Just as cloud models and outsourcing of more data center functions have become more popular, the security needs, too, across cloud models have grown even more fast-paced and pressing.
And as small- to medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) have turned to such managed service providers (MSPs) to be in
effect their IT departments, they are also seeking those MSPs to serve as their best defenses
against myriad and changing security risks.
The latest BriefingsDirect security
insights discussion examines how MSPs in particular are building better security postures for their networks, data centers, and clients' operations.
Here to discuss the role of the latest security technology in making MSPs more like security services providers are Brian Luckey, Director of Managed Services, and Jeremy Wiginton, Applications Administrator, both at All Covered, IT Services from Konica Minolta, in Ramsey, New Jersey. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Here to discuss the role of the latest security technology in making MSPs more like security services providers are Brian Luckey, Director of Managed Services, and Jeremy Wiginton, Applications Administrator, both at All Covered, IT Services from Konica Minolta, in Ramsey, New Jersey. The discussion is moderated by Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Here are some excerpts:
Gardner: What are
some of the trends that have been driving the need for MSPs like yourselves to
provide even more and better security solutions?
Luckey: As MSPs,
we are expected, especially for SMBs, to cover the entire gamut when it comes
to managing or overseeing an organization’s IT function. And with IT functions
come those security services.
It’s just an expectation at
this point when you are managing the IT services for our clients. They are also
expecting that we are overseeing the security part of that function as well.
Gardner: How
has this changed from three to five years ago? What has changed that makes you
more of a security services provider?
 |
| Luckey |
Luckey: A major
driver has been the awareness of needing heightened security. So all of the
news, the different security breach events -- especially over the last 12
months, let alone the last couple of years -- with WannaCry
and Petya.
Now, not only companies but
the owners and executives are more in tune with the risks. This has sparked
more interest in making sure that they are protected and feel like they are
protected. This has all definitely increased the need for MPSs to provide these
IT services.
Gardner: As we
have had more awareness, more concerns, and more publicity, then the
expectations are higher.
Jeremy, what are some of the
technical advances that you feel are most responsible for allowing you as an
MSP to react better to these risks?
Wiginton: The capability
for the fast analytics, the fast reporting, and the fast responses that we can
get out of the products and solutions that we use helps tremendously in making
sure that our clients are well-protected and that security -- any security
issues that might pop up -- are mitigated very, very quickly.
Gardner: The
role of compliance requirements has also risen. Are your clients also seeking
more security and privacy control around such things as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or Payment Card
Industry Data Security Standard (PCI
DSS) and nowadays the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?
Tools and regulations
Luckey: Oh, absolutely.
We provide IT services to a variety of different industries like the financial
industry, insurance, and health care. In those industries, they have high regulations
and compliance needs, which are growing more and more. But there are also companies
that might not fall into those typical industries yet have compliance needs,
too -- like PCI and GDPR, as you mentioned.
Gardner: As
Jeremy mentioned, speed is critical here. What’s been a challenge for
organizations like yours to react to some of these issues -- be it security or compliance?
Luckey: That’s
a great question. There are a couple of things. One is technology; having the
right technology that fits not only our business needs, but also our clients'
needs. That’s a huge impact for us -- being able to provide the right service
and the right fit.
But also integration points
are important. Disparate systems that don’t integrate well or work well
together can be a difficulty for us to service our clients inappropriately. If
we have internal chaos, how can we provide a great service to our clients?
The proper progression and
adoption of services and solutions is also key. We are in a technological world,
for sure, and as technology progresses it only gets better, faster, cheaper, and
smarter. We need to be able to use those solutions and then pass along the benefits
to our clients.
Gardner:
Jeremy, we have been speaking generally about data center services, IT
services, but what about the applications themselves? Is there something
specific to applications hosting that helps you react more quickly when it
comes to security?
Quick reactions
Wiginton: Most
assuredly. A lot of things have been getting bloated. And when things get
bloated, they get slowed down, and clients don’t want them on their machines --
regardless of how it impacts their security.
