s due diligence can mean the difference between a mere warning and a painful penalty—because regulators draw a very clear distinction between failures that occur despite an organization’s best efforts and failures that they can reasonably attribute to negligence and/or shortfalls in executive oversight. Avoiding the latter in even one instance can be worth the entire cost of a vCSO program all by itself.

The bottom line: A vCSO engagement will enable your clients to reap the essential business advantages of a CSO without the high cost and extreme difficulty of finding, recruiting, hiring, and retaining a CSO in-house.

Getting started

The vCSO is growing quickly due to high demand and constrained supply. So you probably want to launch your vCSO program sooner rather than later.

But there are several things you’ll need to do to get started. For one thing, you’ll need to educate yourself about how to talk about risk strategically rather than just talking about threats and countermeasures tactically. For another, you’ll have to add more compliance-related capabilities to your deliverables portfolio. And, of course, you’ll need to develop an effective and repeatable sales process for identifying prospects, assessing their needs, rightsizing your vCSO proposals, and turning those proposals into closed deals.

The best place to start is probably your existing client base. These are organizations that already know you and trust you. And you already know them—so you most likely have a good idea of why they could benefit from a vCSO engagement.

At the same time, you should also make it a priority to start including a vCSO offering in your proposals to new prospects as well. That offering can help you better differentiate yourself from competitors that only offer basic IT and security deliverables. And, if you segment your proposal properly, a vCSO offering can even help you close deals for those basic IT and security deliverables even when you’re selling prospects who initially decline or defer your proposal for a full vCSO engagement.

Here at Galactic Advisors, we specialize in helping MSPs make the challenging but profitable transition from managed IT and/or managed security to managed IT, security, and compliance plus vCSO engagement. So if you’d like some help with that, just reach out. We have the tools, training, and experience to make your move up the value chain faster, easier, and more successful.

In fact, if you want to really hit the ground running, you can sign up now for vCSO Accelerate coming up October 21. You will leave this unique, high-value workshop with an entire vCSO program in place—and with meetings already scheduled—so you can start delivering your first vCSO engagements right away.

Just click this link to learn more.

This is a sponsored blog post.

The post The vCSO Market Opportunity: Why and How appeared first on Kaseya.

According to the CEO, Mateo Barraza, the rebranding was necessary to portray the company’s mission accurately. “The ‘Quickpass Cybersecurity’ name took us far, but as our product evolved it stopped accurately portraying what we did. Our new name helps clarify what we are here to do: Help MSPs with Privileged Access Management.”

CyberQP is dedicated to helping MSPs and their customers protect their critical assets. Their Privileged Access Management and Helpdesk Security Automation provides comprehensive security solutions essential for MSPs to protect against cyberthreats.

The additional funding from Arthur Ventures will help CyberQP continue to grow its offerings and expand its reach to more MSPs worldwide. The company and its investors are fully committed to the MSP community and believe that MSPs are the only group of people who can secure SMBs.

“We are thrilled to have the continued support of Arthur Ventures and their confidence in our ability to help MSPs protect their customers,” said Mateo Barraza, CEO of CyberQP. “This funding will help us continue to develop innovative solutions and provide top-tier security services to MSPs.”

The post Quickpass Rebrands to CyberQP, Raises $12M to Help MSPs With Privileged Access Management appeared first on Kaseya.

These days, you need to secure more than just a single door. There are multiple doors, windows, and other entry points throughout the entire house. There are so many potential access points that simply relying on locks won’t work. Organizations need more than a single solution to be completely secure. Bitdefender’s GravityZone for MSPs will help you prevent an attack, defend against one and recover if compromised.

The post Why All Companies Should Invest in Layered Security appeared first on Kaseya.

Additionally, Kaseya has partnered with various universities in its home city to create a workforce pipeline and ensure graduates are entering the workforce with the skills needed to succeed on the job. Most recently, Kaseya participated in Florida International University’s Senior Capstone in the College of Engineering & Computing. Members of Kaseya’s leadership team mentored four teams, assigning them four real-world challenges to see how they’d go about solving them, and even getting a chance to have their ideas implemented within the company.

