Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World is opening in theaters this weekend. Hopefully MSPs everywhere, who are everyday superheroes to their customers, can grab some popcorn and watch somebody else save the world for a change. And rest assured you won’t miss any action happening in channel, because you can catch up here. Find out what JumpCloud and AvePoint just rolled out. Thread and NUSO have some new offerings too. Plus, learn what new partnerships and acquisitions may shape trends in networking and identity security. Finally, do you know what hackers are starting to prefer over ransomware? Keep reading to find out!
Products
JumpCloud Tackles Shadow IT Threats with SaaS Management Solution
JumpCloud, a unified open directory platform, rolled out a new SaaS management solution and expanded its device management capabilities.
There are several key features of the SaaS management solution. For example, you can use the JumpCloud browser extension to identify and track SaaS apps and accounts. You can also integrate it with platforms like Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra ID.
In addition, you can reduce security and compliance risks by blocking unapproved apps and guide employees toward IT-approved alternatives. And you can expand SSO coverage by connecting apps to JumpCloud single sign-on (SSO). Plus, there are advanced discovery capabilities for adding manual apps and native SaaS connectors. Examples include Google Workspace, GitHub, and Atlassian.
Finally, you can track SaaS usage and generate reports to identify underutilized apps and reduce unnecessary spending.
Device Management Expanded
Additionally, JumpCloud announced new device management capabilities.
Features include:
- Device Monitoring and Alerting: Conduct routine checks on the health of your entire device fleet. Identify and resolve device issues without delay to prevent any impact on your users.
- JumpCloud Application Catalog: Ability to install and patch a set of third-party applications like Slack, Chrome, Zoom, etc., via the JumpCloud Admin Console.
- JumpCloud Application Patch Management for Windows: Automate application patch management and version control for third-party applications on Windows devices.
AvePoint’s Next Generation of Elements for MSPs Debuts
AvePoint, a data security, governance, and resilience solution provider, launched its next generation of AvePoint Elements, an AI-enhanced platform for data security, IT management, and operational efficiency.
“Our partners have a massive opportunity to unlock new recurring revenue streams through security, backup, workspace management, and compliance services this year,” said Coby Liang, head of EMEA, AvePoint, in a press statement. “Our Elements Platform empowers MSPs to deploy standardized security and compliance configurations consistently across multiple tenants, helping them efficiently manage increasing data volumes and complex environments, thus driving growth and capitalizing on the expanding cybersecurity market.”
AvePoint Elements integrates with AvePoint’s compliance and data protection solutions and features seamless API integrations, enabling automation and remote management for efficient service delivery. Additionally, it provides centralized baseline management and workspace governance, ensuring consistency and efficient lifecycle management across customer tenants.
In addition, AvePoint Elements automates manual tasks and aims to simplify transactions between MSPs and their customers. And with AvePoint’s multi-SaaS support, MSPs can serve customers across clouds from within one platform.
The AvePoint Elements Platform also offers centralized management for multitenant configurations so MSPs can deploy, track, and enforce security and compliance across multiple tenants.
“MSPs have significant revenue opportunities surrounding multicloud data security and workspace management, especially when they offer more than one solution to their customers within a managed service,” said Scott Sacket, AvePoint SVP of partner strategy, in a press statement.
Thread Rolls Out 3 Major Upgrades to Its AI Service Desk
Thread, maker of an AI service desks for MSPs, just released some major upgrades to the solution.
Messenger 3 has a fully redesigned Microsoft Teams experience. Now, every service request automatically creates a Teams Group Chat, giving customers and technicians a clear, organized space to collaborate. Messenger 3 brings automated approvals to Teams, Slack, Messenger Web & Desktop, and even email.
Inbox 2 introduces Views, a new way to organize and track service desk activity. Views are faster to set up than channels, and they automatically pull in historical data—so you get instant insights into your backlog, priority tickets, and team performance. Inbox 2 now features real-time insights too, giving you an MSP dashboard that updates instantly as tickets are created, updated, or resolved.
Finally, Magic 2, Thread’s next-generation AI, now features full AI triage. Magic Agents instantly follow up with customers, gather missing details, set priorities, clean up titles, and categorize requests—before a technician ever touches the ticket. Magic also includes Agents Automations that auto-trigger approvals and execute actions via API; and Agents Service Catalog, a library of prebuilt automation tools that handle 40% of the most common requests. Setup is under 15 minutes, according to Thread.
NUSO Launches AI-Powered Recorder for Compliance Needs
NUSO, a cloud communication solution provider, unveiled NUSO Connect Recorder, a secure, AI-backed call and contact recording solution that offers sentiment analysis, transcription, and integration with NUSO’s UCaaS, SIP Trunking, and Connect solutions. This includes integration with Microsoft Teams and other collaboration platforms.