So being able to deliver a
modern security product that is lightweight, and so fast that the clients don’t
even notice it, is essential. These solutions have come a long way compared to
when you were constantly doing multiple things just to keep the client happy
and having to compromise things that you may not have wanted to compromise.
Gardner: It wasn't
that long ago that we had to make some tough trade-offs between getting security,
but without degrading the performance. How far do you think we have come on
that? Is that something that's essentially solved nowadays?
Being
able to deliver a modern security product that is lightweight, and so
fast that the clients don't even notice it, is essential. These
solutions have come a long way.
Gardner: Tell
us more, Brian, about All Covered. You have 1,200 employees and have been doing
this since 1997. What makes you differentiated in the MSP market?
Longevity makes a difference
Luckey: We
have been around a long time. I think our partnership and acquisition by Konica Minolta many years ago has definitely been a huge differentiator for us. Being focused
on the office workplace of the future and being able to have multiple different
technologies that serve an organization’s needs is definitely critical for us and
the differentiating factor.
We have been providing computing
and networking services, and fulfilling different application needs across multiple
vertical industries for a long time, so it makes us one of the major MSP and IT
players.
Gardner: But, of
course Konica Minolta is a global company. So you have sister properties, if
you will, around the globe?
Luckey: That
is correct, yes.
Gardner: Let's
find out what you did to solve your security and performance issues and take
advantage of the latest technology.
Luckey: We
set out to find a new endpoint security vendor that would meet the high demands
of not only our clients, but also our internal needs as well to service those
clients appropriately.
We looked at more than a dozen
different solutions covering the endpoint security marketplace. Over about six
months we narrowed it down to the final three and began initial testing and discussions
around what these three endpoint security vendors would do for us and what the
success factors would look like as we tested them.
We eventually choose Bitdefender
Cloud Security for MSPs.
Gardner: As an
MSP, you are concerned not only with passing along great security services, but
you have to operate on a margin basis, and take into consideration how to cut
your total cost over time. Was there anything about the Bitdefender approach
that's allowed you to reduce man hours or incidents? What has been impactful
from an economic standpoint, not just a security posture standpoint?
A streamlined security solution
Luckey: Bitdefender
definitely helped us with that. Our original endpoint security solution
involved three different solutions, including an anti-malware solution. And so
just being able to condense those into one -- but still providing the best
protection that we could find -- was important to us. That’s what we found with
Bitdefender. That definitely saved us some costs from the reduction of overall number
of solutions.
But we did recognize other
things in choosing Bitdefender, like the reduction of incidents; I think we
reduced them by about 70 percent. That translated into a reduction of people and
manpower needed to address issues. That, too, was a big win for us. And having
such a wide diversity of clients -- and also a large endpoint base -- those
were big wins for us when it came down to choosing Bitdefender.
Gardner:
Jeremy, we’re talking about endpoint security, and so that means the movement
of software. It means delivery of patches and updates. It means management of
those processes. What was it about Bitdefender along the logistical elements of
getting and keeping the security in place.
Bitdefender
definitely helped us. It saved us costs due to the reduction of the
overall number of solutions. We had a reduction of incidents, a 70
percent reduction.
We have one consistent product
to work with, a product that, as Brian said, has cut down on the number of
things that come across our desks by at least 70 percent. The incidents still
occur, but they are getting resolved faster and on a more automated basis with
Bitdefender than they were in the past with our other products.
Gardner: Brian,
where you are in your journey of this adoption? Are you well into production?
Luckey: We are
well into the journey. We chose Bitdefender in mid-2016, and we were deployed
in January 2017. It's been about a year-and-a-half now, and still growing.
We have grown our endpoints by
about 30 percent from the time that we originally went live. Our business is growing,
and Bitdefender is growing with us. We have continued to have success and we feel
like we have very good protection for our clients when it comes to endpoint
security.
