Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

As modern work has evolved, so too has the network end users rely on to do their jobs. Today’s network is vastly different from the networks of just a few years ago, with the new last mile of the office network evolving to cover anywhere end users are. This has had a significant impact on the visibility IT professionals have in the office network, and it means we need to revisit what network visibility really means as modern work continues to evolve.

Against a backdrop of constantly evolving cybersecurity threats, it’s essential that MSPs understand how to own the risk conversation if they are to really help their customers effectively manage their security posture. In this blog, I want to look at what we mean by “owning the risk conversation”, and how MSPs can achieve this. For me, I look at it from the perspective of my own job.

It’s pretty easy to hit that “remind me later” button when you don’t want to wait for installations, reboots, and possible errors if something goes wrong with the update. Snoozing that patch notification can quickly become a habit, and before you know it, a critical piece of software is weeks or months out of date. More people are learning that this isn’t a bit of harmless procrastination -- it’s actually a huge cybersecurity risk.

The past few years have been a boon to the IT channel. Economic and social changes have driven more SMBs and enterprises toward outsourced IT solutions. New technologies have pushed IT profitability higher. Businesses are more focused on digital transformation than at any other point in history, while at the same time everyone with a networked device is concerned about the growing threat of cyberattack. Operations of all types know that the IT department is becoming the key to staying competitive.

Even though testing is a part of the patch management lifecycle, sometimes bugs manage to slip through the testing stage and aren’t caught until after implementation. When this occurs, a new patch can actually break or alter software instead of fixing or updating it. This situation is known as software regression, and it has a significant impact on IT teams and MSPs around the globe.

Patch management is a critical process within IT environments, and servers are one of the many types of endpoints that need software patches. Server patching, in particular, is crucial to ensure that your servers are optimally functioning and don’t go down unexpectedly. Let’s dig into what server patching is, why it’s so necessary, how server patching works, and keys to proper execution of server patch management.

One of the things that I regularly get questioned about in my Operational Efficiency Boot Camp is the reporting in N-sight RMM and what MSPs should be presenting to customers to show that they are properly performing their work. I am a huge fan of monthly or quarterly business reviews to showcase your MSP client reports. I feel that for MSPs they are one of our greatest retention tools, and clearly demonstrate the value we provide.

So-called “conventional IT” is quickly fading into the background in the face of widespread changes to the modern world. Fast-growing technologies like cloud, SaaS, and remote monitoring or RMM software, have decentralized the very idea of IT -- and the timing of this migration to remote services and cloud-centric IT infrastructures couldn’t have been better, as demand for remote work and reliable information security skyrocketed during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

As organizations grow, the number of tools needed for basic business operations grow with it. Unfortunately, as you add more tools to an organization, you increase the number of potential attack vectors. Within the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), there were 26,448 CVEs published last year, an increase of 20% over 2021. Each of these vulnerabilities serve as opportunities for bad actors to break their way into your network, leading to a loss of valuable data, money, and time.