Opinion

MSP’s beware of world economics

It has come to my attention that a lot of “RMM Firms are trying to buy your business on 1 year special pricing vs monthly sort of like what Microsoft proposed for O365  pricing. Most of the these firms are scrambling to stay in business

As a distributor of security software I changed this model around to monthly without a contract 12 year ago. In the case of MspPortal Partners we can flex on accounts receivable against our accounts payable.

If any of you can remember the dot com bubble 2000, or Financial Market crash 2008, I know personally it seemed we received weekly bankruptcy notices from firms going out of business. Just review the business community they are laying off or cutting back hiring

If you can provide your clients “Flex Power” to grow and retract on the fly, your business will continue to grow now and into the future

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace,  Axcient
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Important: Microsoft 365 – Term and Prices Announcement

As a Security Provider of Security Software by Rackspace be aware Microsoft will be reaching into your pocketbook  (Wrong) MspPortal Partners refuses to sell O365.

Rackspace offers a Standalone  or Hosted mail server and at MspPortal Partners monthly  and no contract pricing.

We previously shared an announcement about changes to the Microsoft 365 CSP experience regarding the enforcement of annual-commit subscription terms, price increases on select products, and a premium charge for monthly-commit licenses. Microsoft is now enforcing annual commitments which historically they have not enforced, and they have created an offer for monthly-commitment options but with a premium charge.

This communication serves as a reminder that monthly-commit licenses will receive a price increase due to the pricing premium from Microsoft for monthly adjustment flexibility. As required by Rackspace’s agreement with our Customers, this communication serves as your 45-day notice that Rackspace will begin to pass Microsoft’s price increase through to our customers on July 1, 2022, per the terms of our agreement.

Microsoft is currently not allowing terms to change from monthly to annual commitments. However, we are working closely with Microsoft to provide an option to allow our customers to switch to annual licenses prior to July 1 to avoid the monthly premium should they wish to do so. Please continue to monitor the control panel where you manage licenses, as we will enable this feature via the control panel once we come to a resolution with Microsoft.

In the initial announcement, we announced Microsoft’s price increases on six products, reflected on invoices as of April 1 with pricing as follows (annual-commit pricing, per user/per month):

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Microsoft the No. 1 Most-Spoofed Brand in Phishing Attacks (O365)

1) Microsoft the No. 1 Most-Spoofed Brand in Phishing Attacks
Nearly 60% of all phishing attacks impersonate Microsoft and about half a million Microsoft 365 accounts were compromised in 2021, new data shows.

Barracuda Networks’ telemetry — from from millions of emails it analyzed — shows that in 2021, a little over half of all social engineering attacks came via phishing, and Microsoft was the most-impersonated brand in those attack attempts. Overall, attackers sent 3 million emails from 12,000 compromised accounts, and one in five organizations suffered an account compromise last year.

As a Security Software Distributor of Barracuda there security mail which is by far the best in the industry. Built from scratch using open source. For a very inexpensive dollar amount you could be protected> Call your MSP/Tech firm for pricing and then have them call MspPortal Partners to assist in implementing a secure solution at no additional cost.

1) Google Emergency Update Fixes Chrome Zero-Day
Google patches a critical flaw in its Chrome browser, bringing its count of zero-day vulnerabilities fixed in 2022 to four already. Do you really want to use Chrome or Google period let alone Google Mail
2) Microsoft Releases Advisory to Address Critical Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2022-26809)
3)Microsoft Releases April 2022 Security Updates (112)
4) Apple Releases Security Updates (its getting worse)

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Security Software Distributor: Bitdefender , Barracuda, RackSpace, Axcient

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

 

More Orgs Suffered Successful Phishing Attacks in 2021 Than in 2020

Enterprise organizations appear to be falling even further behind in their battle against phishing threats despite heightened awareness of the problem and efforts to curb it.