Gardner: And
now that you have had that opportunity to really evaluate and measure this in
business terms, what about things like help desk, remote patch management,
reporting? Are these things that have changed your culture and your business around
security?
Reporting reaps rewards
Luckey: Yes,
absolutely. We have been able to reduce our incidents, and that’s obviously been
a positive reflection on the service desk and help desk on taking calls and
those type of issues.
For patching, we have a low
patch remediation rate, which is great. I’m sure that Bitdefender has been a
strong reflection on that.
And for reporting, it's big
for us. Not only do we have more in-depth and detailed reporting for our
clients, but we also have the capability to give access to our clients to
manage their own endpoints, as well as to gain reports on their own endpoints.
Gardner:
You’re able to provide a hybrid approach, let them customize -- slice and dice
it the way they want for those larger enterprise clients. Tell us how Bitdefender
has helped you to be a total solution provider to your SMB clients?
Luckey:
Endpoint security has become a commodity business. It’s one of those things you
just have to do. It’s like a standard requirement. And not having to worry
about our standard offerings, like endpoint security -- we just know it works,
we know how it works, we are very comfortable on how it works, and we know it inside
and out. All of that makes life easier for us to focus on the other things, such
as the non-commodity businesses or the more advanced items like security information management (SIM) and manage unified threat management (UTM).
Gardner: What
now can you do now with such value-added services that you could not do before?
Luckey: We
can focus more on providing the advanced types of services. For example, we recently
acquired a [managed security services and compliance consulting] company, VioPoint, that
focuses solely on security offerings. Being able to focus on those is
definitely key for us.
Gardner: Jeremy,
looking at this through the applications lens again, what do you see as the new
level of value-added services that you can provide?
Fewer fires to extinguish
Wiginton: We
are bringing in and evaluating Bitdefender technologies such as Full
Disk Encryption. It has been a nice little product. I have done some
testing with it, they let me in on their beta of it, which was really nice.
It’s really easy to use.
Also, [with Bitdefender],
because there's a lot less remediation needed on security incidents, we have
seen a great drop in things like ransomware. As a result, I am able to focus
more on making sure that our clients are well protected and making sure that
the applications are working as intended -- as opposed to having to put out a fire
because the old solution let something in that it shouldn’t have.
Gardner: It’s been
great to talk about this in the abstract, but it's very powerful too if we can
get more concrete examples.
Do you have any use cases for your
MSP endpoint security and management capabilities that you can point to?
When
we rolled out Bitdefender to replace older security systems for a
client, their business stopped. Malware was newly discovered. The
previous solutions did not catch that.
Luckey: The
one that comes to mind, and always sticks with me, is a legal client of ours. When
we rolled out Bitdefender to replace the older security solutions they had,
their business stopped. And the reason their business stopped is there was
malware being detected, and we couldn’t find out where it was coming from.
After additional research, we
found that their main application to manage their clients and to manage billing
-- basically to run their business -- the executable file that they would take
and copy and actually install that application on every desktop, that had
malware in it.
The previous solutions didn’t
catch that. Every time they were deploying this application to new users, or if
they had to redeploy it, they were putting malware on every machine, every
time. We weren't able to detect it until we had Bitdefender deployed. Once
Bitdefender detected it, it stopped the business, which is not good. The better
part was that we were able to detect the malware that was being spread across
the different machines.
That’s one example that I
always remember because that was a big deal, obviously by stopping the business.
But the most important part was that we were able to detect malware and protect
that company better than they had been protected before.
Gardner: The
worst kind of problem is not knowing what you don’t know.
Luckey: Exactly! Another example is a large client that has many remote
offices for its dental services, all across the US. Some offices had spotty
Internet access, so deploying Bitdefender was challenging until we used Bitdefender
Relay. And Relay allowed us to deploy it once to the company and
then deploy most of the devices with one deployment, instead of having to deploy
one agent at a time.
