Thank you to Cam Wayland from Channel Dynamics for coming over to Auckland this week and delivering an overview of the trends in Cybersecurity using his own knowledge developed by engagement with the IT channel across Australia and New Zealand, plus research from CompTIA and Verizon. Verizon? Yes this US telco produces a Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) based on information gathered across their huge ISP network. Some of the interesting stats that turned up are that 25% of breaches were associated with internal people, 15% of victims are in the retail or accommodation sectors (you’d think they’d be too small!), and 81% of breaches used stolen and/or weak passwords.
Turning to some of the findings from CompTIA’s Australian research, it was pointed out that MSPs are being targeted for access to their client’s data. Also 72% of Australian SMEs expect IT security to become a higher priority over the next two years – a big factor being reports of security breaches at other firms – so plenty of opportunity here to get your customers investing in security technology and education. Around 40% of breaches are the result of human error so do encourage employees to “ask first and click second” – make sure they know not be embarrassed to send it for checking.
On another note, apparently 28% of reported mobile security incidents are because an employee disabled the security features on their mobile device – not a good look given the skyrocketing growth of Android malware. Cam closed with the reminder that MSPs are ideally placed to deliver security as a service – so either invest in developing a security competency or partner with someone who has.
We also had a session from Daniel Watson of Vertech IT Services, a SolarWinds MSP customer, who talked about how his transition from a break-fix model to MSP. He is happy that this solution means he CAN meet the customer expectation of being across things before they break, and how it saves him from the hours he used to spend on the road going from site to site. Yes the customers still get visits, but now it’s on HIS schedule. His first step into RMM was for remote access to customer systems – and not a single customer complained about being charged $1 per device per month so Vertech could reach out when issues came up. As he delved deeper into the SolarWinds MSP remote monitoring feature set he found that “it automates a stack-load of stuff that would be dull and boring to do otherwise.” In Daniel’s experience customers will pay more if they can understand the value – you just need to be able to articulate that value – but keep in mind that it needs to add value for the reseller also. In evaluating new offerings Daniel needs good answers to three questions.
- Will it improve things for the client?
- Will it make me money?
- How do I integrate it into my existing systems and processes?
So thanks Daniel (Vertech IT Services) for a great interactive session helping resellers at multiple stages of the transition to MSP to understand some of the steps on that journey, and leaving us with that final comment that you keep in mind as you grow: “You can delegate responsibility but not accountability”.
Big ups to our brand manager Tyron Warren for organising a great event, and to Hamish Boot for helping out with marketing funding from SolarWinds MSP.