“Senior Capstone has mutual benefit for both industry and academia. At Kaseya, we cherish the opportunity to work with students to help us set them up for success working through real-world industry challenges. By working with Kaseya, the students gain valuable insights into the inner-workings of a major tech company and are able to put what they learned in the classroom into practice,” said Mike East, Kaseya’s V.P. of Research & Development. “For us, as a company, it’s important to mentor the next generation in tech, especially here in Miami. As part of Kaseya’s Grow Your Own Program, we are focused on building and keeping engineering talent right here in Miami’s rapidly growing tech sector.“

Here’s an overview of the projects:

Churn Detection Modeling

The purpose of this project was to develop a statistical model that would predict whether a customer would renew a product subscription, officially known as customer churn. “The students were eager to apply their classroom learning to the real-world challenges. I think there were some surprises along the way around what aspects of the process present the greatest challenge – it gave them a good sense of what real issues are faced by teams in this field,” said Lina Sokol, Kaseya’s Director of Sales Strategy and Operations.

“I had a great experience working on the churn detection modeling project. In the end, we had a usable prediction model that we were proud of, and we set the foundation for future potential improvements to the prediction model,” said team member, Jose Iturria, who graduated this spring with a B.S. in computer science. “I’d also like to thank Kaseya for sponsoring this project. Our product owner, Lina Sokol was responsive, alert, and clear in the requirements of the project. She was a great mentor and product owner for this project, and we definitely owe it to her for pushing us to continue learning and focus on elegant solutions.”

Automated Threat Modeling

This effort focused on creating a mechanism to automatically detect the global attack surface for a given environment. Project lead, Win Pham, Kaseya’s VP of Development, explained that students were tasked with creating an automated system to identify the attack surface given limited input in the form or a URL, domain, or IP address range. The project involved research into various methodologies and required that students put themselves in the mindset of an attacker. They explored various network tools and created a web interface to launch them and display the results.

“The students were able to identify some potential techniques and tools that could be matured into a service offering that could enhance Kaseya’s IT Complete Security Suite,” Pham added.

Ransomware Anomaly Detection

This project centered around detection of anomalous behavior on a local system using machine learning with ransomware. The students were given two topics around ransomware detection. The concept selected was to analyze log data using machine learning to determine if ransomware is present or being staged on a Microsoft Windows device.

“The students had an eagerness to apply their technical skills to the project and excelled at scoping the project to fit the timeline,” said Carl Banzhof, Kaseya’s VP of Engineering and co-founder of RocketCyber, a Kaseya company and managed security operations center (SOC) platform.

The final team’s project was Network Outage Call Home where they built and connected a Raspberry Pi – a personal computer built into a compact keyboard – into a network so when it lost outbound connectivity, it would send alerts via a GSM network to proactively alert its owner that the network was down.

Interested in joining Kaseya? Check out our Careers page to learn more about our culture and to view our open roles.

The post Kaseya is Helping to Build Miami’s Tech Workforce appeared first on Kaseya.

While every company is different, and the nuances of each business require unique levels of preparation and response, the one constant that I tell EVEYONE without exception is that the VERY FIRST call should be to the FBI to get them and all their full resources to help IMMEDIATELY. That call should be prior to calling the board, lawyers, or anyone else.  Call the FBI and bring them in right away.    

That often is surprising for people to hear – they act stunned. I have had many people tell me that they were advised AGAINST bringing in the FBI by colleagues or even their legal counsel. Often, it is rooted in the fear that the FBI will come in and start an investigation on every aspect of the company looking to find wrongdoing in any, and all, areas of the business. I have also heard people claim they are concerned that the FBI might uncover poor investment levels or poor cyber prevention measures, and they may be “punished” by the FBI.  The FBI did none of that. Their goal was to help us, and they assured us they would do nothing to jeopardize our mission to restore operations – and they were true to their word. 