And so that was a big benefit
that we didn’t have in the past. Being able to deploy it once and then have all
the other machines utilize that Relay for the deployments made it a lot easier
and a lot faster due to the low bandwidth that was available in those
locations.
Wiginton: We
had a similar issue at a company where they would not allow their servers to
have any Internet access whatsoever. We were able to set up a desktop as the Relay
and get the servers connected to the Relay on the desktop to be able to make
sure that their security software was up-to-date and checking in. It was still
able to do what it was supposed to, as opposed to just sitting there and then
alerting whenever its definitions became out of date because it didn't have
Internet access.
Gardner: Let’s
look to the future and what comes next. We have heard a lot about encryption,
as you mentioned, Jeremy. There's also a of research and development being done
into things like machine learning (ML) to help reduce the time to remediation
and allow the security technology to become more prescriptive, to head things
off before they become a problem.
Brian, what are you looking
for next when it comes to what suppliers like Bitdefender can do to help you do
your job?
Future flexibility and functionality
Luckey: We
have already begun testing some of the newer functionality being released to
the Bitdfender MSP Cloud Security suite this month. We are looking into the advanced
security and ML features, and some new functionality they are releasing. That’s
definitely our next approach when it comes to the next generation of the
Bitdefender agent and console.
And in addition to that,
outside of Bitdefender, we are also expanding the services from our new
security acquisition, VioPoint, and consolidating those to provide best-in-class
security offerings to our clients.
Gardner:
Jeremy, what entices you about what's coming down the pike when it comes to
helping to do your job better?
Wiginton: I’m
really looking forward to Bitdefender’s
Cloud, which allows us a lot more flexibility because we are not
having to allocate our own internal resources to try and do the analytics. So their
Sandbox
Analyzer and things that are coming soon really do interest me a lot.
I am hoping that that will further chop down the number of security incidents
that come across our desk.
Gardner: What
would you suggest in hindsight, now that you have made a big transition from
multiple security providers to more of a consolidated comprehensive approach? What
have you learned that you could share with others who are maybe not quite as
far along in the journey as you?
Testing, testing
Luckey: Number
one is testing. We did a pretty good job of testing. We took a three-pronged
approach of internal, external, and then semi-internal, so our help desk folks.
Make sure that you have a comprehensive test plan to test out how many bad guys
are being protected, what kind of malware is being blocked, and the
functionality. That's the big one … test, test, and test some more.
Choosing the right partner and
the right vendor, if you will, is key. I believe in having partners instead of just
vendors; vendors just supply products, but partners work together to be successful.
It’s kind of like dating, date
the right partner until you find the right one -- and Bitdefender has definitely
been a great partner for us.
It's
kind of like dating. Date the partners until you find the right one --
and Bitdefender has definitely been a great partner for us. Once we knew
what we wanted, the rest fell into place.
Otherwise, have your
requirements set up for what success looks like, those are all important. But the
testing -- and making sure you find the right partner – those were key for us.
Once we knew what we wanted, the rest of it fell into place.
Gardner:
Jeremy, from your perspective, what advice could you give others who are just
starting out?
Wiginton: Make sure
that you are as thorough as possible in your testing, and get it done sooner
rather later. The longer you wait, the more advanced threats are going to be
out there and the less likely you are going to catch them on an older solution.
Do your homework and you have to be on the ball with it.
Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Read a full transcript or download a copy.
Sponsor: Bitdefender.
You may also be
interested in:
- How a large Missouri medical center developed an agile healthcare infrastructure security strategy
- Kansas Development Finance Authority gains peace of mind, end-points virtual shield using Hypervisor-level security
- How IT innovators turn digital disruption into a business productivity force multiplier
- How a Florida school district tames the Wild West of education security at scale and on budget
- The next line of defense—How new security leverages virtualization to counter sophisticated threats
- Cybersecurity standards: The Open Group explores security and safer supply chains
- How the Citrix Technology Professional Program Produces User Experience Benefits from Greater Ecosystem Collaboration
- DevOps and Security, a Match Made in Heaven
