Thanksgiving in the U.S. is less than a week away. If you were out shopping for gravy and cranberry sauce and missed the news about N-able’s acquisition of Adlumin, check out the details here, plus be sure to read our follow-up Q&A with CEO John Pagliuca on what the acquisition means to MSPs and if new pricing bundles may be on the table. In other channel news, find out below what’s new from Microsoft, Syncro, KnowBe4, and more; plus who bought who; and some new research on good bots vs. bad bots. Enjoy the read!
Microsoft Ignite: All About AI
Microsoft Ignite 2024 took place this week in Chicago with more than 14,000 attendees and over 200,000 virtual attendees. Suffice it to say, it was all about AI and Copilot, including a variety of new agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot; updates to Microsoft Copilot Studio; Copilot in OneNote; new features in Copilot Pages; the general availability of Microsoft Places, which brings AI-powered location understanding to Teams and Outlook with Microsoft 365 Copilot; new Copilot Analytics, new features in the Copilot Prompt Gallery; new features for Azure AI Foundry, and so much more. As CEO Satya Nadella summed up in his keynote: “Copilot is the UI for AI.” For a complete look at all the announcements, go here.
Syncro Introduces Ticket Sentiment Analysis
Syncro, an MSP platform provider, added Ticket Sentiment Analysis to its Smart Ticket Management suite. This new feature leverages advanced natural language processing to help MSPs automatically gauge the tone and sentiment of customer communications within tickets and prioritize urgent issues. Negative sentiments can trigger smart automations, such as escalating the ticket, assigning it to a specific specialist, or generating immediate responses.
“Understanding whether a customer’s ticket conveys positive or negative sentiment is critical for maintaining strong customer relationships,” said Dee Zepf, chief product officer, Syncro, in a press statement. “This feature gives MSPs the insights they need to prioritize effectively and resolve issues with unprecedented speed.”
In addition to sentiment detection, Smart Ticket Management allows MSPs to tailor responses based on a customer’s attributes, such as VIP status or account size. Automations can direct critical tickets to human agents or send follow-ups to customers, streamlining service workflows.
Syncro’s Ticket Sentiment Analysis is now available to all team plan users as part of Syncro’s Smart Ticket Management suite.
KnowBe4 Rolls Out All-in-One Human Risk Management Platform
Security awareness training provider KnowBe4 introduced of HRM+, an all-in-one human risk management platform. Building on the earlier acquisition of Egress, HRM+ combines security awareness training, email security, anti-phishing, real-time coaching, AI defense agents and compliance training into a single, seamless platform.
“Given the rapid evolution of today’s most prevalent cybersecurity threats, people remain the greatest point of vulnerability—and potentially the strongest defense—for any organization’s security,” Stu Sjouwerman, CEO, KnowBe4, in a press statement. “Our new human risk management platform, HRM+ … is a natural progression of KnowBe4’s growth trajectory and cements our future plans to elevate our presence in this new market.”
Hornetsecurity Launches DMARC Manager
Hornetsecurity launched DMARC Manager, a solution for setting up and maintaining best practices in email authentication. After onboarding and adding the different DNS entries for DMARC, SPF, DKIM, all further DNS entries can be added directly in the product without having to do it every time in the DNS records.
The tool provides advanced reporting and analytics, and can identify suspicious activities, such as unauthorized email traffic being sent in the name of the user’s domains. It features increased visibility and control over sending sources, so administrators can discover shadow IT by identifying all email-sending entities associated with their domains.
It also provides enhanced brand protection by using Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI), so organizations display their brand logos in email messages to recipients’ inboxes.
Hornetsecurity includes DMARC Manager with its 365 Total Protection and is also available as an add-on to its Spam and Malware Protection service. The company is also offering it as a standalone product.
Arctic Wolf Adds Threat Intelligence Module To Its Platform
Arctic Wolf expanded its Arctic Wolf Aurora Platform with the addition of Arctic Wolf Threat Intelligence, a new module that gives organizations real-time threat intelligence and curated reporting. The new Arctic Wolf Threat Intelligence enables organizations to gain access to the same threat intelligence that powers the Arctic Wolf SOC.
Key features of Arctic Wolf Threat Intelligence include:
- Threat Pulse: Curated monthly and quarterly insights into active threat campaigns and essential Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) through easy-to-consume written reports and video highlights.
- Intelligence Feeds: IoC lists ,including IPs, domains, URLs, and file hashes-designed for seamless integration into firewall and endpoint block/allow lists.
