Having returned from our N-able Empower event in Las Vegas about a month ago from writing this, I was surprised at just how many attendees felt like they were not doing enough to automate their IT processes. I spoke to several IT leaders, business owners, presidents, and other executives and all of them were looking to do more with automation—many were even still trying to get to grips with the concept from a business perspective and start out on their automation journey.

Patch management has become an essential part of IT and a critical part of ensuring an enterprise’s safety and efficiency. Why are these seemingly trivial updates so important? In short, because companies without an effective patch management solution are at a massively increased risk of cyberattack. There are other reasons why patching hardware and software is important.

Many entrepreneurs hang their shingle without putting much thought into sales. They find out further down the road that sales is the heart of enterprise, and that it demands just as much preparation and planning as any other aspect of business. More often than not, an MSP who doesn’t plan ahead finds a great deal of difficulty growing once their referral business has inevitably run dry.

The MSP industry is facing and ongoing movement across customers’ transition to the cloud, the evolving threat landscape, and a skills shortage that seems to be more pronounced than ever. Consider these facts from Gartner: The threat landscape is also evolving as highlighted by some of the following statistics: Data protection is a service that managed service providers (MSPs) need to consider as critical.

When I initially wrote my guide to blocking Microsoft’s auto-update to Windows 11—Windows 11: how to configure an auto-patch decline in N-central—I only had N-central partners and our N-central Patch Management in mind. However, after reading various other forums and discussions, I thought I’d take a more regimented approach to stopping or blocking Windows 11 from your machine.