Often, once an organization suffers an attack, everyone in the company is on edge, and the idea of bringing in the FBI further increases stress and anxiety. It is normal. I think it’s safe to say that everyone gets a little nervous when they see a bunch of people with FBI on the back of their windbreakers.   However, it is in that EXACT vulnerable and dire moment when making that FIRST call to the FBI is the MOST important. And the reason is simple. The FBI has more experience dealing with cyberattacks than anyone in the world.  Period. They are THE experts. They have more resources within the agency, as well as relationships with every major private and government organization that can help – very deep, and very real, relationships.

When an attack happens, a million questions run through the minds of executives at that organization. As mentioned earlier, regardless of the preparation, it is the FIRST TIME that it is real. Stress sets in. Panic sets in. With stress and panic come BAD decision making, driven by fear and resistance to logic and reason. The FBI eliminates that fear and doubt and most importantly, the panic.   

When we were hit, our playbook had as a standard process (luckily) to call the FBI the second something seemed suspicious. And we did just that. To this day, it was the single best decision that I, as the CEO, and we as a company, made. They were 100% professional, and ONLY INTERESTED IN HELPING address the company’s cyber issues. In addition, they were on point for everything. They had answers right away. They framed everything for us immediately, allowing our fears and stress levels to come down instantly because we had a partner in this. Neither I, nor anyone in my company, ever felt anything but partnership from our engagement with them. Even things that I thought the FBI would not care about, from issues related to our business reputation to communication strategy with the press, etc., they were incredibly helpful, just as you would expect a true partner to be.   

As I look back at the past 8 months, I can attest that the collaboration with the FBI was the single most important partnership on our journey. To this day, we team with the FBI helping them with other cases, as any, and all, resources at Kaseya are now available to the agency for the next organization that gets hit. The FBI should be the first call for any organization, big or small, that experiences any cyber-related incident. For Kaseya, and for me personally, calling the FBI 30 seconds into our incident was the best professional decision I have ever made.  

On another note, many who read this may remember the Kaseya cyberattack of July 2021.  However, a few short months later, the FBI, working with partners around the world, CAUGHT the people who executed the attack against my company. Now that, in itself, is a real-life James Bond scenario! 

The post The FBI Was Our #1 Partner During the Worst Time of Our Company’s History, and They Should Be Yours Too appeared first on Kaseya.

Over the past few years, merger and acquisition activity has skyrocketed in the IT channel. Experts forecast that the managed services market will hit $329.1 billion in 2025 within a huge growth industry, while simultaneously consolidating. In 2019, two-thirds or more of MSPs considered being acquired by a bigger agency, with 20% of larger agencies thinking about buying an MSP. Continuing COVID-19 pressures have kept these trends on course. Even if the prediction falls shy at 10%, small-to-midsize MSPs should be open to opportunity.

What does this unprecedented level of activity mean for your MSP business?

According to a recent IT Glue Survey, 53% of the 501 companies on the 2018 Channel Futures MSP 501 list considered merging or being acquired within two years. There are several key reasons for this M&A activity inside of the MSP space.

Baby Boomers are bowing out

Channel e2e reported thousands of baby boomer owners are looking to exit their businesses to capture the net worth from the companies they built.

Customers calling for a ‘one-stop shop’

It can’t be denied that managed information security (IS) services and IT services are being combined. It makes more sense to the consumer when they are looking for a complete service. If you do not provide all the services customers request, you risk customers leaving for one-stop-shop competitors.

Falling behind the IT trends

When focused on growth, many businesses stop focusing on innovation, new technologies and advanced training of teams. Customers continue to grow their own businesses and want the newest solutions. Skills and resources can often fall behind or be out of reach due to limited capital.

Coming up short on cash

Delivering more service coverage and scaling your MSP business always equals bigger (and bigger) cash needs.

Remote, remote, remote

MSP acquisition may be on a meteoric rise because the world no longer demands that businesses stay brick and mortar or within the same zip code. MSPs that band together can now easily take the market share in any region.

