Barracuda MSP Industry and Tech Blog

Do you think of artificial intelligence (AI) as just another buzzword, or is it the next big thing to protect your customers’ inboxes? With email threats becoming more evasive and sophisticated, security vendors are turning to AI to help MSPs defend their customers against the latest attacks.

Today, only 15 percent of businesses are using artificial intelligence, but 31 percent say it’s on the agenda for the next 12 months. However, this new trend might be the edge your customers need to defend their business-critical data from looming cyber criminals. This week’s tip comes from Jim Furstenberg, an assistant professor of information security, in a recent post on Smarter MSP.

How confident are you that your SMB customers and their employees know how to recognize a phishing attack? Most likely the answer is not very. According to Barracuda’s 2018 Email Security Trends Report, 84 percent of IT security professionals said poor employee behavior is a greater email security concern than inadequate tools.

The solution? Better security awareness training. In the email security trends report, 98 percent of respondents said there are better ways to train employees than traditional classroom-style education.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce Managed PhishLine, a new service for MSPs. To give you an inside look at the new addition to our professional services offering and how it can help your business, we talked to Jayne Haggard from the Managed PhishLine team.

Behind the scenes of every successful MSP business is a well-crafted marketing strategy. The right strategy can help drive more prospects to your website, build your brand’s reputation, and grow your customer base.

To truly be effective in your marketing efforts, you need to make marketing your IT service business a priority. All too often, smaller companies put their marketing strategy on the backburner and only make an effort when they have time.

Phishing attacks are increasing at a rapid rate, which is why it is so important to educate your customers about email security best practices. In fact, a recent report showed that 1.5 million phishing emails—representing more than 10,000 unique phishing attempts—were blocked by Barracuda in the month of May alone.  

Schools are out, and summer has officially begun! With family vacations and holidays around the corner, you might be thinking about different ways to drum up some additional managed services business during what can be a slow season.

Email security is a primary threat vector for businesses of all sizes, and that won’t be changing anytime soon. The nature of those email-borne threats is evolving, though, and MSPs need to keep up. You can’t have an email offering that stands still — and neither can your vendors. The threat landscape is simply too dynamic.

Albert Einstein once said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” When it comes to running a profitable IT service business, it’s often best to take that approach. Not only should you find ways to simplify your processes and procedures for your techs, but you should also look for a way to simplify who you work with.

Here at Barracuda MSP, we like to say that we only succeed when our MSP partners succeed. This point of view informs everything we do, from the solutions we develop to the resources we provide to our MSP partners.

Skilled technicians are in demand, which is why businesses are having a hard time holding onto their internal IT staff. Instead of employing these highly skilled workers, more companies are turning to managed service businesses to take over for their internal IT departments.

This presents a large opportunity for providers that are already established in the channel or those looking to grow their managed services offerings. Alan Boshnack from The Net Solvers shared his advice on how to effectively break into the managed service market:

At Barracuda MSP, we understand that remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) platforms are an important part of our MSP partners’ success. That’s why we’re excited about our integration for Barracuda Intronis Backup – MSP with ConnectWise Automate (formerly LabTech).

To give you a better look at the integration and its benefits, we sat down with Chris Crellin, the senior director of product management.