HIPAA

HIPAA Compliance — It’s the law…

As an IT Managed Services provider, we’ve heard it all…. I mean, who wants to take on another initiative that is as ambiguous and costly as HIPAA Compliance. Besides, your staff don’t have the time to take on more roles and responsibilities.

There’s only one problem though. These rules and regulations are signed into Law. That means, you are breaking the law. So, where does that leave us? Well, there’s 2 options: 1) Roll the dice and hope you don’t get audited/fined when PHI info is lost/stolen 2) Have someone like NetCal help you be compliant quickly and easily.

You see, we are forced to understand/implement the compliance requirements because as a Business Associate, we are also liable for our client’s non-compliance. We’re in this together and we got your back. It’s actually not as bad as everyone thinks. In particular, we know which items are important to focus on and we know how to get your business in compliance via best practices, trainings, templates, etc…

NetCal will perform the following tasks for you:

1. Perform HIPAA, MACRA, and Meaningful Use Risk Assessment
2. Write your Policies and Procedures
3. Train your Employees
4. Maintain your documents in a web portal
5. Provide support in the event of an audit

High-level Summary of Tasks Needed

1. BAA signings
2. User Training
3. Risk Assessment
4. Create HIPAA Policies
5. Perform IT Discovery and Vulnerabilities list
6. Create Recommendation and Security Plan

Major sites still largely lax on prompting users towards safer password choices, study finds

A study assessed whether or not the most popular English-language websites help users strengthen their security by providing them with guidance on creating safer passwords during account sign-up or password-change processes.

Some of the Internet’s biggest names largely fall short of nudging users towards safer choices when they create or change their passwords, a study by the University of Plymouth has found.

Steven Furnell, Professor of Information Security at the United Kingdom-based university, recently conducted an examination of the password practices of Google, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, Yahoo, Amazon, Twitter, Instagram, Microsoft Live, and Netflix. The results – summed up in a paper called Assessing website password practices – over a decade of progress? – actually follow up on previous runs of the same survey in 2007, 2011, and 2014.

So what are the results? In short, some of the world’s biggest online services “still allow people to use the word ‘password’, while others will allow single-character passwords and basic words including a person’s surname or a repeat of their user identity”.

In other words, although there have been modest improvements on some scores, the picture has remained largely unchanged over the years, according to the survey. That is notwithstanding the increased threat of cyberattacks and privacy breaches, along with the fact that countless people continue to make one of the most common security mistakes by picking atrocious passwords.

On a positive note, the number of wildly popular sites in English that allow you to use “password” as your, well, password has dropped over the years. Also, the number of services that enable you to add an extra safeguard on top of your password by supporting two-factor authentication (2FA) has increased from three to eight between 2011 and 2018.

Enforcement of password restrictions and availability of additional support (source: Assessing website password practices – over a decade of progress? via TechCrunch)

Of the ten online services under review (although their composition has not remained unchanged over the years), Google, Microsoft Live, and Yahoo were found to provide the best assistance to users in designing a strong password. This holds true both for the survey’s 2014 and 2018 editions.

On the flip side, Amazon fared the worst, both now and four years ago, having been joined by Reddit and Wikipedia as the worst performers in the study’s latest run.

Now, in the absence of clear and thorough guidance on some of the biggest websites themselves, be sure to read our pieces on how to avoid the perils of passwords, their reuse, and, indeed, how to ditch your password and use a passphrase instead.

In addition, we’ve also reported on The Digital Identity Guidelines, drafted by the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) last year, which among other things recommend that every password should be compared against a “black list” of unacceptable passwords. Such a “wall of shame” should include predictable and easily guessable passwords, passwords leaked in past breaches, dictionary words, and common phrases that users are known to pick.

This article was provided by our service partner : Eset

Windows 10 quality updates explained & the end of delta updates

With Windows 10, quality updates are cumulative. Installing the most recent update ensures that you receive any previous updates you may have missed. We used a cumulative update model to reduce ecosystem fragmentation, and to make it easier for IT admins and end users to stay up to date and secure. However, cumulative updates can prove challenging when it comes to the size of the update and the impact that size can have on your organization’s valuable network bandwidth.

