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Defining the Value of Technology Teams

Technology Teams are made up of a lot more than just the service technicians working with your customers. Every Technology Team is made up of a combination of people that account for every step of the Customer Journey. Sales, finance, even marketing…they’re all a part of your Technology Teams and enable you to reach your clients, making their jobs and lives a little easier and helping you stay ahead of technology.

Technology Teams are formed to deliver a unique set of solutions and services. Within one company, multiple Technology Teams can combine to form a resilient Technology Organization. ConnectWise provides a tailored experience to fit the customer journey by turning the ConnectWise suite into a platform of microservices. Building on the foundation of the Solutions Menu, we will focus on Technology Workers.

Building Value

As a business with your sights set on current and future success, you have to find ways to build resiliency into your business. A key way to do this is by building out multiple Technology Teams to continuously increase and diversify the value you offer to your clients. The more you can do to cover their needs, now and into the future, the more you’ll be able to serve the needs of your current customers and attract new ones.

Get Specialized

So why not just have one big team in your company, with every resource managing all of the information they need for each customer’s needs? Every Technology Team is going to have a unique approach to solving customer problems, whether in sales, services or billing, and you’ll want to have people dedicated to making sure those unique approaches are supported. Instead of overwhelming your team with the heavy load of understanding everything about every one of your customers.

No one can be a master of everything, so allow your Technology Teams to focus only on expertise in their specific area. By dividing your business efforts to focus on each specific Technology Team, you’ll be more efficient, your team will feel more in control, and your customers will feel like you really understand their needs.

Take the Lead

Once your Technology Teams are leading the way in meeting your customers’ varied—and growing—needs, they’ll be responsible for guiding your customers through every part of the customer journey.

Mastering each step of the customer journey for each Technology Team enables them to provide excellent customer service, laying the groundwork for long-term relationships that keep your customers happy and loyal.

Where to Start

Fortunately, you’re probably already doing this without realizing it. Do you have a list of services you offer? Those probably line up pretty nicely to some of the Technology Teams already. Now you’ll just need to conduct a gap analysis to find out what you’ve got covered and what still needs to have resources put toward it.

A gap analysis looks at your current performance to help you pinpoint the difference between your current and ideal states of business. Get started by answering these three deceptively simple questions with input from your team:

Where are we now?
Where do we want to be?
How do we get there (close the gap)?

Keep working toward full coverage for every Technology Team your customers are looking for, and seeing every client through the steps of the customer journey and before long, you’ll be meeting and exceeding your business goals.

This article was provided by our service partner : Connectwise

Ransomware Variants an MSP Should Watch Out For

We can all agree that ransomware is one of the biggest and most destructive threats managed service providers and their clients have faced in recent years. Currently, there are well over 120 separate ransomware families, and there’s been a 3,500% increase in cyber criminal internet infrastructure for launching attacks since the beginning of 2016. And nearly 90% of MSP report their clients have been hit by ransomware in the last year. But, in spite of these numbers, nearly 70% of MSP still aren’t completely confident their clients’ endpoints are secure against these insidious attacks.

Know Your Enemy

In addition to maintaining up-to-date endpoint security that uses real-time analysis to detect zero-day attacks, it’s important to know your enemy. Cybersecurity provider Webroot recently put together a list of the top 10 nastiest ransomware variants of 2017. You’ve probably heard of the big, newsworthy names that made the list, like WannaCry, NotPetya, and Locky, but here’s a few more MSPs should watch out for.