To meet compliance regulations, communication recording is often essential for auditing, dispute resolution, employee training, and maintaining adherence to industry guidelines—both within and beyond formal contact center environments.
Beyond compliance and security, NUSO Connect Recorder features a user-friendly interface with intuitive navigation; advanced tagging and commenting capabilities; and AI-powered transcription and sentiment analysis.
Partnerships & Integrations
Meter Enters Strategic Partnership with Microsoft
Meter, a provider of networking infrastructure, entered a strategic, multi-year partnership with Microsoft to collaborate on advancing networking.
The partnership focuses on three key areas:
Investment and support. Microsoft will serve as a strategic partner as Meter develops its next-generation campus and datacenter networking hardware and software, offering expertise in design and performance.
Advanced compute. Meter will soon fully integrate onto Microsoft’s Azure AI computing infrastructure, gaining significant compute and performance for training custom models. The first step will be moving Command, Meter’s generative UI product built on its own real-time, proprietary data, to Microsoft Azure. Direct access to Azure’s compute services—especially GPU clusters—will exponentially scale Meter’s AI training, inference, and analytics capabilities.
Market expansion. Through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, Meter will create new channels to promote, sell, and distribute Meter products globally. Meter will also collaborate with Microsoft’s expert sales and solutions architects.
M&A – Vendors
CyberArk Acquires Zilla Security
CyberArk, a provider of identity security solutions, acquired Zilla Security, provider of identity governance and administration (IGA) solutions. Zilla’s AI-powered IGA capabilities will expand CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform with scalable automation that enables accelerated identity compliance and provisioning across digital environments, while maximizing security and operational efficiency.
Under the terms of the agreement, CyberArk has acquired Zilla Security for an enterprise value of $165 million in cash and a $10 million earn-out.
The addition of Zilla will expand CyberArk’s Identity Security Platform capabilities, including: discovery and onboarding of all identities with context and risk mapping; applying the right level of privilege controls across entitlement management, session management, credential management and authentication management; and automated lifecycle management, policy, governance and compliance.
Zilla’s IGA capabilities are now available from CyberArk as standalone offerings too. These include include: Zilla Comply, which simplifies user access reviews and evidence documentation through integration and automation that supports the entire audit process, from app integration to the evidence package for auditors; and Zilla Provisioning, which features an AI-driven, automated approach to provisioning tasks such as onboarding, role transitions, and offboarding, while ensuring all identities receive job-appropriate entitlements and access.
People
Liongard, an attack surface management platform for MSPs, appointed Joe Kilburg as vice president of revenue. Kilburg was most recently director of revenue at IT By Design. He previously worked in partner management roles at ThreatLocker and ConnectWise …. Several key executives departed ConnectWise. They are Raghu Bongula, CTO; Jake Varghese, EVP and GM; Ameer Karim, EVP and GM, cybersecurity and data protection; and Rafael Marty, SVP of product management. And ConnectWise promoted Jeff Bishop from chief product officer to EVP of product management.
By the Numbers
Huntress Report: Hackers Getting More Automated and Sophisticated
The just released Huntress 2025 Cyber Threat Report finds that hackers are maximizing their efficiency with automation. According to the report, the majority (87%) of attacks in 2024 were automated or helped by automated tools, with hackers using malware, scripts, and other automated methods to conduct widespread, low-effort campaigns efficiently. Once attackers got access, they moved to more focused hands-on-keyboard (HOK) activity, representing 13% of activity, where manual actions like lateral movement or domain enumeration were executed.
Phishing attacks also grew more sophisticated, with attackers moving towards tactics like QR code phishing and Living Off Trusted Sites (LoTS). QR code phishing—where users are sent an email with a QR embedded that directs to a malicious site—accounted for 8.1% of phishing emails, while 7% involved LoTS, a tactic that abuses legitimate platforms to share malicious documents.
The top target for hackers in 2024 was education, followed by healthcare and technology. Hackers used tactics like credential theft, abuse of RMM tools, and malicious updates disguised as legitimate software to infiltrate educational institutions.
Ransomware and Extortion
Ransomware groups are moving faster now, Greg Linares, principal threat intelligence analyst at Huntress, tells MSP Success, making it more critical not to miss an alert. They are also doing more planning and reconnaissance before launching the attack, often purchasing credential data from infostealers, he notes. The Huntress report finds that infostealers accounted for nearly a quarter (24%) of all observed incidents. Even adware and other unwanted programs, once seen as harmless infections, now have infostealing features that take sensitive data, contributing to a rise in infostealer incidents.
Another key finding, according Linares, is that more hackers are turning to extortion in lieu of ransomware. Instead of encrypting drives, hackers are threatening to leak data unless the organization pays an extortion fee. “That’s a tale for DLP [data leak prevention] companies as well right now,” Linares says. “In my humble opinion, DLP is woefully unprepared.”