When a new Windows 10 feature update is released, the first cumulative update is generally between 100-200 MB in size. Across all versions of Windows 10, cumulative updates grow as additional components and features get serviced, pushing the size to somewhere between 1-1.2 GB. Generally, this happens within the first 6-8 months after the release of a feature update.

To help you reduce the burden on your network bandwidth, yet still receive the same equivalent update, Microsoft designed three different update types:

  • Full updates have all the necessary components and files that have changed since the last feature update. We refer to this as the latest cumulative update, or LCU. It can quickly grow to a little over 1 GB in size, but typically stays that size for the lifetime of that supported version of Windows 10.
  • Express updates generate differential downloads for every component in the full update based on several historical bases. For example, the latest May LCU contains tcpip.sys. We will generate a differential for all tcpip.sys file changes from April to May, March to May, and from the original feature release to May. A device leveraging express updates will use network protocol to determine optimal differentials, then download only what is needed, which is typically around 150-200 MB in size each month. Ultimately, the more up to date a device is, the smaller the size of the differential download. Devices connected directly to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS), System Center Configuration Manager, or a third-party update manager that supports express updates will receive these smaller payloads.
  • Delta updates include only the components that changed in the most recent quality update. Delta updates will only install if a device already has the previous month’s update installed. For example, assume in May that we changed tcpip.sys and ntfs.sys, but did not change notepad.exe. A device that downloads the delta update will get the latest version of tcpip.sys and ntfs.sys, but not notepad.exe. Delta updates include the full component (not just the individual files) that changed. As a result, they are larger than express updates, often around 300-500 MB in size.

Regardless of which type of update is installed on a device, that update is fully cumulative and installing the latest update will ensure that the device has all the necessary quality and security improvements.

Windows 10

This raises an important question: why make delta updates available if express updates are more optimized and don’t require the previous month’s update already be installed? Delta updates were originally created because the express update protocol was only available to devices connecting directly to Windows Update or Windows Server Update Services. In January 2017, the express protocol was extended to all 3rd party update management systems; however, we continued to ship delta updates to give companies and third-party update management tools time to implement support for express updates.

Currently delta updates are available for the following versions of Windows 10:

  • Windows 10, version 1607
  • Windows 10, version 1703
  • Windows 10, version 1709
  • Windows 10, version 1803

Now that express update support for third-party update managers has been available for over a year, we plan to stop shipping delta updates. Beginning February 12, 2019 Microsoft will end its practice of creating delta updates for all versions of Windows 10. Express updates are much smaller in size, and simplifying the cumulative options available will reduce complexity for IT administrators.

For more information on optimizing update bandwidth and more details about express updates, see Optimize Windows 10 update delivery. To learn more about Windows as a service, check out the new Windows as a service page on the Windows IT Pro Center.

 

3 Cyber Threats IT Providers Should Protect Against

With cybercrime damages set to cost the world $6 trillion annually by 2021, a new bar has been set for cyber threats security teams across industries to defend their assets. This rings especially true for IT service providers, who are entrusted to keep their clients’ systems and IT environments safe from cybercriminals. These clients are typically small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which are now the primary target of cyber threats and attacks. This presents a major opportunity for the managed service providers (MSPs) who serve them to emerge as the cybersecurity leaders their clients rely on to help them successfully navigate the threat landscape.

Before you can start providing cybersecurity education and guidance, it’s crucial that you become well-versed in the biggest threats to your clients’ businesses. As an IT service provider, understanding how to prepare for the following cyber threats will reinforce the importance of your role to your clients.

Ransomware

Ransomware is a type of malware that blocks access to a victim’s assets and demands money to restore that access. The malicious software may either encrypt the user’s hard drive or the user’s files until a ransom is paid. This payment is typically requested in the form of an encrypted digital currency, such as bitcoin. Like other types of malware, ransomware can spread through email attachments, operating system exploits, infected software, infected external storage devices, and compromised websites, although a growing number of ransomware attacks use remote desktop protocols (RDP). The motive for these types of attacks is usually monetary.

Why is ransomware a threat that continues to spread like wildfire? Simple: it’s easy for cybercriminals to access toolsets. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) sites make it extremely easy for less skilled or programming-savvy criminals to simply subscribe to the malware, encryption, and ransom collection services necessary to run an attack—and fast. Since many users and organizations are willing to pay to get their data back, even people with little or no technical skill can quickly generate thousands of dollars in extorted income. Also, the cryptocurrency that criminals demand as payment, while volatile in price, has seen huge boosts in value year over year.