Boost ‘business’ skills

Apart from enabling you to bring in the skills you need to keep abreast of new technologies and customer expectations, weaknesses in areas such as process and methodology, compliance or even sales and marketing, could be remedied by merging with or acquiring an MSP with complementary skills.

Investors imagine MSPs and MSSPs as great opportunities

The majority of MSPs are “lean” so growth prospects are good – especially when they have strong relationships with their customers. Channel Futures reports that VCs are scooping up MSPs and OEMs to create powerhouse entities. Valuations are high and capital fairly cheap, making IT services, technology companies and MSPs favored amongst venture capitalists.

Can small-to-midsize MSPs survive?

At ReachOut here are some facts that shed light on what the future has in store for MSPs:

1. Demand for managed services has never been greater
2. More MSPs are entering the profession every day
3. Baby boomers want out, but at the best valuation
4. Geography is no longer a hindrance to collaboration

The other definite is that while investors are swimming around small-to-midsize MSPs like sharks in the water, they are looking for a particular size. For example, when ReachOut Technology brings an MSP under the family umbrella, we look for specifics like:

• Minimum of three employees
• $1 million to $5 million in annual revenue
• 50% of contracts must be monthly recurring revenue

With PE firms seeking out MSPs typically with a minimum of $15 million in annual recurring revenue and double-digit margins, it narrows down the opportunities considerably.

Is the ‘Super MSP’ inevitable?

MSP consolidation is actively happening and is a big part of the IT space’s future. That question has been answered. What remains to be answered is:

1. Who will be left standing?
2. How will customer trends impact mergers?
3. Will the “Super MSP” come out both bigger and better?

“Big” may be better and bring benefits such as access to more resources, a wider range of skills and experience – and access to capital, for example.

However, “small can be beautiful” and when applied to MSPs, it can mean greater agility, a closer connection to customers and the ability to serve niche markets cost-effectively.

At ReachOut, we are focused on blending both scenarios with an aim to acquire 75 MSPs and bring them under the family umbrella with exceptional training and support so that customers only see the positive of the mergers. The key thing is to keep our customers happy.

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to acquiring the new skills needed. Many are developed in-house, but we cannot ignore the new services expected by our customers. Under the ReachOut umbrella, we are passionate about advancing our skills and staying ahead of the ever-changing landscape.

Calculate your MSPs value here and consider living the life of your dreams.

The post To Merge or Not to Merge: The Future of MSPs appeared first on Kaseya.

The primary challenges for most SMBs are limited IT budget for security tools ⁠and the lack of cybersecurity expertise ⁠— for monitoring and managing the security of the IT infrastructure.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and unsecured IoT devices are also proving to be a huge risk for SMBs. In 2017, 50,000 cyber-attacks were targeted at IoT devices, an increase of 600 percent from 2016 and the number of IoT-driven malware attacks surpassed 121,000 in 2018.

Although SMBs may not have the same access to resources and manpower as large enterprises, they can improve the security their business with an effective IT security strategy.

Here are five ways SMBs can protect their business from cyber attacks.

Top 5 Ways to Improve the Security of Your Business 

1. Perform a security assessment 

Assessing your company’s security threats is the first step towards keeping your IT environment secure. Security assessments include checks for vulnerabilities in your IT systems and business processes, as well as recommending steps to lower the risk of future attacks.  Security assessment tools provide a way to identify and resolve security issues. 

RapidFire Tools, a Kaseya company, offers a security assessment solution called ‘Network Detective’ that scans your network and gives you a security assessment score:

Security Assessment Score

Network Detective also identifies issues such as:   

• External vulnerabilities that could be potential security holes that would allow hackers access to your network and
  information
• System protocol leakage- outbound protocols that shouldn’t be allowed
• Lack of web browser controls
• Wireless network security issues
• Network share permissions, and more

 2. Automate software patch management to remediate software vulnerabilities 

WannaCry, the cyberattack that infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries in 2017, could have been avoided with a simple patch. About 80 percent of security breaches in 2017 was the result of poor patching.

