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.

Kaseya VSA, a powerful RMM solution, has all the capabilities – high visibility and control, seamless remote access, automated patch and vulnerability management and more – that an MSP needs.

Is it the best RMM out there? We’ll leave it to you to decide. However, in this blog, we’ll be looking at some key features of Kaseya VSA that gives it an edge over its peers.

1. Powerful Automation

“The level of what you can automate in VSA is far superior to SolarWinds N-central”, says Elliot Stirn, IT Managed Services Supervisor at Circle Computer Resources. Not our words, mind you. This comes straight from our customer who recently switched from SolarWinds to Kaseya VSA.

Kaseya VSA enables MSPs to take automation to the next level. With a powerful scripting engine and fully customizable automation capabilities, MSPs can update/install applications on thousands of endpoints, patch their vulnerabilities on time, set alerts and reporting as per their needs and run agent procedures on multiple devices simultaneously.

Kaseya VSA offers more than 500 pre-built scripts, which include agent procedures, monitor sets, reports, templates and other types of automation, at Kaseya Automation Exchange, a community where all these scripts are shared and exchanged. These allow MSPs to automate to their heart’s content.

2. Ease of Deployment and Scalability

SolarWinds N-central has a Policy Manager that is device-centric and requires a developer understanding of their product to implement (if\else and then statements). Kaseya VSA has a checkbox graphic user interface (GUI) approach that is implemented at the global or customer organization level without the need to manually recreate policies, thereby ensuring quick and consistent deployment of configurations.

Kaseya VSA is highly scalable and can monitor up to 50,000 endpoints with one instance. However, SolarWinds N-central is extremely slow around 5,000 endpoints, hence the ability to scale as you grow is low.

3. Robust Reporting

Kaseya VSA has a very extensible reporting engine that allows MSP clients to get the data they need and can be customized with additional templates available in the Kaseya Automation exchange. With accurate and visual reporting, MSPs can highlight their service delivery in technology business reviews with their clients.

SolarWinds N-central report templates are minimal, not very customizable and not pretty.

4. Seamless RMM and PSA Integration in Mobile App

With the Kaseya Fusion Mobile App, MSP technicians get the functionalities of both Kaseya VSA and Kaseya BMS (the professional services automation/ticketing solution) together. This means they can not only remotely manage endpoints with the app but also manage tickets on the go.

With the Kaseya Fusion Mobile App you can:

• Get real-time visibility into your IT environment
• Manage all service tickets on the go
• Document and quickly access relevant information as it happens

SolarWinds N-central’s mobile app “MSP N-central Mobile” caters to RMM functionalities only.

5. Ease of Navigation Within Workflows

Kaseya VSA integrates seamlessly with other solutions such as PSA (Kaseya BMS), IT documentation (IT Glue), backup and recovery (Kaseya Unified Backup) and more. It allows technicians to switch between applications with just a click of a button. Comparatively, SolarWinds N-central puts you in a box without allowing you to work in the workstream that you want to.

In conclusion, Kaseya VSA is a feature-rich RMM solution that enables MSPs to increase their IT efficiency, bolster security and reduce operational costs, making it one of the best RMM solutions out there.

Learn more about why Circle Computer Resources replaced SolarWinds N-central with Kaseya VSA here.

The post 5 Reasons Why Kaseya Makes It Easy to Leave Your Current RMM Vendor appeared first on Kaseya.