- IOC QuickLinks: Search an organization’s environment for IOCs using Arctic Wolf Data Explorer, simplifying and accelerating threat validation with a single click.
SentinelOne’s Announces AI Security Posture Management Capabilities
SentinelOne announced new AI security posture management (AI-SPM) capabilities to protect and secure the use of AI services in the workplace. Built on SentinelOne’s Singularity cybersecurity platform, the new offering expands SentinelOne’s Singularity Cloud Security portfolio to provide visibility into—and protection over—both known and shadow AI cloud services running in an organization’s environment. SentinelOne’s AI-SPM will help discover the entire inventory of AI applications and models being used, detect and pinpoint AI service misconfigurations and vulnerabilities, and gain visibility into potential attack paths related to AI workloads.
Early adopter access is available now for SentinelOne customers, with general availability expected in early 2025.
Partnerships & Alliances
ServiceNow, a business operations platform, expanded its strategic alliance with Microsoft to modernize front-office business processes with Copilot and agents. Most recently, both companies introduced ServiceNow Now Assist and Microsoft 365 Copilot integration. The Now Assist integration with Microsoft 365I Copilot will be available by Q1 of calendar year 2025
M&A – MSPs
MSPs NETRIO and SUCCESS Computer Consulting, which recently merged, acquired PCA Technology Group (PCA), an MSP in Buffalo, New York. The acquisition of PCA strengthens NETRIO’s and SUCCESS’ service offerings by adding custom application development and integration capabilities and a broader range of services. “This acquisition comes at a pivotal moment in our evolution as a company,” said Gina Murphy, president and chief transformation officer of NETRIO and SUCCESS. “With PCA, we’re gaining valuable expertise and capabilities in the custom application development space that allows us to deliver even more value to our clients. And PCA’s history of understanding small and mid-market organizations’ needs and becoming an extension of their teams is exactly the approach we are looking for.”
IT Solutions Consulting, an MSP serving legal, healthcare, and other commercial firms across the United States, expanded into Canada with the acquisition of PACE Technical. Both organizations specialize in compliance, security, and seamless IT solutions for law firms. Garrett Graney, CEO of IT Solutions, said in a press statement, “We are thrilled to welcome PACE into the IT Solutions family. With this expansion into Canada, we’re reinforcing our mission to bridge the gap between technology and people. This is an exciting opportunity to invest in Canada’s thriving business landscape and double down on localized, client-focused service with PACE. PACE’s expertise and local presence align perfectly with our commitment to delivering exceptional client care, ensuring businesses can flourish and that IT is not a burden.”
M&A – Vendors
NUSO, a cloud-based communications, collaboration, and customer experience provider, acquired T-Metrics, a provider of advanced contact center solutions and communication tools for the enterprise, U.S. federal, state, and local government markets. T-Metrics offers certified cloud-based solutions that comply with FedRAMP, StateRAMP, and TXRAMP requirements, and premise-based (JITC) solutions.
Integrations & Partnerships
Malwarebytes and SuperOps are integrating Malwarebytes’ ThreatDown suite of endpoint security products with SuperOps’ AI-powered IT management platform.
People
Egnyte, a provider of cloud-based content collaboration and governance solutions, today announced the appointment of Elizabeth Hajjar as vice president of sales, EMEA. Most recently, she served as senior director of sales for Northern Europe at Highspot … John Pagliuca, president and CEO of N-able, joined the board of 8×8, a unified communications platform provider … Keepit, a SaaS data protection provider, appointed Fahad Qureshi as the new vice president of sales for America and ANZ.
By the Numbers
Good Bots vs. Bad Bots
New research from Barracuda reveals a changing bot landscape. Malicious—or bad bots—are evolving to become more advanced and human-like in their behavior. Meanwhile, an emerging category of AI bots, or “grey bots,” is blurring the boundary of legitimate activity. According to Barracuda, “These AI bots are primarily designed to extract or scrape large volumes of data from websites, for example, to train generative AI models. The bots can be aggressive when collecting data and may remove information without permission, possibly ignoring any embedded robots.txt code that is added by publishers to signal to scraper bots that they shouldn’t take that website’s data.”
Other key findings include:
- Bad bots make up 24% of internet traffic in 2024, down from 39% in 2021.
- However, the number of individual bad bots has risen and now comprises 44% of detected clients, compared to 36% a year ago.
- 49% of bots are classed as “advanced bots,” most of which are malicious and designed to mimic human behavior and handle complex online interactions such as engaging with targets in account takeover attacks.
