Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Penetration Testing -- also known as “pentesting” -- are used by cybersecurity professionals and managed service providers to identify vulnerabilities present in a system before a cybersecurity incident takes place. You will often come across clients asking you to perform penetration testing, especially as emerging government regulations begin to make the practice mandatory.

As a managed service provider, you know that cyberthreats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and impact. In recent years, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of cyber-attacks targeting businesses, governments, and individuals. This explosion of cyberthreats highlights the need for businesses and individuals to take cybersecurity seriously and implement modernized security measures to protect themselves against these threats.

Two software solutions that most MSPs cannot live without are known as professional services automation (PSA) and remote monitoring and management (RMM). However, it’s no secret that software solutions are expensive, so does your business really need both? Decide which software you should use after reviewing this comparison of PSA vs. RMM.

The history of digital transformation can be traced back as early as the 1940s when Dr. Claude Shannon published A Mathematical Theory of Communication, which is the theory behind the creation of the internet. Then addition of the microchip and semiconductor transistor, invented In the 1950s, established the foundation for digital transformation. Since then, the capabilities of machines and digital technology have grown exponentially, and they have fundamentally changed ways our society operates.

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patch notification can quickly become a habit, and before you know it, a critical piece of software is weeks or months out of date.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.

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.