A new study shows that in 2021 more organizations experienced at least one successful email-based phishing attack than the year before. There were also more opportunistic and targeted phishing attacks last year compared with 2020, as well as phishing attacks involving ransomware and business email compromise (BEC).

Researchers recently analyzed data from a survey of 600 IT and security professionals and another survey of 3,500 employees from seven countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, and Australia. The researchers also analyzed data gathered from some 100 million simulated phishing attacks and more than 15 million emails that end users reported as being suspicious.

Seventy-eight percent of organizations experienced a ransomware attack in which a phishing email was the initial infection vector. Seventy-seven percent reported a phishing-related BEC incident — an 18-point increase from 2020. Overall, 12% more organizations reported being victims of an indiscriminate or opportunistic phishing attack, while organizations reporting more targeted spear-phishing and BEC attacks went up 20%.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President
Bitdefender and Barracuda Distributor for Msp’s
“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome (Must Apply)

Google Releases Security Updates for Chrome (Must Apply) (Review update)
02/15/2022 07:25 AM EST

Original release date: February 15, 2022

Google has released Chrome version 98.0.4758.102 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This version addresses vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system. One of these vulnerabilities has been detected in exploits in the wild.

CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Chrome Release Note and apply the necessary update as soon as possible.

I have always supported Firefox. As bad as I personally think Facebook is, I think Google products and browser are worse.

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President Bitdefender /MSP Aggregator – Distributor “Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Leading Barracuda RMM will release 12 SP5 MR1

We will be releasing Barracuda RMM 12 SP5 MR1 to our cloud instances starting on January 31, 2022. This release includes an enhancement to view automated task results and necessary security updates. To ensure our partners are protected, we have updated our third-party dependencies. It is required for all partners to update to this Maintenance Release as soon as possible.

NOTE: After you update the Maintenance Release, please ensure your Onsite Managers and Device Managers for Windows and Mac, as well as your Office 365 and VMWare Service Modules, are updated. These two Service Modules must be updated to the latest version to work with this Maintenance Release.

A maintenance window is required for this upgrade during which all services will be unavailable. Please plan accordingly using the schedule outlined below.

Barracuda Cloud Maintenance Window
US07 Friday, February 4 from 0000 – 0200 UTC-0500

This is a tech dashboard with more scripts to utilize for all your clients. Pricing is monthly no contracts and more aggressive then mainline products. Migration has no conflicts with other providers. Remote Support is a true point to point

Bitdefender and Microsoft O365 Information IMPORTANT

Bitdefender Policy Update- please apply

Network Protection ->General Settings Section- Check off Besides SSL Scan RDP.  Brute Force attacks are happening..it surprises me considering the whole world I thought shutdown RDP on the public side.

Microsoft Changes to O365 user and Resellers agreements

Dear Reseller,  

We’d like to take the opportunity to provide you with an overview of upcoming changes Microsoft is making to their CSP experience. 

Historically, Microsoft has not enforced their annual subscription terms which has allowed customers flexibility in modifying licenses throughout the annual term. Effective March 10, 2022, Microsoft will be enforcing annual terms, and offering monthly terms for customers who wish to maintain flexibility with license changes.  Monthly-term license subscriptions will be charged a 20% premium, however, to help support this new enforcement, Microsoft is offering a promotion for most of the monthly-term licenses.  This promotion is effective through June 2022 and is for designated SKUs where the customer has under 2,400 of the same licenses within the same tenant. Customers who do not want to pay a 20% premium for this flexibility will need to move their license to an annual term before Microsoft’s promotion ends in June. 

In addition to enforcement of term policies, Microsoft is only allowing a 72-hour time frame during which new subscriptions can change terms or quantities. After 72-hours from the initial purchase, subscriptions cannot be modified until the next renewal period (either monthly or annual).