Maintaining a robust patch management process is critical for the security of the business. But many SMBs do not patch vulnerabilities in a timely manner despite being aware of the consequences. SMBs usually have a small, multi-function IT team. This makes it difficult for them to afford the resources and time for manual patch management. Automated patching is a cost-effective alternative to the drain of manual patching. With automation, you can easily achieve the goal of remediating critical vulnerabilities by applying patches within 30 days of first availability.

Automated patch management is a core capability of Kaseya VSA. It simplifies patching and reporting for Microsoft, Mac OS and third-party applications across all your servers, workstations and virtual machines. 

With Kaseya VSA: 

• You have complete visibility into your IT infrastructure landscape which makes it easier to locate machines with vulnerabilities. 
• You can schedule the deployment of patches on any machine in the environment. 
• You have the ability to override a rejected update and redeploy the patch. 
• Microsoft patches come from the online Microsoft update catalog—automatically. Recently, Microsoft provided a critical patch for a remote code execution vulnerability called BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708) in remote desktop services which had the same threat level as WannaCry. Customers with VSA would have had automatic patch updates in place.

3. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) 

About 81 percent of data breaches are mainly caused by stolen or weak credentials. Many users reuse passwords or use weak passwords such as “123456” and “password” – these were used by 23.2 million and 3 million accounts, respectively. This makes systems vulnerable to brute force attacks in which the attacker systematically tries all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found.

Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to the login procedure beyond using just a password. The most common form of MFA is two-factor authentication (2FA). 2FA solves the password problem by requiring something users know- username + password, and something they have- a token or smartphone app.

A few companies are moving away from passwords altogether —e.g. Microsoft, with biometric technology used in combination with MFA.

Kaseya AuthAnvil is an identity and access management (IAM) solution which provides two-factor authentication to improve security. It has an authenticator app for iPhone and Android devices. It also provides Out of Band Authentication (OOBA) which refers to an authentication process that utilizes a communications channel that is separate from that used by the client and server trying to establish an authenticated connection.

4. Detect and respond to insider threats 

The 2019 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) shows that 34 percent of breaches involve internal actors. Insider threats not only involve malicious attacks, but also the negligent use of systems and data by employees.

To protect against these threats, organizations need to quickly and accurately detect, investigate and respond to issues that could be indicators of insider attacks. Insider threats require specialized tools. Common antivirus and anti-malware (AV/AM) tools usually won’t be effective against these threats.

Cyber Hawk, a RapidFire Tools product detects insider threats by monitoring:

• Unauthorized logins 
• New apps installed on locked-down computers 
• Users that recently got admin rights to a device
• New devices on restricted networks, and more. 

With Cyber Hawk, you can set and enforce as many security policies as you want. You can also automate scanning and leverage Security Policy Violation Based Alerting for instant alerts. Cyber Hawk combines machine learning and intelligent tagging to identify anomalous activity, suspicious changes and threats caused by misconfigurations.

 5. Backup all your systems, from on-premises to cloud, to protect against ransomware attacks 

Picture a scenario: One fine day you are working on your system and you realize something is not right. Your computer begins to slow down and you are unable to access your files.  

You are now completely locked out of your system with a message displayed in front of you.  

Screenshot of the ransom note left on an infected system – Sourced from Wikipedia

Your worst fears have come true. You are the victim of a ransomware attack.   

Ransomware attacks can be crippling to a midsize business that does not have a proper backup strategy in place. And, those that have backups in place are also in danger of the backup itself being infected. With evolved malware strains attacking systems, being absolutely secure has become a thing of the past. There is always a weakness in the landscape.  

Kaseya Unified Backup (KUB)  brings together the world’s best backup, ransomware protection, cloud-based storage and business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) solutions. It works on-premises and for IaaS and SaaS applications. 

With KUB you can be assured that every file is inspected during each backup for ransomware infections to ensure “clean” recoveries. 

