Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

April 2022

4 Tips for Creating a Successful Backup Strategy

Businesses of all sizes lose an average of $4,500 for every minute of downtime they experience, and often that downtime is a result of data loss. Data loss can occur for a multitude of reasons, such as theft, natural disasters, software corruption, or human error. In addition, you can combat the adverse effects of data loss by creating a backup strategy.

Recipe for Great In-Person Events: 5 Key DO's and DON'Ts

For the last couple of years, most of us have been working from spare rooms, bar stools at our kitchen islands, the couch, and even garages retrofitted into home offices. The pandemic has changed the world of work forever. It has also dramatically changed the world of networking and events. Since March of 2020, we’ve seen networking move to virtual spaces in the following forms: Many have spent a significant amount of time and energy building up their digital presence in the last two years.

7 Cybersecurity Statistics Every SMB and MSP Needs to Know in 2022

Cybersecurity isn’t just at the top of the discussion queue within the IT channel. Businesses and governments worldwide have turned a sharp eye toward rising cyber threats. Many have learned the hard way that small businesses are frequent targets of cyberattacks. The idea of “targeting a victim” itself has come into question, and more realize that widespread, indiscriminate attacks are the status quo.

The Real Benefits of Cloud Services

"The cloud" started as a term used mainly by tech industry insiders but quickly fell into everyday use over the past several years. As more computing processes moved into off-site data centers and more organizations turned to cloud storage, the masses began to talk about migration to "the cloud." Today, the cloud is the accepted term for this type of computing and is used widely in discussions of IT infrastructure, data storage, and certain types of software.

Microsoft will disable SMB1 client this year, what does this mean for your customers?

To be clear, SMB V1 has been deprecated, unsecure, and not recommended for a long time. But Microsoft is now taking the next step towards removing it from Windows entirely. In recent years, Microsoft had stopped installing SMB1 server on all Windows versions by default; however, they have kept installing the SMB1 client in Home and Pro versions of Windows. This was meant to allow end users to connect to various devices, including NAS, which only supported SMB1.

Moving Beyond Troubleshooting, IT Reports Best Practices

It is widely accepted that technology is critical to modern businesses, but it’s often challenging to show the value Information Technology (IT) delivers to the entire organization. As a result, IT is still often viewed as a matter of “troubleshooting” or “customer support” rather than a genuinely strategic component of the organization.

The Anatomy of a Cybercrime: Dissecting a Phishing Attack

Our previous blog provided an outline of the current phishing trends and potential consequences of not being aware of them. This article, however, takes a deep dive into a particularly dangerous type of attack. There is a large amount of phishing that is targeting webmail users on non-free mail domains in an attempt to syphon out their credentials for later use.

Windows Autopatch: Will MSPs Still Need a Patch Management Solution?

On April 5, 2022, Microsoft announced their new Windows Autopatch feature to take the burden of patching off the shoulders of overwhelmed IT departments. With a planned released date of July 2022, it’s worth getting educated about this new service from Microsoft and what its potential impacts on the MSP ecosystem will be. Spoiler alert: It’s not that big of a deal.

Five Essential Ticketing Automations to Get You Started

Like all Ninja products, Ninja Ticketing gives users many opportunities to save time through automation. Setting up automations against a tabula rasa can be a daunting task when first getting started with ticketing. We wrote this blog post to help new users get started with common, helpful automations you can use from day one. This guide will provide step-by-step explanations and screenshots to show how to set up these automations.

10 Tips to Creating a Website That Will Improve Prospect Conversion and Engagement, Part Two

Did you know? 75% of users admit to making judgments about a company’s credibility based purely on how their website looks and functions. So, it’s imperative that the design of your website doesn’t deter people from clicking through your site and heading straight to your competition. Continuing from my previous blog, looking at 10 things you can do to ensure your website is as engaging as it can be. Here are tips six to ten.

Filling in the Gaps: Manufacturing and MSPs

It’s no secret that the world of manufacturing is changing fast. The “fourth industrial revolution”, a.k.a. Industry 4.0, is leading to the digitization of just about every stage in the manufacturing process. Of course, a shift from a primarily analog and mechanical world to one where digital is at the forefront means increased bandwidth requirements, larger potential attack surfaces for cybersecurity exploits, and a drastic increase in the sheer amount of network-connected devices.

2022 MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation Results Are In-What You Need to Know

It’s that time of the year again! The MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK evaluation results are in and generating quite the buzz in the industry. And for good reason. The MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK evaluation focuses on a tool’s ability to prevent and detect cyber attacker behaviors. Now in its fourth round of testing, it has become the de-facto standard for how security solutions perform against different advanced cyberattack scenarios.

