Partner Spotlight: How one MSP provides comprehensive network and email security services

NoctisIT has been serving the Austin, Texas area since 2013, providing technical help desk support, computer support, and consulting services to small and mid-size businesses. The service provider’s security expertise has contributed to its demand, not only in protecting highly regulated businesses, but has also led to a growing number of partnerships supporting other MSPs. Co-founder, virtual CIO and enterprise architect Jason Whitehurst,
has more than 15 years of experience in design, implementation, and support of enterprise and SMB environments. “We partner with many different types of businesses in the area and strive to eliminate IT issues before they cause expensive downtime, so our customers can continue to drive their businesses forward.”

Pervasive attacks require higher security standards

NoctisIT supports several non-governmental organizations (NGO), which provide emergency healthcare services after natural disasters. Their employees travel around the world and their locations can be unpredictable, due to the nature of their business. This makes common security measures such as geo-fencing impossible. “Cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and pervasive, and many targeted organizations are nonprofits with purposefully limited IT budgets in an effort to spend as much as possible on servicing those in most need,” says Whitehurst.

The MSP is also seeing their fellow peers become cybercrime victims. “In one instance, hackers targeted an outdated plug-in to a leading RMM tool, which enabled hackers to compromise several MSPs’ networks. They gained access to the MSPs’ customers via the RMM tool and to spread zero-day ransomware. These events have often been tracked to an IT employee falling for a well-crafted phishing attempt and exposing client credentials,” says Whitehurst.

Barracuda Essentials and Sentinel security package makes the difference

Since so many of NoctisIT’s customers use Office 365, adding the extra protection of Barracuda Essentials was a natural choice. “Barracuda Essentials gives us the ability to see clients’ backups in real time, which is not available with the backup tool that comes with an Office 365 subscription,” says Whitehurst. “No one else has a security package like this and at such an affordable price. Once a year I’ll do a product check to investigate competitive offerings, and Barracuda Essentials is still a couple of years ahead of the others.”

Whitehurst was pleasantly surprised to learn about a new security product that complements Essentials: Barracuda Sentinel, which uses AI and machine learning to detect spear phishing messages targeted to high-level individuals in an organization. “I had an opportunity to try Sentinel, and I was stunned at how quickly it was able to detect and intercept expertly crafted phishing attempts not normally detected by traditional spam platforms before they reached clients’ inboxes,” he says.

Security sales see massive growth

Barracuda Essentials now protects more than 3,000 endpoints for NoctisIT’s customers. “Sentinel has allowed us to reduce security engineer time significantly – either preventing, responding to, or analyzing spear phishing attempts,” says Whitehurst. “Previously, our engineers spent 12-16 hours per week on a decent size organization dealing with malicious emails that got through, re-imaging machines, and dealing with other consequences of the attack. Since we put Sentinel in, each engineer spends just five hours per week troubleshooting problems. We haven’t seen any targeted phishing emails get through since we started using Sentinel.”

Over the next 6-9 months, NoctisIT is projecting to add between 1,000 and 2,500 Barracuda security software licenses. “We added 2,000 new endpoints in the last 90 days and experienced 80 percent growth in security solution sales and services,” says Whitehurst. “We’re anticipating 200-300 percent growth this year.”

To learn more about how to protect your customers with AI, visit our Barracuda Sentinel page.

To learn more about our email security portfolio, visit our Barracuda Essentials page.

To learn how other Partners are improving their businesses, check out Barracuda MSP’s collection of Success Stories.

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Photo:  asharkyu / Shutterstock.