As businesses move more of their IT services to the cloud, reducing complexity and making sure that security needs are met throughout the migration process are now top of mind.
For a UK managed services
provider (MSP), finding the right mix of security strength and ease-of-use for
its many types of customers became a top priority.
The next managed services security management edition of BriefingsDirect explores how Northstar Services, Ltd. in Bristol-area England adopted Bitdefender Cloud Security for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to both improve security for their end users and to make managing that security at scale and from the cloud easier than ever.
The next managed services security management edition of BriefingsDirect explores how Northstar Services, Ltd. in Bristol-area England adopted Bitdefender Cloud Security for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to both improve security for their end users and to make managing that security at scale and from the cloud easier than ever.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: What
are some of the top trends driving the need for an MSP such as Northstar
to provide even better security services?
Williams: We
used to get lots of questions regarding stability for computers. They would
break fairly regularly and we’d have to do hardware changes. People were
interested in what software we were going to load -- what the next version of
this, that, and the other was -- but those discussions have changed a great
deal. Now everybody is talking about security in one form or another.
Gardner: Whenever
you change something -- whether it’s configurations, the software, or the service
provider, like a cloud -- it leaves gaps that can create security problems. How
can you be doubly sure when you make changes that the security follows through?
The value of visibility, 24-7
 |
| Williams |
Williams: We
used to install a lot of antivirus software
on centralized servers. That was very common. We would set up a big database
and install security software on there, for example. And then we would deploy
it to the endpoints from those servers, and it worked fairly well. Yet it was
quite a lot of work to maintain it.
But now we are supporting
people who are so much more mobile. Some customers are all out and about on the
road. They don’t go to the office. They are servicing their customers, and they
have their laptop. But they want the same level of security as they would have on
a big corporate network.
So we have defined the security
products that give us visibility of what’s happening. It means that we don’t
have to know that they are up to date. We have to manage those clients wherever
they are on whatever device they have -- all from one place.
Gardner: Even
though these customers are on the frontline, you’re the one as the MSP they are
going to call up when things don’t go right.
Williams: Yes,
absolutely. We have lots
of customers who don’t have on-site IT resources. They are not experts. They
often have small businesses with hundreds of users. They just want to call us,
find out what’s going on when they see a problem on their computers, and we
have got to know whether that’s a security issue or an application that’s
broken.
But they are very concerned
that we have that visibility all of the time. Our engineers need to be able to
access that easily and address it as soon as a call comes in.
Gardner: Before
we learn more about your journey to solving those issues, tell us about
Northstar. How long have you been around and what’s the mainstay of your business?
Williams: I
have been running Northstar
for more than 20 years now, since January 1999. I had been working in IT as
an IT support engineer in large organizations for a few years, but I really wanted
to get involved in looking after small businesses.
People
appreciate it when you make an effort. They want to tell you that you
did a good job, and they want to know that someone is paying attention
to them.
I like that because you get direct feedback. People appreciate it when you make an effort. They want to tell you that you did a good job, and they want to know that someone is paying attention to them.
So it was a joy to be able to
get that up and going. We have a great team here now and that’s what gets me
out of bed in the morning -- working with our team to look after our customers.
Gardner: Smaller
businesses moving to the cloud has become more the norm lately. How are your smaller
organizations managing that? Sometimes with the crossover -- the hybrid period
between having both on-premises devices as well as cloud services -- can be
daunting. Is that something you are helping them with?
Moving to cloud step-by-step
Williams: Yes,
absolutely. We often see circumstances where they want to move one set of
systems to the cloud before they want to move everything to the cloud. So they generally
are on a trend where they want to get rid of in-house services, especially for
the smaller end of the market, for customers who are smaller. But they often have
legacy systems that they can’t easily port off the services from. They might
have been custom written or are older versions that they can’t afford to
upgrade at this point. So we end up supporting partly in the cloud and partly
on-premises.
And some customers, that’s their strategy. They take a particular workload, a database, for example, or some graphics software that they use, that runs brilliantly on servers in their offices. But they want to outsource other applications.