CrySis
CrySis attacks by compromising Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). RDP is a common method for deploying ransomware because criminals can get into admin accounts that have access to an entire organization. First detected in February 2016, CrySis took some time to spread, and really came into its own in 2017.
Nemucod
This ransomware variant arrives via phishing emails disguised as a shipping invoice. Nemucod downloads malware and encryption components stored from hacked websites, and would have most likely been the worst of the phishing email attacks for the year, had Locky not resurfaced in August.
Jaff
Like Nemucod and Locky, Jaff uses phishing emails to spread. It also uses similar techniques to other successful ransomware attacks, including Dridex.
Spora
This ransomware is distributed by legitimate websites that have been compromised with malicious JavaScript code. The sites display a pop-up prompt to visitors, instructing them to update their Chrome browsers to continue viewing the page. But when the unsuspecting user downloads the “Chrome Font Pack”, they get the infection instead.
Cerber
Cerber also uses phishing and RDP, but unlike some of its colleagues, it distributes ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS). This “service” allows aspiring cybercriminals to use pre-packaged ransomware tools as they choose, while the Cerber author gets a 30% cut of any profits made.

Keeping Your Clients Safe

There are a number of steps an MSP can take to keep clients safe.

First, educate your clients. Be sure to teach them how to spot suspicious emails and how to check legitimacy any time an email seems a little off. We also recommend implementing an end user cybersecurity training program.
Second, keep applications and plugins up to date, and make sure your clients are using reliable cloud-based antimalware, web filtering, and firewalls.
Third, use your operating system to your advantage. Set up Windows® OS policy restrictions, disable auto-run, disable VBS, and filter executables from emails.
Fourth, ensure your clients run regular backups, set up offline air gap backups with multiple copies of each file, and maintain up-to-date business continuity measures.

This article was provided by our service partners Webroot & Connectwise.

Four Pillars of the Modern Partner Creating Thriving Cloud Business

Guest Author: Matt Morris – Matt Morris is a Partner Technical Strategist & Cloud Business guru in the One Commercial Partner group, where he leads technical sales readiness, and strategy for one of Microsoft’s largest distribution partners. Prior to his current role, Matt worked in enterprise technology sales, software development, and solution architecture roles at Microsoft and other technology firms. He has experience with mid-market and large enterprise organizations across a variety of industries as well as the public sector. He helps customers understand and implement high innovation and transformational technology solutions in the areas of analytics, cloud computing, and developer tools and platforms.

According to IDC, by 2020 IT cloud services revenue will exceed $500 billion. As a part of Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner organization, I know firsthand both the tremendous opportunity cloud computing presents our partners and the complexity that opportunity can pose. So, as you prepare to join us at IT Nation, I want to share a series of cross-industry partner resources that will help you evaluate the benefits and risks of cloud computing, and provide best practices to help you successfully transform your business to capture the largest possible share of those dollars.

Is the cloud right for my business?

Nearly 80% of customers are deploying or fully embracing cloud technology today, according to IDC. It’s clear many clients are hungry for the cost-savings and flexibility the cloud can provide, but finding the right pace and model for cloud adoption is challenging for many partners. In The Booming Cloud Opportunity, IDC analyzes the scope of the opportunity and how you can take advantage.

How do I grow my business with the cloud?

No one knows your clients like you do. Your hard-earned expertise solving clients’ challenges is the perfect foundation for a cloud-based practice. You know the solutions your clients want, without compromising their security or increasing long-term costs. More importantly, your clients chose you for a reason. Whether you’ve mastered a particular technology, specific vertical, or business process – your unique expertise can be scaled with cloud solutions to make you more profitable. Whether you’re looking to start gently with an SaaS solutions like Office 365™, or to dive into IaaS or PaaS with Azure™, evaluate your revenue potential with your Office 365 Revenue Modeling Tool or check out the eBook, Differentiate to Stand Out.

Will I need to change my sales & marketing for cloud solutions?

The next challenge is communicating the unique value you offer, particularly when 65% of B2B purchase decisions are made before ever engaging sales. The Modernizing Sales and Marketing Guide distills the best practices other successful partners have implemented. From developing a listening culture and understanding the customer journey, to building the right marketing assets to communicate how you solve customers’ real business challenges, this guide will help you grow your practice.

Am I ready to expand my practice into the cloud?