To learn more about improving your IT security strategy, watch our on-demand webinar Unify Security with Unified IT Management. 

The post Top 5 Ways to Improve the Security of Your Business appeared first on Kaseya.

Security breaches are mostly caused by more than one instigator. It can involve hacking, malware, human errors and other factors. According to the 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) by Verizon, about 21 percent of security breaches were due to human errors and 15 percent of the breaches were caused by an application or data misuse by authorized users.  

To prevent breaches, security teams must patch quickly. However, IT teams are held back by manual processes and off-network systems that hinder their ability to patch on time. About 57 percent of cyberattack victims report that their breaches could have been prevented by installing an available patch. 

Automate the Patch Management Process 

The biggest challenge for patch management is the fact that the process is time-consuming and requires constant attention. This can, however, be overcome by automating the various IT processes related to software patching. 

Auto Discovery of Endpoints:  You can’t patch what you can’t see. Auto-discovery of every single endpoint in the IT environment reduces the risk of blind spots and keeps every system in view.  

Create Patch Deployment Policy: Configure how and when to deploy the patches based on your organization’s patching requirements and to minimize network impact. Use a patch management solution that minimizes network bandwidth consumption.

Automate Patch Deployment: Use a systematic and automated solution that deploys scheduled patches across all systems without any manual intervention. 

Scan for Missing Patches: Automate the process of researching the latest patches and determining which patches are missing on systems to ensure that your systems are always up-to-date. Schedule scans for missing patches and updates.

Automate Reporting: An up-to-date patch status and compliance report should be automatically generated in the event of patch deployment. This is helpful for security compliance reporting.

Patch management plays a critical role in ensuring that companies keep their systems fully up-to-date with the latest security patches. A robust patch management solution that provides a single view of all the patches installed on machines across the organization and that automates patching should be a key component of an organization’s IT security strategy. Reduce your cybersecurity risk and ensure that endpoints are in compliance with your security policies. 

Kaseya VSA patch management software provides real-time visibility of the patch status of your entire IT environment, including on and off-network devices. VSA’s Software Management module is powered by policies that allow you to automate software management across platforms and easily address the complexities of software patching. 

To learn more about VSA, request a demo.  

The post Reduce the Risk of Vulnerabilities by Automating Security Patch Management appeared first on Kaseya.

Automated Remediation with Scripts

Automated remediation means that your IT management tools can fix issues automatically by executing scripts in response to an alert.  Here’s a simple example: you have set up a monitor that generates an alert when disk space is low on a server or workstation. Next, you want to automatically validate that condition. Then, remediate the problem by executing a script to clean up the disk space. Lastly, you may want to run a weekly report on all of the alerts that have occurred during the prior week. The process flow looks like the following:

Obviously, this type of automation means that you, as the IT technician, don’t have to respond to that alert yourself and go perform disk cleanup on that device. It also means that your support desk doesn’t need to get a support ticket from the department that uses that device saying they’re running out of space. It’s all taken care of automatically. Viola!

Of course, the flow diagram above could be slightly more complex– the automated remediation for some process may fail sometimes. Then, the system should generate a service ticket automatically and could also send you a notification that there’s (still) a problem. So, you only need to get involved when there’s a more serious problem.

And, by the way, that automatically generated IT service ticket should have lots of detailed information that helps reduce the time to resolution. For example, it could have a device name, device location, last logged on user, last time there was an alert on this device, etc.

Driving Automation Based on Policies

Policies allow you to take advantage of all of the different capabilities of the endpoint management solution and drive automation. Policies also help you create standardization of your IT processes.

For example, let’s say you want to establish a policy for how you monitor and manage all of your SQL Server machines. The policy definition could include “monitor sets,” to define what needs to be monitored and when alerts are generated. It could also include automation scripts (like the above) and schedules for things like how often these machines are inventoried, when they get patched, etc. Here’s a screenshot of Kaseya VSA showing a SQL Server Policy setup:

Automation Exchange

You can save even more time by getting automation scripts that have already been built by others in our Automation Exchange. No need to reinvent the wheel. There are more than 500 scripts and other resources in the Automation Exchange.