Tips to combat ransomware:
  • Keep company operating systems and application patches up-to-date.
  • Use quality endpoint protection software.
  • Regularly back up company files and plan for the worst-case scenario: total data and systems loss (consider business continuity if budgets allow).
  • Run regular cybersecurity trainings with employees and clients.

Phishing

Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and, indirectly, money ), often for malicious reasons. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter personal information into a fake website, the look and feel of which are almost identical to a trusted, legitimate site.

Phishing is a common example of a social engineering attack. Social engineering is the art of tricking or manipulating a user into giving up sensitive or confidential information. The main purpose of a phishing attack can range from conning the recipient into sharing personal or financial information, to clicking on a link that installs malware and infects the device (for example, ransomware uses phishing as its primary infection route.)

Tips to combat phishing:
  • Ensure your employees and clients understand what a phishing email looks likeand how to avoid becoming a victim by testing your users regularly. Train them with relevant phishing scam simulations.
  • Hover over URLs in email to see the real address before clicking.
  • Use endpoint security with built-in anti-phishing protection.
  • Consider a DNS filtering solution to stop known phishing and malicious internet traffic requests.

Brute Force Attack

A brute force attack is a cyberattack in which the strength of computer and software resources are used to overwhelm security defenses via the speed and/or frequency of the attack. Brute force attacks can also be executed by algorithmically attempting all combinations of login options until a successful one is found.

It’s important to note that brute force attacks are on the rise. Earlier this year, Rene Millman of SC Magazine UK reported, “hacking attempts using brute force or dictionary attacks increased 400 percent in 2017.”

Tips to combat brute force attacks:
  • Scan your systems for password-protected applications and ensure they are not set to default login credentials. And if they’re not actively in use, get rid of them.
  • Adjust the account lockout policy to use progressive delay lockouts, so a dictionary or brute force combination attack is impossible.
  • Consider deploying a CAPTCHA stage to prevent automated dictionary attacks.
  • Enforce strong passwords and 2-factor authentication whenever possible.
  • Upgrade your toolset. RDP brute force is a major ongoing issue. Standard RDP is highly risky, but secure VPN paid-for alternatives make remote access much more secure.

Leveraging Common Cyber Attacks to Improve Business

As an IT service provider, it’s important to remember that communication is everything. With clients, I recommend you define what exactly you’re protecting them against in an effort to focus on their top cybersecurity concerns. If you “profile” certain attack vectors using common cyber threat attack types, like ransomware, phishing, and brute force attacks, you’ll be able to clearly communicate to clients exactly what it takes to protect against their biggest risks and which technologies are necessary to remain as secure as possible.

This article was provided by our service partner : webroot.com 

Tips to backup & restore your SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server is often one of the most critical applications in an organization, with too many uses to count. Due to its criticality, your SQL Server and its data should be thoroughly protected. Business operations rely on a core component like Microsoft SQL Server to manage databases and data. The importance of backing up this server and ensuring you have a recovery plan in place is tangible. People want consistent Availability of data. Any loss of critical application Availability can result in decreased productivity, lost sales, lost customer confidence and potentially loss of customers. Does your company have a recovery plan in place to protect its Microsoft SQL Server application Availability? Has this plan been thoroughly tested?

Microsoft SQL Server works on the backend of your critical applications, making it imperative to have a strategy set in place in case something happens to your server. Veeam specifically has tools to back up your SQL Server and restore it when needed. Veeam’s intuitive tool, Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server, is easy to use and doesn’t require you to be a database expert to quickly restore the database. This blog post aims to discuss using these tools and what Veeam can offer to help ensure your SQL Server databases are well protected and always available to your business.

The Basics

There are some things you should take note of when using Veeam to back up your Microsoft SQL Server. An important aspect and easy way to ensure your backup is consistent is to check that application-aware processing is enabled for the backup job. Application aware processing is Veeam’s proprietary technology based on Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service. This technology quiescences the applications running on the virtual machine to create a consistent view of data. This is done so there are no unfinished database transactions when a backup is performed. This technology creates a transactionally consistent backup of a running VM minimizing the potential for data loss.

