Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

February 2022

Beyond the ping

“I can’t get this website to load.” As common help requests go, this sort of ticket can cause any tech to roll their eyes in anticipation of wasting time on a wild goose chase. If example.com isn’t working for one of your users, it could be caused by any of a dozen or more points of failure—everything from the user making a simple typo to a major Internet outage.

Let's go phishing! Email security trends to keep up with in 2022

Although it’s good to stay optimistic for 2022, it’s difficult to deny that the main challenges the world has been facing since the beginning of the pandemic are still among us. Cybersecurity continues to be one of the key global targets for criminals in a world where an ever-increasing percentage of the workforce is shifting to working from home (WFH), leaving organizations more vulnerable than ever to a wide array of threats.

5 automation tools you should use or look into

One of the questions I regularly get asked is what common automation tools do I use or what do I advise people to use for various use cases? I thought I’d put this information into a blog for easy reference for our partners and others. Note: None of the recommendations below are commercial endorsements, but they are suggestions based on what I’ve used personally in the past. You are welcome to use whatever you want since most of the things below have other options, free or paid.

Replacing your backup solution: part one, learning why

So, you’re thinking about replacing your current backup solution. Well, before you start requesting price quotes and comparing feature matrixes you should understand that a change can have both short-term and long-term impacts. The extent of the impact depends on several factors, including why your clients need backup, how those backups are being performed, whether they have ever experienced data loss, and how long they need to retain backup data.

My pledge for Safer Internet Day

I was asked to write a pledge to help promote the importance of Safer Internet Day, which is taking place February 8. If you are not familiar with Safer Internet Day, it is a day dedicated to highlighting practical ways in which you can be involved in creating and maintaining a better online world. You can read more about it here. I took on this task and actually came up with two pledges: a personal and business one.

Securing DNS: interrupting attacks as early as possible

While MSPs have been making significant investments in security and offering services, it is a challenge to keep up with the frequency and evolving sophistication of today’s cybersecurity threats. Defense in Depth (DiD) is the foundation on which most MSPs have built a layered security approach for dealing with them.