Changing your business model seems risky, even when you know that it’s critical to long-term success. So, before deciding to wait a little longer, see what it would take to get started. Some cloud services, like Office 365, can be implemented quickly and painlessly. If you have cautious clients, expanding into a hybrid blend of on-premise and cloud solutions might fit. The key is to create a strategy that allows you to leverage easily deployed cloud components to drive services revenue today, while developing your own specialized solutions to turn your unique expertise into a repeatable product over time. Get started with Optimizing your Operations.

However you choose to implement cloud services, my goal is to help you strengthen both your bottom line and your relationship with your customers. Long-term profitability is the result of helping your customers achieve their goals, growing revenue while reducing churn. Our last resource, Delivering Customer Lifetime Value closes the loop.

This article was provided by our service partner Microsoft.

Cisco Umbrella Has Something New for MSPs

The threat landscape continues to get more sophisticated and complex. In a continued partnership to help MSPs protect their clients, Cisco is excited to announce a new Advanced Cisco Umbrella package specifically designed to help MSPs deliver even deeper protection.

As part of the Cisco Umbrella rollout for MSPs Advanced, centrexIT has become an early adopter. centrexIT, an award-winning Managed Services Provider in Southern California, stands out in the IT industry with a unique take on information technology and business alignment. Although their clients engage with them to support their business technology, network health, cybersecurity, and more, centrexIT’s most important metric isn’t how well the technology is working. It’s how to make their client’s lives easier, more productive, and ultimately make them more profitable. A large part of that goal in 2018, and beyond, is practicing good cybersecurity management.

“We value people over technology,” says Eric Rockwell, CEO of centrexIT. “And that commitment to our Culture of Care in turn leads us to focus on providing excellence in service while using technology that meets the highest of standards.”

That standard is even higher when it comes to security — especially in the face of the many high-profile breaches in security that have taken place throughout the tech industry over the past few years.

“Without following the standards for good cybersecurity controls and adhering to applicable regulations, you’re at a much higher risk of your information being breached — and that’s what you’re seeing on the daily news,” Rockwell says.

Cisco plays a major role in helping centrexIT protect their clients. As long-time partners with Cisco, centrexIT was given the opportunity to be the first to adopt Cisco’s latest security features.

“centrexIT is in the process of transitioning to a Next Gen MSP — an MSP with an MSSP (Managed Security Services Provider) practice,” Rockwell says. “We’re expecting huge growth in our MSSP line of business next year, both from existing MSP clients buying MSSP services as well as non-MSP clients buying MSSP services. Our focus on quality and security will only continue to grow as our clients keep demanding it.”

With the company’s growth and the Culture of Care at the forefront, the centrexIT team was more than ready to adopt the latest features.

“We’re using the new Cisco Umbrella features such as file inspection with anti-virus (AV) engine, Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), and custom URL blocking to help further protect our clients,” Rockwell says.

File inspection provides centrexIT with even deeper protection. When Umbrella receives a DNS request, it uses intelligence to determine if the request is safe, malicious, or risky — meaning the domain contains both malicious and legitimate content. Safe and malicious requests are routed as usual or blocked, respectively. Risky requests are routed to our cloud-based proxy for deeper inspection. The Umbrella proxy uses Cisco Talos web reputation and other third-party feeds to determine if a URL is malicious. With the advanced package, the proxy will also inspect files attempted to be downloaded from those risky sites using anti-virus (AV) engine and Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP). Based on the outcome of this inspection, the connection is allowed or blocked.

Through custom URL blocking, centrexIT has even more control over information being accessed and in discovering potential security threats. Custom URL blocking gives MSPs the ability to enforce against malicious URLs in a destination list. It provides the flexibility to block specific pages without blocking entire domains.

These new security features are a huge plus for centrexIT and its clients. They help fulfill its core value and meet its key metric, says Rockwell. “At the end of the day, our client’s lives are easier and they’re at peace because they know we’re working tirelessly to care for them and keep their information safe and private.”

Overcoming the MSP Stereotype in 5 Steps

Some of the best clients on any technology solution provider’s radar might already have an in-house IT resource, and while you’re busy building relationships with the right people to get that contract signed, that in-house IT person may not know you exist until the deal is done. The uphill battle to finding success with that first in-house IT client? The MSP Stereotype.