Enabling Application Aware processing is just the first step, you must also consider how you want to handle the transaction logs. Veeam has different options available to help process the transaction logs. The options available are truncate logs, do not truncate logs, or backup logs periodically.

Figure 1: SQL Server Transaction logs Options

Figure 1 shows the Backup logs periodically option is selected in this scenario. This option supports any database restore operation offered through Veeam Backup & Replication. In this case, Veeam periodically will transfer transaction logs to the backup repository and store them with the SQL server VM backup, truncating logs on the original VM. Make sure you have set the recovery model for the required SQL Server database to full or bulk-logged.

If you decide you do not want to truncate logs, Veeam will preserve the logs. This option puts the control into the database administrator’s hands, allowing them to take care of the database logs. The other alternative is to truncate logs, this selection allows Veeam to perform a database restore to the state of the latest restore point. To read more about backing up transaction logs check out this blog post.

Data recovery

Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server delivers consistent application Availability through the different restore options it offers to you. These include the ability to restore a database to a specific point in time, restore a database to the same or different server, restore it back to its original location or export to a specified location. Other options include performing restores of multiple databases at once, the ability to perform a table-level recovery or running transaction log replay to perform quick point-in-time restores.

Figure 2: Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server

Recovery is the most important aspect of data Availability. SQL Transaction log backup allows you to back up your transaction logs on a regular basis meeting recovery point objectives (RPOs). This provides not only database recovery options, but also point-in-time database recovery. Transaction-level recovery saves you from a bad transaction such as a table drop, or a mass delete of records. This functionality allows you to do a restore to a point in time right before the bad transaction had occurred, for minimal data loss.

And it is available for FREE!

Veeam offers a variety of free products and Veeam Explorer for Microsoft SQL Server is one that is included in that bunch. If you are using Veeam Backup Free Edition already, you currently have this Explorer available to you. The free version allows you to view database information, export a database and export a database schema or data. If you’re interested in learning more about what you get with Veeam Backup Free Edition, be sure to download this HitchHikers Guide.

 

This article was provided by our service partner : veeam.com

veeam

Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 3a is now available!

Platform support is a priority at Veeam. Whether that is the latest operating systems, new storage systems or updated hypervisors, we take platform support seriously. Since Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 3 has been released, a number of ecosystem changes have warranted an update ahead of the upcoming set of Veeam capabilities (due later this year) showcased at VeeamON. A larger update is coming soon, which is why we are referring to this release as Update 3a opposed to Update 4 (which is planned for later in the year). The main capabilities in this release are the new platforms supported as well as over 20 minor enhancements detailed in the KB article.

Update 3a will bring support for the latest VMware and Microsoft platforms that organizations need from Veeam. The list of new platforms supported by Veeam Backup & Replication are:

  • VMware vSphere 6.7
  • VMware vCloud Director 9.1
  • Preliminary support for VMware vSphere 6.5 U2  (See more below)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 1803
  • Microsoft Windows Hyper-V Server 1803
  • Microsoft Windows 10 April 2018 Update

There are supplemental platforms also supported in this update:

  • VMware Cloud on AWS version 1.3
  • Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 1801

This update is important as it means Veeam Backup & Replication will do the following:

  1. Install Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 Update 3a on the new Windows operating systems
  2. Install components (such as proxies, repositories, etc.) on the new Windows operating systems
  3. Perform backup and replication jobs from the new vSphere platforms and the Hyper-V roles in the Microsoft Windows Server 1803 operating system

One different notation is the “Preliminary” support for VMware vSphere 6.5 Update 2. Those of you who have been following the weekly forum digest emails have additional insights to the many milestones that had to be achieved to get to this point. This is very important as with a product providing backup in the data center, we cannot take any risk of a false sense of security. These emails are also where you can get the latest from R&D on all the catch points that may arise; namely what we are seeing with vSphere 6.5 Update 2. Support for this release will likely come in an update to 6.5 Update 2 itself. The support statement is clarified well in this forum post, basically stating as it is there is a known issue a critical API for our use failing under load.

To remain on the cutting edge, many organizations like to maintain aggressive policies on upgrading to the latest vSphere, vCloud Director, Windows 10 and Windows Server releases; and ensuring that these platforms are supported for backup should be an important consideration. This is yet another reason why Veeam continues to work hard to deliver updated platform support as soon as possible. As you plan your next moves for your business, you can know that the platform support needed to keep those applications, systems and data available will be there with Veeam.

