The overarching theme of the Kaseya event this year is security, but the company is also announcing a broad range of significant product enhancements, and a new Cybersecurity Management Certification Program.
Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO
Kaseya, which provides IT infrastructure and security management solutions for MSPs and SMBs, is launching their Connect IT Global event today. It is taking place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas from October 19-22, one of the few live events to go ahead this year, although it is technically a hybrid event since it is also available online.
Despite Vegas’ return to mask mandates, the event is expected to draw a good crowd with about 2000 MSPs attending in person.
“A couple things have hit to make Connect IT the perfect storm,” said Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s CEO. “Almost everyone else cancelled their shows, and many people want to get out to an event.”
The major theme of this year’s Connect IT is security. That also includes highlighting Kaseya’s new Chief Information Security Officer, 16-year FBI veteran and Special Agent Jason Manar.
The world is always changing, but the last 10 months really accelerated things,” Voccola said. “Cybercriminals had a feast, in part because IT people were more distracted. It’s also hard to catch a criminal if you can’t follow the money, and with anonymous currencies you cant do that. It’s the perfect time for a cybercriminal – a huge career for very low risk. Jason, our new CISO, was saying the FBI doesn’t have the resources to chase after cybercrime as a result. We spend about 3000x as much against the illicit drug trade relative to cybercrime.”
The news announcements for MSPs around the event begin with a new Cybersecurity Management Certification Program. Mike Steep, Executive Director at the Stanford Engineering Center for Disruptive Technologies, will provide participants with a set of tools to better equip their companies against cyberattacks today and in the future.
“That’s a huge thing for MSPs,” Voccola said. “We at Kaseya have been exposed to Homeland Security and the FBI, and they have emphasized how little MSPs know compared to what they need to know.”
Multiple enhancements to existing products are also being announced.
“Our platform is built for multi-functional technicians,” Voccola said. “Their biggest goal should be learning how these modules all integrate with each other, so they can do in one hour what it would take others four hours to do.”
IP Access Control has been added to IT Glue. It lets technicians restrict IT Glue access to specific IP addresses, with the ability to configure settings to even restrict access to the IT Glue log-in page.
“This is an enhancement that we have been asked for quite a bit,” Voccola said. “It allows you to do everything in one step.”
IT Glue has also added built-in security checklists to take technicians through the most effective ways to secure IT Glue and help establish best practices for securing documentation and passwords.
RapidFire Tools VulScan Portable Vulnerability Scanner has had its external vulnerability scanning functionality enhanced. The portable vulnerability scanner can be installed on a physical appliance and moved to different sites as needed, allowing MSPs to more easily use VulScan for prospecting.
“Our data tells us that 54% of MSPs and 38% of small IT shops don’t have a vulnerability scanner at all,” Voccola said. “They have been too expensive and too complex. We developed this over last two years. It is very affordable, and built for our market.”
Graphus, which Kaseya uses for email and anti-phishing security, has also been enhanced.MSP administrators can now save time by managing and configuring settings for end customers from a central location with just a few clicks.
“Also new with Graphus is the ability of the MSP to white label their reports, so they look like they are coming from them,” Voccola noted.
An enhancement to Spanning Backup for Salesforce automatically repairs lookup relationships when records are restored, saving technicians time.
Azure reporting has also been upgraded through Azure Infrastructure Discovery and Reports in RapidFire Tools Network Detective Pro. This new discovery and reporting capability makes it much easier for techs to spot unauthorized shadow IT on the network. MSPs can also better analyze usage patterns and produce reports to build an effective case for managing and securing the entire cloud structure of their clients’ networks.
New complete workflow integrations were also announced for myITdashboard in Kaseya’s BMS PSA tools, for myITprocess Integration with BMS, and for Unitrends Endpoint Backup Alarm and Monitoring Integration with VSA {Kaseya’s Virtual Systems Administrator].