So, when we look at security,
we need software that’s going to be able to work across those different
scenarios. It can’t just be one or the other. It’s no good if it’s just
on-premises, and no good if it’s just in the cloud. It has to be able to do all
of that, all from one console because that’s what we are supporting.
Gardner: John,
what were your requirements when you were looking for the best security to
accomplish this set of requirements? What did you look for and how did your
journey end?
Williams: Well,
you can talk about the things being easy to manage, things being visible and
with good reporting. All those things are important, and we assessed all of
those. But the bottom line is, does it pick up infections? Is it able to keep
those units secure and safe? And when an infection has happened, does it clean them
up or stop them in their tracks quickly?
That has to be the number one
thing, because whatever other savings you might make in looking after security,
the fact that something that’s trying to do something bad is blocked -- that
has to be number one; stopping it in its tracks and getting it off that unit as
quickly as possible. The sooner it’s stopped, the less damage and the less time
the engineers have to spend rebuilding the units that have been killed by viruses
or malware.
And we used to do quite a lot
of that. With the previous antivirus security software we used, there was a
constant stream of cleaning up after infections. Although it would detect and
alert us, very often the damage was already done. So, we had a long period of
repairing that, often rebuilding the whole operating system (OS), which is really
inconvenient for customers.
And again, coming back to the
small businesses, they don’t have spare PCs hanging around that they can just
get out of the cupboard and carry on. Very often that’s the most vital kit that
they own. Every moment it’s out of action, that’s directly affecting their bottom
line. So detecting infections and stopping them in their tracks was our number-one
criteria when we were looking.
Gardner: In
the best of all worlds, the end user is not even aware that they were infected,
not aware it was remediated, not having to go through the process of rebuilding.
That’s a win-win for everyone.
Automation around security is
therefore top of mind these days. What you have been able to do with Bitdefender
Cloud Security for MSPs that accomplishes that invisibility to the end user
-- and also helps you with automation behind the scenes?
Stop malware in its tracks
Williams: Yes,
the stuff was easy to deploy. But what it boils down to is that we just don’t
get as many issues to have to automate the resolution for. So automation is
important, and the things it does are useful. But the number of issues that we
have to deal with is so few now that even if we were to 100 percent automate,
it wouldn’t make a massive savings, because it’s not interrupting us very much.
It’s stopping malware in its
tracks and cleaning it up. Most of the time we are seeing that it has done it,
rather than us having to automate a script to do some removal or some changes
or that kind of thing. It has already done it. I suppose that is automated, if
you think about it, yes.
Gardner: You
said it’s been a dramatic difference between the past and now with the number
of issues to deal with. Can you qualify that?
Williams: In the
three or four years we have used Bitdefender, when we look at the number of
tickets that we used to get in for antivirus problems on people’s laptops and
PCs, they have just dropped to such a low level now, it’s a tiny proportion. I
don’t think it’s even coming up on a graph.
When
we look at the number of tickets we used to get in for antivirus
problems, since we have used Bitdefender they have just dropped to such a
low level now, it's a tiny proportion. It doesn't even come up on a
graph.
You record the type of ticket that comes in, and it’s a printer issue, a hardware issue. The virus removal tickets are not featuring high enough to even appear on the graph because Bitdefender is just dealing with those infections and fixing them without having to get to them and rebuild PCs.
Gardner: When
you defend a PC, Mac or mobile device, that can have a degradation effect. Users
will complain about slow apps, especially when the antivirus software is
running. Has there been an improvement in terms of the impact of the safety net
when it comes to your use of Bitdefender Cloud Security for MSPs?
Williams: Yes,
it’s much lighter on the OS than the previous software that we were using. We
were often getting calls from customers to say that their units were running
slowly because of the heavy load it was having to do in order to run the
security software. That’s the exact opposite of what you want. You are putting
this software on there so that they get a better experience; in other words,
they are not getting infected as often.
But then you’re slowing down
their work every day, I mean, that’s not a great trade-off. Security is vital
but if it has such a big impact on them that they are losing time by just
having it on there -- then that’s not working out very well.
Now [with Bitdefender Cloud
Security for MSPs] it’s light enough from the that it just isn’t an issue. We
don’t get customers saying, “Since you put the antivirus on my laptops, it
seems to be slower.” In fact, it’s usually the opposite.