This article was provided by our service partner : veeam.com 

veeam

Veeam Availability Console U1 is now available

Managed service providers (MSPs) are playing an increasingly critical role in helping businesses of all sizes realize their digital transformation aspirations. The extensive offerings made available to businesses continue to allow them to shift day-to-day management onto you, the MSP, while allowing them to focus on more strategic initiatives. One of the most notable services being backup and recovery.

We introduced Veeam Availability Console in November 2017, a FREE, cloud-enabled management platform built specifically for service providers. Through this console, service providers can remotely manage and monitor the Availability of their customer’s virtual, physical and cloud-based workloads protected by Veeam solutions with ease. And, in just a few short months, we’ve seen incredible adoption across our global Veeam Cloud & Service Provider (VCSP) partner base, with overwhelmingly positive feedback.

Today, I’m happy to announce the General Availability (GA) of Veeam Availability Console U1, bringing with it some of the most hotly requested features to help further address the needs of your service provider business.

Enhanced Veeam Agent support

The initial release of Veeam Availability Console was capable of monitoring Veeam Agents deployed and managed by the service provider through Veeam Availability Console. New to U1 is the ability to achieve greater insights into your customer environments with new support that extends to monitoring and alarms for Veeam Agents that are managed by Veeam Backup & Replication. With this new capability, we’re enabling you to extend your monitoring services to even more Veeam customers that purchase their own Veeam Agents, but still want the expertise that you can bring to their business. And yes, this even includes monitoring support for Veeam Agent for Linux instances that are managed by Veeam Backup & Replication.

New user security group

VCSP partners wanting to delegate Veeam Availability Console access without granting complete control (like local administrator privileges) can now take advantage of the new operator role. This role permits access to everything within Veeam Availability Console essential to the remote monitoring and management of customer environments (you can even assign access to your employees on a company-by-company basis), but excludes access to Veeam Availability Console server configuration settings. Now you can assign access to Veeam Availability Console to your staff without exposing settings of the Veeam Availability Console server.

ConnectWise Manage integration

We’re introducing native integration with ConnectWise Manage. Through this new, seamless integration (available in the plugins library tab), the management, monitoring and billing of Veeam Availability Console-powered cloud backup and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) can now be consolidated with your other managed service offerings into the single pane of glass that is ConnectWise Manage. This integration makes it easier and more efficient to expand your services portfolio while making administration of multiple, differing managed services much more efficient.

Matt Baldwin, President of Vertisys said, “This integration is exactly what my business needs to streamline our managed backup and DRaaS offering. The interface is clean and intuitive with just the right number of features. We project a yearly savings of 50 to 60 hours.”

Let’s take a closer look at some of the integration points between Veeam Availability Console and ConnectWise Manage.

Mapping companies

Firstly, the integration will help avoid a lot of manually intensive work by automatically synchronizing and mapping companies present in ConnectWise Manage with those in Veeam Availability Console. Automatic mapping is achieved through the company name. Before mapping is fully-complete, Veeam Availability Console allows you to check over what it’s automatically mapped before committing to the synchronization. If no match is found, mapping can be completed manually to an existing company or through the creation of a new company, with the option to send login credentials for the self-service customer portal, too.

Ticket creation

The integration also enables you to more quickly resolve issues before they impact your customers’ business through automatic ticket creation within ConnectWise Manage from Veeam Availability Console alarms. You can specify from the list of available alarms within Veeam Availability Console all those that are capable of triggering a ticket (e.g. failed backup, exceeding quota, etc.), and to which service board within ConnectWise Manage the ticket is posted. We’ve also enabled you with the capability to set delays (e.g. 1 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, etc.) between the alarm occurring and the ticket posting, so issues like a temporary connectivity loss that self-resolves doesn’t trigger a ticket immediately. Every ticket created in ConnectWise Manage is automatically bundled with the corresponding configuration, such as representing a computer managed by Veeam Availability Console. This makes it incredibly easy for support engineers to find which component failed and where to go fix it. The integration also works in reverse, so that when tickets are closed within ConnectWise Manage, the corresponding alarm in Veeam Availability Console will be resolved.