What IS the MSP Stereotype?

As crazy as it seems, there’s an unofficial caste system in IT that revolves around career paths and specialization. Most IT professionals start out in desktop support to learn basic concepts, then move on to application support for a deeper understanding of business-critical applications. Their time in troubleshooting opens new doors to managing the systems or networks those applications rely on.

What About MSPs?

This general path leaves out the traditional MSP, who some IT pros see as a failed desktop support specialist. Every time an MSP says they’re “concentrated on making money, not learning some new technology” it reinforces the stereotype that MSPs are peddling half-baked fixes, useless hardware, and needless up-selling. It’s a mentality that gives the entire community a bad name, and overcoming it is the key to building a healthy, long-term relationship with your clients’ in-house IT.

So how do you overcome the bias / bad press? How do you avoid being undermined and build a mutually beneficial relationship?

5 Steps to Overcome the Stereotype

1. Find Their Passion

Make time to meet with in-house IT staff. Take them out to lunch or drinks, and assure them you want to help. Find out what part of IT excites them. If they’re passionate about troubleshooting and the instant gratification it brings, give them first refusal on break/fix issues with an agreed upon SLA. If strategic planning lights them up, give them a voice in those meetings. In other words, give in-house IT a chance to redefine their roles and responsibilities.

2. Build Credibility

Provide in-house IT with credentials for their assigned technicians/engineers. If your team has a slew of certifications and/or years of experience, let your client’s in-house staff see for themselves. Be prepared to handle objections. Some IT pros believe in certifications, while others think certifications are useless. Address objections calmly and professionally. At the end of the day, it’s about winning trust. It won’t happen overnight, but making efforts early help you both better understand what you’re walking into.

3. Collaborate Often

With a solid understanding of what the in-house IT staff is passionate about, take the time to collaborate with them on the direction of their account. In-house IT will understand why you have standards to uphold for supportability and consistency –give them a chance to voice preferences before options are finalized. Involving them as much as possible will do wonders for your long-term relationship.

4. Communicate Decisions

As an MSP, you bring recommendations and options for clients to decide on. Which means you likely have more access to your client’s decision makers than their own staff, including In-house IT. Decisions get made multiple times a day, but top-down communication is often a problem. Treat In-house IT the way you’d want them to treat you. If you get out of a meeting where a decision is made that could impact In-house IT, let them know the decision and, if possible, the logic behind it. Face-to-face will go a long way, but a simple phone call works too.

5. Maintain Trust

The problem with stereotypes is that you need to constantly prove you’re different. Doing the 4 steps above get the ball rolling, but you can’t slack off. Stay actively engaged with your client’s In-house IT to remind them you’re constantly looking out for their best interests.

Many MSPs already understand the benefit of clients with in-house IT. You get an extra set of hands without any of the overhead. You get an advocate when you’re not in the room, and a champion for your team and business…if you simply overcome the MSP stereotype. Invest the time to nurture your in-house IT relationships and they’ll help you build a stellar reputation.

This article was provided by our service partner : Connectwise.

The Evolving Role of the Managed Service Provider

Nearly every enterprise has at least one relationship with a managed service provider today and it’s very likely that relationship has evolved over the years. Get ready, it’s changing again and very much to the advantage of the enterprise.

Managed services has its origins in the beginning of the tech market when companies would turn to a reseller to not only integrate but manage the finished solution. Reselling begot hosting in the late 1990s as the Internet began to crossover from government system to the foundation of our lives, as it exists today. Hosters played two key roles: granting individuals and companies access to the Internet and renting server rack space so corporate applications (mostly web sites) could have a point of presence (POP) on the Internet.

This business evolved from rack hoster to rentable IT admins, who took on the tasks of managing the hardware, OS and increasingly the middleware and applications that ran on those servers. The hosting market was a lucrative and relatively well protected space until cloud computing came along. With the introduction of Software as a Service, applications could now be delivered and managed directly by the software provider themselves. Salesforce led this new market disruption in typical innovator fashion by targeting smaller firms, with lower enterprise-grade expectations and line of business budgets. By the time SaaS started penetrating the enterprise market, its multi-tenant, highly scalable deployment model and new pay-per-user business model was hard for hosters to match and the fight was on.

