This week, the U.S. reclaimed the title of “world’s fastest man,” with track star Noah Wyles winning the 100 meter race in a photo finish at the Paris Olympics. If you’ve been engrossed watching the events during this final week of the summer games, MSP Success brings you the fastest way to catch up on channel news you may have missed—without breaking a sweat. See what’s new on the cloud computing front from SaaS Alerts and N-able. Plus, find out what the top cloud threats are and what Service Leadership has to say about slowing MSP revenue. And if you missed our story on how Rewst plans to spend its latest cash influx, you can find it here.
Products
SaaS Alerts Integrates Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
SaaS Alerts has added Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to its SaaS security platform for MSPs. Now, MSPs have a single pane to view Microsoft’s Identity monitoring, Microsoft 365 application suite, and the endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution.
SaaS Alerts enables Microsoft Defender to integrate directly with PSAs, sending alerts to MSPs over a single ticket. All alerts are centralized and reported over a built-in, multitenant view of alert data across all clients. SaaS Alerts will consolidate all alerts into the SaaS Alerts platform, eliminating the need for MSPs to log into each client account to see alerts.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint holds the largest market share in the endpoint security market, capturing 18.9% in 2022.
“There’s a lot of MSPs out there using Defender to protect their customers,” SaaS Alerts CEO Jim Lippie tells MSP Success. “This is a request that we’ve gotten a great deal over the last year or so. Our goal is to better empower MSPs to protect their customers and integrate with the tools that they currently use.”
The Microsoft threat security software is the latest addition to SaaS Alerts integrations, which include Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack, Dropbox, Salesforce, Okta, and Duo. The SaaS Alerts Respond module was initially launched in 2022 to allow MSPs to automatically remediate SaaS security threats in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. This functionality will extend to Microsoft Defender.
“Today we’ve got nearly 300 events that we monitor for and alert on and 24 applications,” Lippie says.
“By combining Microsoft Defender with our existing support for Microsoft 365 we’re enabling MSPs to protect their clients across the cloud and their devices and be rewarded with additional revenue at the same time,” Lippie says. “This combination significantly enhances our existing security capabilities and sets the stage for additional integrations later this year.”
N-able’s Cloud Commander Adds Windows 365 Management
IT platform provider N-able announced enhanced Windows 365 management capabilities within N-able Cloud Commander. Introduced in collaboration with Microsoft earlier this year, Cloud Commander is a multitenant solution for managing Microsoft users, Microsoft Azure resources, and Microsoft Intune from a single console—now including Windows 365 management capabilities.
“MSPs are expected to manage a lot of different environments, alongside physical devices through Intune, Azure virtual machines, and Azure Virtual Desktop,” said N-able Chief Technology and Product Officer, Mike Adler, in a press statement. “When adding the growth of Windows 365 to the mix, viewing all these assets in a single location is extremely important in making their business run efficiently—and in turn, making their small and medium-sized customers efficient.”
Some new capabilities include the ability to view and manage Windows 365 Cloud PCs across Windows 365 Business, Windows 365 Enterprise, and Windows 365 Frontline editions; access critical monitoring parameters for each Cloud PC, including provisioning status, power state, connectivity status, and last sign-in; and perform key actions such as refreshing, renaming, rebooting, and reprovisioning on devices based on user roles, with many actions supported in bulk. In addition, the integration simplifies Windows 365 license administration and optimization.
SentinelOne Launches Singularity MDR
SentinelOne announced the general availability of Singularity MDR and Singularity MDR + DFIR at Black Hat 2024. The new managed detection and response (MDR) service builds on SentinelOne’s Vigilance MDR service, WatchTower threat hunting offering, DFIR services, and more to provide 24x7x365, end-to-end managed protection.
Singularity MDR will be generally available to customers globally starting on August 12.
Tenable Aims to Reduce Whack-a-Mole Approach to Vulnerability Alerts
Tenable, an exposure management company, released two new features, Vulnerability Intelligence and Exposure Response, which are available in Tenable Vulnerability Management, Tenable One, and Tenable Cloud Security. Combined, the features contextualize vulnerability data from internal and external sources, identifying the riskiest exposures, according to the company.
“Without threat context and research insights, every vulnerability is a priority, creating a high-stress, low efficiency whack-a-mole scenario for security teams,” said Tenable’s Gavin Millard, VP of product management for Vulnerability Management, in a press statement. “The enriched intelligence and contextualization takes prioritization and response to a new level, providing security teams with the critical data needed to identify and reduce risk.”