Billing

The final part of the integration extends to billing, reducing complexities for you and your customers by consolidating invoices for all the managed services in your portfolio connected to ConnectWise Manage into a single bill. Not only this, but the integration allows for the automatic creation of new products in ConnectWise Manage, or mapping to existing ones. Service providers can select which agreement Veeam Availability Console-powered services should be added to on a per-customer basis, with agreements updated automatically based on activity, quota usage, etc.

Enhanced scalability

Finally, we’ve enhanced the scalability potential of Veeam Availability Console, enabling you to deliver your services to even more customers. The scalability improvements specifically align to the supported number of managed Veeam Backup & Replication servers, and this is especially useful when paired with the enhanced Veeam Agent support discussed earlier. This ensures optimal operation and performance when managing up to 10,000 Veeam Agents and up to 600 Veeam Backup & Replication servers, protecting 150-200 VMs and Veeam Agents each.

This article was provided by our service partner : veeam.com

3 MSP Best Practices for Protecting Users

Cyberattacks are on the rise, with UK firms being hit, on average, by over 230,000 attacks in 2017. Managed service providers (MSPs) need to make security a priority in 2018, or they will risk souring their relationships with clients. By following 3 simple MSP best practices consisting of user education, backup and recovery, and patch management, your MSP can enhance security, mitigate overall client risk, and grow revenue.

User Education

An effective anti-virus is essential to keeping businesses safe; however, It isn’t enough anymore. Educating end users through security awareness training can reduce the cost and impact of user-generated infections and breaches, while also helping clients meet the EU’s new GDPR compliance requirements. Cybercriminals’ tactics are evolving and increasingly relying on user error to circumvent security protocols. Targeting businesses through end users via social engineering is a rising favorite among new methods of attack.

Common social engineering attacks include:

  • An email from a trusted friend, colleague or contact—whose account has been compromised—containing a compelling story with a malicious link/download is very popular. For example, a managing director’s email gets hacked and the finance department receives an email to pay an outstanding “invoice”.
  • A phishing email, comment, or text message that appears to come from a legitimate company or institution. The messages may ask you to donate to charity, ‘verify’ information, or notify you that you’re the winner in a competition you never entered.
  • A fraudster leaving a USB around a company’s premises hoping a curious employee will insert it into a computer providing access to company data.

Highly topical, relevant, and timely real-life educational content can minimize the impact of security breaches caused by user error. By training clients on social engineering and other topics including ransomware, email, passwords, and data protection, you can help foster a culture of security while adding serious value for your clients.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Plans

It’s important for your MSP to stress the importance of backups. If hit with ransomware without a secure backup, clients face the unsavory options of either paying up or losing important data. Offering clients automated, cloud-based backup makes it virtually impossible to infect backup data and provides additional benefits, like a simplified backup process, offsite data storage, and anytime/anywhere access. In the case of a disaster, there should be a recovery plan in place. Even the most secure systems can be infiltrated. Build your plan around business-critical data, a disaster recovery timeline, and protocol for disaster communications.

Things to consider for your disaster communications
  • Who declares the disaster?
  • How are employees informed?
  • How will you communicate with customers?

Once a plan is in place, it is important to monitor and test that it has been implemented effectively. A common failure with a company’s backup strategy occurs when companies fail to test their backups. Then, disaster strikes and only then do they discover they cannot restore their data. A disaster recovery plan should be tested regularly and updated as needed. Once a plan is developed, it doesn’t mean that it’s effective or set in stone.

Patch Management

Consider it an iron law; patch and update everything immediately following a release. As soon as patches/updates are released and tested, they should be applied for maximum protection. The vast majority of updates are security related and need to be kept up-to-date. Outdated technology–especially an operating system (OS)–is one of the most common weaknesses exploited in a cyberattack. Without updates, you leave browsers and other software open to ransomware and exploit kits. By staying on top of OS updates, you can prevent extremely costly cyberattacks. For example, in 2017 Windows 10 saw only 15% of total files deemed to be malware, while Windows 7 saw 63%. These figures and more can be found in Webroot’s 2018 Threat Report.

