Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

For managed service providers (MSPs), business revolves around their clients. Tasks like endpoint management, network monitoring, IT security enhancement, and SLA management are routine in the life of an MSP technician. Most standard tasks are handled through two major tools, namely remote monitoring management (RMM) and professional service automation (PSA) tools.

It’s common for an MSP to question the value of Microsoft Intune when it comes to managing their customers. There are a few common concerns that tend to come up, including the pricing structure and the lack of multi-tenancy. It’s also something new that the MSP and their staff may need to learn. With that said, is MS Intune bringing value to the MSP’s table? Is there some potential to be leveraged out of using Microsoft’s MDM as a managed service provider?

As MSPs begin to grow and mature their businesses, resource efficiency is a common area of focus. It makes sense: if you want to deliver the same high service level (or better) to more customers without making huge investments in staff and equipment, efficiency and standardization are clearly the way forward. Backup is an area that is especially ripe for improved efficiency for most MSPs.

There is an increasing amount of technology used by businesses, from applications to entire networks. More technology means that there are more opportunities for errors or vulnerabilities in these systems to be exploited. With all those opportunities, it’s no wonder why these technological errors continue to be exploited by experienced hackers. What’s worse is that, according to Ponemon, 37% of businesses aren’t even scanning their IT environment for these vulnerabilities.

“I’m not a big enough business… I’m too small… no one will want to hack me.” “I don’t have anything of any importance that anyone would want… I’m not terribly concerned.” “It hasn’t happened to us yet, so it isn’t something I’m worried about.” “What you’re proposing seems like overkill to me. And besides, we don’t have the extra funds in our budget anyway.

When it comes to security, phishing is one of any IT team’s biggest concerns—as it targets the weakest link in the security chain: end-users. No matter how strong an organization’s technical defenses are, they can all be rendered useless if employees fall for a phishing attempt and hand over sensitive information. According to Cisco’s 2021 Cyber Security Threat Trends report, phishing is the second most prevalent cyber attack after crypto mining.

Welcome to the last mile of the office network! I’m thrilled to extend our warmest welcome to two new additions to the Auvik family—Saaslio and Boardgent. Combining their product feature set and industry expertise with Auvik, will extend our capabilities to provide a unique toolset designed to solve problems for MSPs and internal IT departments—and effectively manage the end-user experience regardless of location and which applications are being used.

Over the past few Boot Camps I’ve done since becoming a Head Nerd, automation has been a continuing topic of discussion, and one that brings up various roadblocks. Many of the MSPs that I have talked to one-to-one after the Boot Camps have said they were “embarrassed” to ask more questions about automating their service delivery as they didn’t want their peers “laughing” at them. If you fall into this category, don’t panic!

Without a doubt, a data recovery solution is essential when it comes to maintaining security and business continuity. Backups give you important survival options when ransomware hits, a laptop is lost, or someone accidentally deletes a folder full of important files. Without those safe, secure, redundant copies of your most important data, you’d be left out in the cold.