Gardner: I’d
like to return to the issue of cloud migration. It
such a big deal when people move across a continuum of on-premises, hybrid, and
cloud – and be able to move while security is maintained. It’s like changing
the wings on an airplane and keeping it flying at the same time.
What is it about the way that
Bitdefender has architected its solution that helps you, as a service provider,
guide people through that transition but not lose a sense of security?
Don’t worry, be happy
Williams: It’s
because we are managing all of the antivirus licenses in the cloud, whether
they are on-premises, inside an office where they are using those endpoints, or
whether they are out and about; whether it’s a client-server running in cloud
services or running on-premises, we are putting the same software on there and
managing it in the same console. It means we don’t worry about that security
piece. We know that whatever they change to, whatever they are coming from, we
can put the same software on and manage it in the same place -- and we are
happy.
Williams: Yes,
and the way that I gauge that is the amount of time. Engineers want to do an
efficient job, that’s what they like, they want to get to the root of problems
and fix them quickly. So any piece of software or tool that doesn’t work
efficiently for them, I get a long list of complaints about on a regular basis.
All engineers want to fix things fast because that’s what the customer wants,
and they are working on their behalf.
Before, I would have constant
complaints about how difficult it was to manage and deploy software on the
units if they needed to be decommissioned. It was just troublesome. But now I
don’t get any complaints over it. The staff is nothing but complimentary about
the software. That just makes me happy because I know that they are able to
work with it, which means that they are doing the job that they want to do,
which is helping our customers and keeping them happy. So yes, it’s much
better.
Gardner: Looking
to the future, is there something that you are interested in seeing more of? Perhaps
around encryption or the use of machine learning (ML)
to give you more analytics as to what’s going on? What would you like to see
out of your security infrastructure and services from the cloud in the next
couple of years?
The devil’s in the data detail
Williams: One
thing that customers are talking to us about quite a bit now is data security. So they
are thinking more about the time when they are going to have to report the fact
that they’ve been attacked. And no software on earth is perfect. The whole
point of security is that the threat continually evolves.
At the point where you’ve had a
breach of some kind, you want to understand what’s happened. And so, having
information back from the security software that helps you to understand how
the breach happened -- and the extent of it -- that’s becoming really important
to customers. When they submit those reports, as legally they have to do, they
want to have accurate information to say, “We had an infection, and that’s it.”
If they don’t know exactly what the extent of it was – or whether any data was
accessed or infected or encrypted without having that detail -- that’s a
problem.
Gardner:
Anything else come to mind about what you’d like to see from the technology
side?
Williams: So automation
is important and that artificial
intelligence (AI) side of it where the software itself learns about what’s
happening and can give you an idea when it spots something that’s out of the
ordinary -- that will be more useful as time goes on.
Gardner: John,
what advice do you have for other MSPs when it comes to a security, a better
security posture?
Williams: Don’t
be afraid of defining the securing services. You have to lead that
conversation, I think. That’s what customers want to know. They want to know
that you have thought about it, and that’s at the very full front of your mind.
We
meet our customers regularly. The first item on the agenda is security.
We like to talk about where they are, what's the next thing that they
can do to make sure they are doing everything they can to protect the
data they have gathered from their customers, and to look after their
data about their staff, too, and to keep their services running.
We go meet our customers regularly and we usually have a standard agenda that we use. The first item on the agenda is security. And that journey for each customer is different. They are starting from different places. So we like to talk about where they are, what’s the next thing that they can do to make sure they are doing everything they can to protect the data they have gathered from their customers, and to look after their data about their staff, too, and to keep their services running.
We put that at the top of the
agenda for every meeting. That’s a great way of behaving as a service provider.
But, of course, in order to do that, to deliver on that, you have to have the
right tools. You have to say, “Okay, if I am going to be in that role to help
people with a security, I have to have those tools in place.”
If they are complicated, difficult to use, and hard to implement -- then that’s going to make it horrible. But if they are simple and give you great visibility, then you are going to be able to deliver a service that customers will really want to buy.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Read a full transcript or download a copy. Sponsor: Bitdefender.
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