Public cloud platforms added to the competitive threat by extending the SaaS basics to hosted applications. Now both application outsourcing and the core business of hosting were under threat. A surface examination of these developments might lead you to conclude that the days of the managed service provider were looking pretty gloomy but that’s actually far from the case. It’s simply another evolutionary point in the business life-cycle. While the volume of traditional hosting and application outsourcing opportunities diminish as more applications shift to SaaS or cloud platforms, we aren’t making a binary shift and nor are we getting a free ride from a management and monitoring perspective. Look a little deeper and you’ll find that a large percent of corporate workloads don’t easily fit onto cloud platforms, can’t be cleanly replaced by SaaS and won’t go through such a binary change. In fact the definition of an application is shifting and, for most businesses, already have. Get the Fastest WordPress Hosting for your website.

Take, for example, the common business process of eCommerce. Is that a single application? For most companies, absolutely not. It’s a workflow that blends together multiple applications including ERP, CRM, commerce, machine learning, mobile and web, content management and many other elements. And if your company has been around more than 10 years it’s highly likely you have some pretty customized elements in that mix. And it’s a workflow we are constantly refining to stay competitive, improve customer satisfaction with and adapt as end users shift from web-centric to device-centric. So given the changes we are seeing in applications and the shift to cloud that is taking place, what is the end result – a highly blended mix where certain elements are shifted to SaaS, others moved to cloud platforms and others that can’t make the move but must continue as part of the mix.

According to Gartner, Inc., by 2018, more than 40% of enterprises will have implemented hybrid data centers, up from 10% in 2015. Given that we need to accelerate the evolution of this blended model to keep pace both competitively and with our ever-changing customers, what’s the best use of your limited development and IT staff resources? You will pick up some bandwidth as the management of SaaS apps shifts to the SaaS provider and of the infrastructure below the elements you can shift to cloud platforms. But the integration, evolution, security and need for more agile UX improvements all remain. And whether you put your applications on hyper-scale public clouds like Azure or on more localized offerings such as those provided by most MSPs, you still have to manage the Cloud Handshake.

Looking at your task list and cross-correlating this with your IT staff bandwidth, you’ll likely draw the conclusion that managing the Cloud Handshake falls low on the priority list. And this is exactly where the managed service provider can add the most value. And exactly where their business models are evolving. As pointed out in this white paper from Hosting.com, the future of the managed service provider is in managing the blended IT environment. The reality is that your deployment portfolio is evolving to a mix of in-house, hosted, SaaS and multiple cloud platforms. And managing this mix isn’t your core competency and shouldn’t be your priority. MSPs are evolving their business models towards managing this mix so you can focus on the things that are unique to your business.

Benefits of choosing Private Hosting Services

Looking to make the move into the cloud can be a bit of daunting process, with so many options available. One of the first decisions to make is choosing whether you want to opt for a public provider or choose a Private Hosting Services solution like Knownhost that offers servers with amd ryzen.

With decades of experience within the IT sector, dealing with a range of business clients, we have highlighted security, flexibility and control as the key values to our clients and wanted to ensure all of our cloud services were done so through a highly secure private cloud platform.

We have jotted down 5 top reasons for choosing a private cloud model for your business, to help guide you on your way.

1. Sense of security

Without a doubt, the number one reason to opt for Private Hosting Services is the knowledge that you know, not only, where your data is located but exactly who can access it learn more at Hostens website. Whilst there are certainly a number security controls in place on a good public cloud platform, you will never have the sense control and security that you achieve through a private cloud solution.

Security is especially important for businesses who may hold sensitive documents on their servers such as highly personal customer information or private financial data. Businesses have a responsibility to ensure their data is kept safe and secure at all times, making a private cloud provider the go to platform for rest assured data security.