Think about this the headache you will have trying to do co-terming with you clients. Remember this withing the same tenant, with no time to adjust. We are working to provide a solution and alternative to Micorsoft’s actions

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Bitdefender /MSP Aggregator – Distributor

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Bitdefender New Portfolio email

This will not effect MspPortal Partners pricing on all Gravity Zone pricing will remain the same. Per my Distribution Manager 1-6-2021

Yes a la carte refers only to annual enterprise solution – not MSP. You will continue to distribute Cloud Security for MSP + ATS + EDR, etc. with no change 😊

I will let you know details ASAP on the annual pricing changes to the enterprise only (no change to annual bundles).

The message sent was a little confusing and concerning to a lot of MSP and Resellers

The a-la-carte licensing model is being updated: advanced security capabilities (Cloud Sandbox, HyperDetect and Root Cause Analysis) will now be included in the base license to provide an even higher security level with the base tier. We are also consolidating SKUs and will support both on-premises and cloud console deployments from the same SKU/license.

– The current a-la-carte products and GravityZone Advanced Business Security will move to End-of-Sale for new customers starting April 1st, 2022. This is due to the introduction of the enhanced a-la-carte licensing mentioned above and to optimize the number of packages in our business solutions portfolio from four to three.

Something to think about as an opinion and comment if you bill your clients annually you might change to monthly as soon as feasible and financially acceptable to you.  Annual contracts both with your vendor and your clients could backfire or be detrimental to you .

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc ” Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

 

You think Apache Log4j Security Vulnerabilities is bad look at Mimikatz Malware

Mimikatz Malware

Attacks everything basically once there it will run additional tools to encrypt and do a search find for all machines to encrypt

The susceptible world is Windows of course.

Keep yourself up to date with Bitdefender (An update process has been completed successfully. (Product version: 7.4.1.111. Engines version: 7.90522 (10841006) This may sound like an add to promote Bitdefender but nobody needs Ransomeware.

Use there Gravity Zone basic with the Add-on of ATS/Sandboxing. Lock down in the policy also with no additional costs. This is a tech dashboard

I am having Bitdefender look at this and possibly develop a unencrypted key for the Ransomeware

Roy Miehe | MspPortal Partners Inc. | Ceo/President

Bitdefender / – Distributor

“Where Service and Technical Skills Count”

Disclosure MspPortal Partners only sells and works with MSP’s and Resellers.

Per Bitdefender “Managed services provider hosts the most in endpoint security”

MspPortal Partners simplifies and strengthens security in the cloud:

MspPortal Partners is a managed services provider (MSP) for internet service providers, resellers, value added
resellers and other MSPs. The company delivers comprehensive endpoint security, secure email, and networking in an OEM
arrangement with major manufacturers, hosted in a multitenant cloud environment.

An MSP takes on considerable responsibility by hosting critical business services for its
clients. That responsibility is multiplied when you’re the MSP for hundreds of other service
providers. Such a responsibility requires absolute confidence and trust in the solutions you
provide. Just ask MspPortal Partners.
This innovative MSP supports hundreds of MSPs, ISPs and resellers with everything they
need to offer their customers robust business solutions, such as endpoint security. MspPortal
Partners’ success is built on providing delivery and support services of the highest quality to
its clients.

Bitdefender Cloud Security for MSPs enables MspPortal Partners to deliver comprehensive
endpoint security services, including built-in firewall protection with intrusion detection,
content filtering and advanced antimalware and antivirus capabilities. The solution also gives
MspPortal Partners a multitenant dashboard for granular client specific policy management,
extensive reporting, and easy deployment of endpoint protection to multiple clients.

MspPortal Partners’ reputation for delivering reliable, economical, easy-to-manage endpoint
security has helped the company attract more than 76 new resellers in six months. And by
reselling Bitdefender Cloud Security for MSPs, these service provider customers also have
increased their revenue streams 33-40 percent. Not surprisingly, customer loyalty to MspPortal
Partners is also strong.

MspPortal Assisted a reseller to Deployed security to 52,000
endpoints in three days at 26 different school sites

Bitdefender-Business-CaseStudy-Msp-Portal-Partners