Patching Process

Patching is a never-ending cycle, and it’s good practice to audit your existing environment by creating a complete inventory of all production systems used. Remember to standardize systems to use the same operating systems and application software. This makes the patching process easier. Additionally, assess vulnerabilities against inventory/control lists by separating the vulnerabilities that affect your systems from those that don’t. This will make it easier for your business to classify and prioritize vulnerabilities, as each risk should be assessed by the likelihood of the threat occurring, the level of vulnerability, and the cost of recovery. Once it’s determined which vulnerabilities are of the highest importance, develop and test the patch. The patch should then deploy without disrupting uptime—an automated patch system can help with the process.

Follow these best practices and your MSP can go a lot further toward delivering the security that your customers increasingly need and demand. Not only you improve customer relationships, but you’ll also position your MSP as a higher-value player in the market, ultimately fueling growth. Security is truly an investment MSPs with an eye toward growth can’t afford to ignore.

This article was provided by our service partner : Webroot

Disaster Recovery Planning

How to build a disaster recovery plan with Veeam

Here’s a true story from one of our customers. A gas explosion resulted in a major power failure downtown, which in turn left the company’s primary data center offline for a week. This is a classic example of an IT Disaster – unexpected and unpredictable, disrupting business continuity and affecting Always-On operations. We can only imagine how much it could cost that company to stay offline for a week (as much as losing their business, I’d say), if they didn’t have a reliable disaster recovery plan and an Availability solution to execute this plan.

A solid disaster recovery plan makes your company resilient to IT disruptions and able to restore your services in case of disaster with minimal to no impact on users and business operations. It’s not just making regular backups, but a complex IT infrastructure assessment and documenting (including hardware, software, networks, power and facilities), business impact analysis of applications and workloads and planning on staff, roles and risk assessment. And above all, there’s an essential testing and exercising of your disaster recovery plan. If you don’t test, how would you know that it works as expected?

Unlike physical infrastructures with all their complexity, virtualization gives more flexibility in management and processes allowing you to do more with less. For virtualized data centers, Veeam delivers joint capabilities of enabling data Availability and infrastructure management. By using Veeam Availability Suite, you cover multiple points in your DR plan at once and get:

  • Offsite replication with traffic optimization and advanced capabilities
  • Easier disaster recovery orchestration and recovery testing
  • Infrastructure assessment and documentation
  • Capacity planning and “What if” modelling
  • Backup and virtual infrastructures monitoring and reporting

These also address compliance audit needs by providing you with up-to-date information on backed-up workloads, backups reliability and actual data recovery time versus your SLAs. If staying compliant and ready for audits is important for you, I recommend you read the new white paper by Hannes Kasparick, Mastering compliance, audits and disaster recovery planning with Veeam.

Replication as a core disaster recovery technology

DR planning includes defining the lowest possible RTO to minimize the disruption of business operations. In terms of ability to restore failed operations in minutes, replication mechanism wins the game allowing you to instantly switch the failed workload to its ready-to-use “clone” to get the lowest-possible RTO. For DR purposes, standby replicas of production VMs are stored on a remote secondary site or in the cloud. Even if the production site goes down, like in my example with a major power failure, a remote site remains unaffected by the disaster and can take the load.

Test your disaster recovery plan!

All data security and management standards (ISO family is not an exception) imply DR plan testing as a mandatory exercise. You can never know if everything will work as expected in cases of real disasters until you try it and run the planned procedures in advance. DR simulation will also allow you to ensure that your personnel are well-prepared for extreme IT situations and everyone mentioned in your DR plan is aware of the activities they need to perform. If you discover any drawbacks during DR testing – either human or software-related – you’ll have a good chance to fix your DR plan accordingly and thus potentially avoid serious disruptions in your business continuity.

Automated recovery verification for backups and replica restore points built in Veeam Backup & Replication (for no additional fees!) will save you much time and additional resources for testing. SureReplica allows to boot replicated VMs (VMware only for v9) to the necessary restore point in an isolated Virtual Lab and automatically perform heartbeat, ping and application tests against them. Also, you have an option to run your own customized tests – all without any impact on your production.

Final word

Disaster recovery planning is not just another bureaucracy, but a set of measures to maintain an organization’s business continuity. Built in compliance with international regulations and standards, a DR plan gives your customers a high level of confidence in your non-stop services, data security and Availability. Veeam helps you to stay compliant with both internal and external IT regulations, be ready for audit and be able to restore any system or data in minutes.

This article was provided by our service partner : veeam.com

Technology Teams

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