2. Knowing where your data is

Closely linked to security and privacy, specific data location is another important difference between private and public cloud providers. You cannot be 100% sure where your data is being stored on a public cloud, with many providers holding your data abroad, and often even unable to specify the exact location of your files at any given time.

With a private cloud infrastructure, you will always know the precise location of your data. At NetCal all your data is held on state of the art, enterprise level equipment in temperature controlled environments in a distinct number of data centres, known to you at any given time.

3. Top performance

Another clear advantage for Private Hosting Services is the ability to have dedicated applications and a dedicated server which runs its own operating system for your business. This ensures you do not have to share processing power with other company applications, resulting in a more stable predictable performance which is optimised for your business requirements.

4. Take control

If you want to ensure you have complete control over your hardware and your virtual servers, a private cloud is the clearly favourable option. In addition, private cloud also allows much more control over Service Level Agreement (SLA) management. Public cloud platforms can only give you control over certain features of your operating system, applications and server, and a public cloud provider controls the SLAs with all clients.

Another advantage of a private cloud solution is complete control over your own failover plan, which is put in place to ensure that there is no risk of your cloud service becoming unavailable to users.

5. Be flexible

An enterprise level private cloud service is built from the bottom up and tailored for your individual requirements. This means that, you as a client are able to specify what you need (both technical capabilities and SLAs) and only ever need to take up the processing power that you require.

In summary Private cloud is highly compliant and highly flexible, providing you with complete control over your hardware, virtual servers, SLAs and failover plans, whilst ensuring you are operating at your optimum performance.

If you are considering migrating to a cloud solution, or want to better understand the benefits of opting for a private cloud provider, get in touch with one of the friendly and experienced members of our team and we can get you up and started in no time.

5 Trends in Enterprise Cloud Services

Even though the future of IT belongs to the cloud, much of the enterprise world is still clinging to legacy systems. In fact, 90 percent of workloads today are completed outside of the public cloud. With this continued resistance to cloud services adoption at the enterprise level, today’s “cloud evangelists” are playing a more important role in the industry than ever before.

The role of a cloud evangelist sits somewhere between the duties of a product marketer and the company’s direct link to customers. These individuals are responsible for spreading the doctrine of cloud computing and convincing reluctant IT admins to make the jump to the cloud. It’s a dynamic role and nowhere is this more apparent than with the talented cloud evangelists at NTT Communications.

In a recent interview from NTT Communications, two of the company’s leading cloud evangelists, Masayuki Hayashi and Waturu Katsurashima, sat down to chat about the current challenges slowing enterprise cloud migration and what companies can do to help mitigate those challenges. In this post, we take a look at the five areas that are top-of-mind for cloud evangelists today.

The Changing Role of Cloud Evangelists

While the role itself may be new, it is not insulated from change. When it was first established, cloud evangelists were responsible for ferrying customers through every stage of cloud adoption. From preliminary fact finding to architecting the final network, cloud evangelists played a prominent role.

Today, that hands-on approach is quickly changing. As Hayashi states in the article, “Evangelists have traditionally played the “forward” position, but recently we are more like “midfielders” who focus on passing the ball to others.” Rather than managing every task involved, evangelists are placing more focus on improving processes and strengthening organizational knowledge.

Slow Migration of On-Premise Systems to the Cloud

The number of enterprises migrating on-premise datacenters to the cloud has been less than stellar in recent years. Cloud services migrations have remained relatively flat year-over-year largely due to the complexities surrounding migration. Enterprises are having difficulty simultaneously managing both their existing infrastructure and bringing new cloud-based services online.

For evangelists, it’s important to consider this added complexity when proposing a migration plan. NTT Communications Chief Evangelist Wataru Katsurashima recommends finding specific solutions that can accommodate the unique needs of enterprise cloud migration such as hybrid cloud infrastructures that function like a single, public cloud environment.