Reaffirming Our Commitment to Partners During Seismic Moves in the Channel

In light of the news that Datto is being acquired by Kaseya, we’ve understandably had partners reach out asking for our take along with a variety of questions. In addition to responding 1:1, I also wanted to share some thoughts in a broader way here on the blog. For starters, I think this acquisition reflects a reality that we have long believed — that the MSP market is healthy and growing fast. Investor interest wouldn’t be so high, otherwise.

Monitoring Hyper-V and ESXi-what should you do?

Over the years, I found that building out monitoring scripts and using them properly has proven to be a challenge. When I look back at my internal IT days using platforms like Whatsupgold, PRTG, or N-central, the question always remained the same: how can I monitor efficiently and get alerts that matter? In this blog post, I thought I’d tackle something that is a challenge for a lot of people: monitoring Hypervisors.

Getting Back into In-Person Sales & Networking

As the world opens back up, are you missing in-person sales and networking opportunities that growth-focused MSPs are jumping on? View this recording of a special live discussion with growth and revenue expert Adam Slutskin, the channel veteran behind wildly successful worldwide sales and marketing strategies at Liongard, ConnectWise, and others.

Building a Culture of Security: Practical Tips to Spot a Phish

Technologies exist to limit and spot the number of phishing emails that come into your business. Still, humans are the last line of defense against social engineering attacks like this at the end of the day. At some point, you're going to "be beat" as an employer or MSP. Instead of locking everything down and slowing business communications, staff from the c-suite on down need to be equipped to identify phishing emails, so the worst happens in a training environment and not the real thing.

Be Proactive Amid Growing Cyber Security Concerns

Over the past few weeks, we’ve all been paying very close attention to the events unfolding in eastern Europe. As an individual, it’s heartbreaking to see a war break out and the impact it’s having across the region. We know that cyberattacks are now a part of war. We also know cyberattacks can be targeted, but also have the potential for unintended consequences and increased impact as they can spread outside of the initial target.

10 Help Desk Best Practices for IT Professionals

As people continue to expand their business operations on technology and devices, the necessity of a functional and efficient help desk cannot be overstated. With ticketing software, help desk teams can provide excellent and swift assistance that keeps end users productive and IT operations running smoothly. As these roles become increasingly important to maintaining efficient workflows, organizations should understand how to apply best practices that make an impact.

Getting Smart with M&A, Part One-Why Standardization Is Critical

In my previous blog, I looked at what’s currently going on in the MSP market with respect to mergers and acquisitions. I also set the scene to discuss some of the key things we’ve learned from this activity and how this is helping to shape the way we are supporting our partners that are going through this process.

Hardware Asset Management (HAM) Explained

A well-run IT team keeps track of every asset in their domain, including hardware, software, and licenses. The specific task of managing hardware assets is known as hardware asset management. This involves keeping tabs on hardware from the time it's requested and purchased to the time it's phased out of use and disposed of. As you can imagine, this can be a daunting task when handled manually. Without procedure and special tools, the process can be scattershot and rife with opportunities for error.

Driving Business Efficiency with Endpoint Management

Endpoint management solutions enable businesses to manage their entire IT portfolio more efficiently and effectively. Combining monitoring, management, patching, remote support, and automation functionality in a single-pane-of-glass, endpoint management solutions like NinjaOne give you full visibility and control over your IT assets.

Double Click to Install: Create a PKG even your users can install from

You’ve got a script. Maybe you wrote it or maybe you found it online, but it handily solves a problem your users face or does a task you typically spend several minutes on with a single command many times a day. With any RMM platform, it would normally be a simple matter of deploying the script to those devices, setting the schedule for it to run, then sitting back and sipping your beverage of choice. Unless you’re in the server room—no food or drink in the server room.

What is Microsoft's New Commerce Experience (NCE)?

Microsoft began the launch rollout of the New Commerce Experience (NCE) in January 2022. This launch brings about changes that impact how MSPs and end-users purchase Microsoft 365 licenses. In addition, Microsoft created the NCE to reduce complexity and offer savings for long-term commitments while also bringing on new features to make CSP a competitive alternative to the traditional Enterprise Agreement (EA). This post will cover everything you need to know about Microsoft NCE.

MSP Guide: How to Move from a Break-Fix Model

If you are an IT service provider still heavily reliant on your break-fix offerings, a move to managed services based on remote monitoring and management software can bring significant business benefits and improve the customer experience. By switching to the MSP model, you can have higher productivity, predictable income, customers' trust and more. As your business model will inevitably change with this new model, it could be a bit tricky to figure everything out on your own. To make this transition convenient, we have put together a guide that will help you.