Automated remediation reduces the number of issues that require technician attention and allows them to focus on other more critical issues and strategic initiatives. Policy-based IT management allows you to define standard, best practice processes for how you monitor and manage your IT environment.

To learn about Kaseya’s VSA endpoint and network management solution, download our product brief here. You can also request a demo of VSA.

Posted by Oscar Romero

Oscar began his career at Kaseya eight years ago as a support engineer. Between then and now, Oscar was the managing engineer at a Service Provider which pushes the levels of automation to the highest capacities. Experienced in both the business technical side of endpoint and network management, Oscar returned to Kaseya to serve in Product Management to provide our partners and users with the best experience from a product and service perspective.

The post Automate IT Monitoring and Remediation – Fix Problems Before They Affect Your Users appeared first on Kaseya.

But IT leaders and staff spend far too much time keeping IT systems running and dealing with a horde of concerns including cybersecurity threats, complex legacy systems, and non-integrated IT management point solutions.

A vast majority of decision makers agree that too much (about 70% ) of their actual IT spending is consumed by what’s often referred to as “keeping the lights on”  — on basic systems and infrastructure maintenance.

For businesses to be agile and competitive, IT professionals are always looking at ways to streamline IT operations and be in a position to allocate more resources to strategic projects.

Kaseya’s Omni IT Solution for Small and Medium Businesses

Kaseya’s Omni IT solution enables small and midsize businesses to monitor and manage their entire IT infrastructure from a single pane of glass. It is an integrated platform which brings together endpoint and network management, service desk, and knowledge and configuration management. Kaseya’s platform allows users to move easily from one product to another, as necessary, and access asset information when and where it’s needed, greatly improving productivity.

The key components of Kaseya’s Omni IT solution are VSA by Kaseya, Vorex by Kaseya and IT Glue.

VSA by Kaseya

With VSA, IT teams can efficiently manage endpoints and networks by deploying policy-based automation. For example, IT pros can automate software deployment and patch management, enhancing the security posture of the enterprise by staying up to date with the latest security patches. Eliminate the hassles of password access and management!

VSA enables IT admins to remotely access end-user devices without disrupting users and proactively resolve issues by using Live Connect. Our new 1-Click Access feature allows technicians to easily and securely access endpoints without having to know user or admin login credentials. 

Its integration with IT Glue enables easy access to contextually relevant asset information right in the VSA Live Connect or Quick View UI.

Vorex by Kaseya

A full-featured, powerful Service Desk, Vorex allows technicians to resolve service tickets quickly, with easy access to VSA’s remote control function. With advanced workflow capabilities, Vorex ensures tickets move through your support process in a timely manner. Technicians can access the right information at the right time via integration with IT Glue– see IT asset information, configuration data, IT procedure documentation and more.

IT Glue

An automated IT documentation, knowledge and configuration management solution, IT Glue maximizes the efficiency of IT pros by providing enriched asset information to get things done faster. Track and manage IT asset configurations, too.

Benefits of Omni IT 

• Faster Ramp-up for New Technicians – With an integrated platform, users do not have to worry about dealing with redundant, non-integrated point solutions. The Kaseya Omni IT ‘single pane of glass’ makes it easy to learn and use, which streamlines onboarding and improves ongoing technician efficiency.
• Maximized Security – Omni IT solution helps you proactively address software vulnerabilities and reduce security risks by automating patch management. Deploy and manage antivirus and anti-malware tools with VSA to secure your endpoints.
• Increased Productivity – With many of the common tasks and security procedures automated, IT pros can pursue IT aligned business initiatives and contribute to the growth of the business.

See All, Know All, Do All from One Cohesive View with Omni IT.

Learn more about how Omni IT benefits small and midsize businesses by downloading our eBook Benefits of Unified IT Management for Midsize Enterprises.

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