High Migration Costs are Slowing Adoption

The added complexity of enterprise cloud migration also directly affects the price of migration, increasing it beyond reach of some companies. The expensive price tag is forcing many enterprises to rethink their decision to migrate to the cloud, opting instead to delay the migration another year or executing a much slower, gradual migration.

One discussed solution to this high cost is using existing services within the VMware vCloud® Air™ Network. According to Katsurashima, leveraging technology from NTT communications and VMware in a synergistic way can dramatically cut down costs through efficiencies and better utilization.

New Hybrid Cloud Structures on the Horizon

Like the role of cloud evangelists, the hybrid cloud, too, is changing. Hayashi explains:

“In the past, a hybrid cloud was similar to a Japanese hot spring inn, with a single hallway that leads from the hot spring to each guest room. NTT Communications aims to achieve a “modern hotel” model. In other words, there is one front desk and a variety of rooms with different purposes, such as extended-stay rooms for VIPs and rooms for business meetings.”

The hotel analogy provides us with a way to visualize the new features and capabilities that hybrid cloud environments must deliver. Since no one cloud service provider can be everything, establishing greater levels of collaboration and cross-pollination between service providers is critical to success.

Redefining the Role of Information System Departments

The days of information system departments only responding to the demands of individual business departments are over. The IT teams that do not help business departments innovate from the inside-out will become increasingly obsolete.

This article was provided by our service partner : Vmware

Healthcare industry embraces Cisco Umbrella

Healthcare industry expenditures on cloud computing will experience a compound annual growth rate of more than 20% by 2020. The industry has quickly transitioned from being hesitant about the cloud to embracing the technology for its overwhelming benefits.

George Washington University, a world-renowned research university, turned to Cisco Umbrella to protect its most important asset: the global reputation as a research leader.

“We chose Cisco Umbrella because it offered a really high level of protection for our various different user bases, with a really low level of interaction required to implement the solution, so we could start blocking attacks and begin saving IR analyst time immediately,” said Mike Glyer, Director, Enterprise Security & Architecture.

Customers love Umbrella because it is a cloud-delivered platform that protects users both on and off the network. It stops threats over all ports and protocols for the most comprehensive coverage. Plus, Umbrella’s powerful, effective security does not require the typical operational complexity. By performing everything in the cloud, there is no hardware to install, and no software to manually update. The service is a scalable solution for large healthcare organizations with multiple locations, like The University of Kansas Hospital, ranked among the nation’s best hospitals every year since 2007 by U.S. News & World Report.

“Like every hospital, we prioritize the protection of sensitive patient data against malware and other threats. We have to safeguard all network connected medical devices, as a compromise could literally result in a life-or-death situation,” says hospital Infrastructure Security Manager Henry Duong. “Unlike non-academic hospitals, however, our entwinement with medical school and research facility networks means we must also protect a lot sensitive research data and intellectual Property.”

Like many healthcare providers, The University of Kansas Hospital would spend a lot time combing through gigabytes of logs trying to trace infections, point of origin and identify which machines were calling out. The team turned to Cisco Umbrella for help.

“First we just pointed our external DNS requests to Cisco Umbrella’s global network, which netted enough information to prompt an instant ‘Wow, we have to have this!’ response,” Duong says. “When our Umbrella trial began, we saw an immediate return, which I was able to document using Umbrella reporting and share with executive stakeholders. Those numbers, which ultimately led to executive buy-in, spoke volumes about the instant effect Umbrella had on our network.”

This overwhelming success led the team to later purchase Umbrella Investigate.

“We suddenly went from struggling to track attacks to being able to correlate users with events and trace every click of their online travels. Then, Cisco Umbrella Investigate gave us the power to understand each threat’s entire story from start to finish,” Duong says. “We’re able to dig deep into the analysis to see what users are doing, where they’re going, and pinpoint any contributing behaviors so we can mitigate most efficiently.”

University of Kansas estimate that with Cisco Umbrella – they have :

Decreased threats by an estimated 99 percent
Shortened investigation time by 75 percent
Increased visibility and automation while reducing exposure to ransomware

This article was provided by our Service Partner : Cisco