Nfina Technologies Releases A High-Precision AI Computing Workstation
Nfina, a U.S.-based manufacturer of unified data storage, servers, and hyperconverged clusters, rolled out its new eight-bay 4508T-AI Workstation. Powered by 5th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, 5600MT/s speed memory, and NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPUs, the 4508T-AI Workstation is designed for high-precision computing workflows.
The new Nfina system is available now through Nfina’s partner network.
By The Numbers
Service Leadership’s Q2 Data Reveals Slowing MSP Revenue Growth Worldwide
Service Leadership, a ConnectWise solution and provider of IT performance data, identifies slowing worldwide MSP revenue in its Q2 Data Report. However, while revenue has declined to pre-Covid levels, MSP profitability has shown resilience, according to the data. The average adjusted EBITDA for MSPs worldwide increased to 14.1%, the highest in eight quarters. Private equity-backed MSPs also achieved their highest level in eight quarters, with 18.7% adjusted EBITDA.
The data shows MSPs have been enhancing their profitability by improving gross margins on services and products. The average product gross margin reached 26.3%, the highest in eight quarters. Additionally, the average managed service gross margin rose to 46.2%, the highest in over a year. However, project/professional services gross margin experienced a decline, dropping to 19.4% from 24.6% in Q1, likely due to lower growth in project/professional services revenue during Q2.
Also in Q2, 16% of MSPs reported a loss, an improvement from 19% in Q1 2024.
Cloud Security Alliance Reveals Today Top Cloud Threats
The Cloud Security Alliance revealed the top cloud threats identified in its Top Threats to Cloud Computing 2024 report.
Misconfiguration and IAM top the list, shown in order of significance (with previous rankings):
- Misconfiguration and inadequate change control (#3)
- Identity and Access Management (IAM) (#1)
- Insecure interfaces and APIs (#2)
- Inadequate selection/Implementation of cloud security strategy (#4)
- Insecure third-party resources (#6)
- Insecure software development (#5)
- Accidental cloud data disclosure (#8)
- System vulnerabilities (#7)
- Limited cloud visibility/Observability
- Unauthenticated resource sharing
- Advanced persistent threats (#10)
The CSA also noted some threat trends likely to impact cloud computing. These include more sophisticated, AI-based techniques to exploit vulnerabilities, rising supply chain risks, potential new data privacy and security regulations, and the rise of ransomware as a service.
“Given the ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape, it’s difficult for companies to stay ahead of the curve and mitigate their financial and reputational risks,” said Sean Heide, technical research director for the Cloud Security Alliance, in a press statement. “By bringing attention to those threats, vulnerabilities, and risks that are top-of-mind across the industry, organizations can better focus their resources.”
Acquisitions & Funding
EQT Buys Majority Stake In Acronis
Acronis, a cybersecurity provider for MSPs, announced that EQT is acquiring a majority stake in the company. The founders, management, and existing investors, including funds and accounts managed by CVC, Springcoast and BlackRock Private Equity Partners, will remain as significant minority shareholders.
Founded in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices around the globe and more than 1,700 employees, Acronis’ network spans over 150 countries enabling over 20,000 IT service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses, according to the company.
Ezequiel Steiner, CEO of Acronis, said in a press statement, “We are thrilled to have EQT as a major shareholder to support our strategic expansion and share our vision for growth. We would like to thank our existing investors for their support to date and are pleased that many will remain invested as we move forward. But most of all, I’d like to thank the Acronis team for their work in getting us to this stage.”
The transaction, pending customary regulatory approvals, is expected to close by Q2 2025.
People
GoTo, an IT management, support, and business communications provider, announced that Peter Mahoney, its chief marketing officer, has assumed the role of chief commercial officer. In the newly created CCO role, Mahoney will continue to oversee the company’s marketing efforts in addition to assuming leadership of the sales organization, which was previously led by Bill Robinson, the former CRO. Additionally, company veteran Nicholas Asadorian, GoTo’s vice president of corporate financial planning & analysis, has been appointed to interim CFO. Asadorian will take over CFO duties from CEO Rich Veldran, who had been acting as joint CEO and CFO since his appointment to the lead executive role in January 2024.
Odds & Ends
Distributor TD SYNNEX has added Securonix’s AI-Reinforced SIEM platform to its solution provider network … Password management provider LastPass has achieved ISO 27701 certification.
