Photo by Kyle Popineau
Happy New Year! Whether you’re a current NinjaRMM partner, or whether you’re considering becoming one in 2019, I wanted to share a few highlights from 2018 and offer a glimpse of the exciting things you can expect to see from us in the year ahead. Read more
A rise in coordinated Ryuk ransomware attacks represents a major new threat for MSPs and their clients in 2019. Here’s what you need to know.
Ransomware was already at the top of many MSPs’ security concerns. Now attackers are deploying it more strategically, making it an even bigger threat. To understand what’s dangerous about this new trend and what you and your clients need to be doing differently to protect yourselves, let’s dig into two recent high-profile attacks deploying ransomware called Ryuk. Read more
At the end of every year, it seems like every business takes a moment to ponder over what’s been accomplished in the past year, looking for ways to improve operations and increase revenue in the coming year. In my last blog, I looked back at the state of security in 2018 and how it affected MSPs. I’d like to take the opportunity in this article to do a bit of looking forward towards next year, focusing in on some security predictions that will change the way you offer security services.
Patching is more important — and more challenging to keep up with — than ever. Here’s how MSPs can make their patch management process more efficient, eliminate disruption, and keep their clients secure.
This year has seen massive changes to the face of cyberattacks. We’ve gone from threats from small numbers of criminal organizations to every part of a cyber crime available as a service. Nearly every type of cyber attack – malware, ransomware, cryptomining, data breaches, phishing, fraud, and more – have all reached record levels.
While large organizations with millions of records tend to get the focus in the news, it’s the small and medium-sized business (SMB) that seems to always be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to cybersecurity.
2018 was no exception.
With Thanksgiving upon us, we polled staff here at NinjaRMM to find about whose ideas they draw upon at work. We wanted to make the list useful to partners, so rather than mentioning mentors, teachers, or clients, we limited ourselves to “thought leaders” whose messages are broadly applicable to anyone in the MSP channel.
At NinjaRMM, we recently published a research survey about “involuntary IT managers” (IITM) — people who spend 2 or more hours per week on IT tasks that aren’t part of their official job duties. We found that 32% of office workers fit the “2 hours-or-more-per-week” definition.
And the number of hours spent on extra IT work varied widely — the median respondent in our survey ends up performing about 18 hours of “involuntary” IT duties each month, so half are doing even more!
Over the summer, we heard from our customer Jason Danner that he likes to target “involuntary IT managers” (IITMs) — people who get stuck doing a significant amount of IT tasks that aren’t a part of their normal job description.
“They’re in an office without an actual IT manager,” says Danner, who runs Aerorock MSP. “They’re someone who might be young, or is just good with computers, and gets IT tasks delegated to them. We often will pitch these involuntary IT managers and get their buy-in for what we do.”
Since most IITMs feel a bit overmatched by their extra duties, and are open to having MSPs take over their duties, we wondered if we could build on Danner’s savvy technique by researching how common the phenomenon is and how much it costs employers. Read more
Leaving software unpatched is one of the most basic unforced errors an executive can make, but companies large and small keep learning this the hard way.
Consider that last year, a vulnerability in a Java virtual machine that the credit agency Equifax failed to update for two months allowed hackers to access over 145 million credit reports, wiping out more than $5 billion in market cap and costing the CEO his job. A single unpatched copy of Microsoft Outlook led to the July 2018 compromise of 1.5 million health records, including that of the prime minister of Singapore. Meanwhile, at an unnamed Fortune 500 corporation in September 2018, an outdated version of Windows opened the door to a crypto-mining attack that quickly moved to over 1,100 machines throughout the company. Read more
Download the full case study here.
Nicholas Walker, who runs an MSP in Charlotte, North Carolina called Halcyon Support, endured a lot from his RMM. There was subpar support, aggressive pricing, and unreliable alerting. But when the product caused him to lose a potential client, he got fed up.
The root of the fateful problem was the very large “agent” software that needs to be installed on client machines.
