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3 min read

Streamline MSP360 Software Deployment with the Network Discovery Tool

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3 min read

Streamline MSP360 Software Deployment with the Network Discovery Tool

Efficiently deploying and managing MSP360 software agents across multiple computers in a network can be a time-consuming and challenging task. However, with the advent of network discovery tools, this process has become significantly easier. In this article, we will explore the capabilities and benefits of the MSP360 Network Discovery Tool, which serves as a valuable asset for bulk deployment of backup, remote monitoring and management (RMM), and Connect agents.

Case #1: Streamlining Bulk Deployment

One of the primary functions of the Network Discovery Tool is to deploy the most recent versions of required agents simultaneously across multiple computers. This feature eliminates the need for manual installation on each individual machine, saving valuable time and effort. By automating the deployment process, administrators can ensure consistency and efficiency throughout the network, thereby boosting productivity.

Case #2: Accurate Network Inventory

Understanding the composition of your network is vital for effective management. The Network Discovery Tool enables administrators to identify all the computers within their domain or local network and provides a clear overview of the computers present, allowing for informed decision-making and resource allocation.

Case #3: Comprehensive Deployment Reporting

After completing a bulk deployment, it is crucial to have a comprehensive report detailing the actions taken and any skipped deployments. The Network Discovery Tool provides administrators with a detailed report, enabling them to track the success of the deployment and identify any potential issues or discrepancies. This feature enhances accountability and facilitates efficient troubleshooting if necessary.

Case #4: Prompt Computer Tracking

In addition to initial network inventory, the Network Discovery Tool offers the ability to track new computers that join the network. By constantly monitoring the network, administrators can ensure that no computers are inadvertently omitted from their management scope. This capability enhances network security, enabling prompt identification and integration of new devices.

MSP360 Network Discovery Tool

To start working with this tool, click the Downloads tab, navigate to the Discover and Deploy section, and click Download. Once the tool is downloaded, run the set-up and proceed with the set-up wizard to finish the installation.

MSP360 Network Discovery Tool

With this tool, users can:

  • Discover computers: perform a search of available computers across the domain.
  • Deploy MSP360 software agents: once the list of computers for the bulk installation is ready, select what agents should be installed on which computers.

MSP360 Network Discovery Tool

Conclusion

Efficiently deploying and managing agents across a network is crucial for any organization. The Network Discovery Tool simplifies these tasks by providing features such as bulk deployment, comprehensive reporting, network inventory, and real-time computer tracking. By utilizing this tool, administrators can save time, streamline operations, and ensure comprehensive coverage within their network environment. Embracing the power of the Network Discovery Tool empowers organizations to enhance productivity, strengthen security, and optimize resource allocation in today's dynamic IT landscape.

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MSP University - Business
9 min read

Patch Management Processes and Best Practices

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9 min read

Patch Management Processes and Best Practices

Keeping software up to date can be a challenging task, especially for teams that manage multiple applications and operating systems. Every system will typically have different patching requirements and frequencies. That's why having a patch management strategy in place is crucial for ensuring that your team is able to keep all of its applications and systems up to date all of the time.
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Endpoint Monitoring
6 min read

Introduction to Endpoint Monitoring and Management

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6 min read

Introduction to Endpoint Monitoring and Management

Once upon a time, business IT environments were relatively simple. They consisted of a few on-prem servers connected to a fleet of PCs. The number of hosts on the network was comparatively small, and network configurations were not particularly complex. Neither were endpoint monitoring and management needs, which could be handled manually. Continue reading

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How to Use Billing in MSP360 Managed Backup Service
4 min read

How to Use Billing in MSP360 Managed Backup

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4 min read

How to Use Billing in MSP360 Managed Backup

The billing system in MSP360 Managed Backup allows users to set up custom prices and limits for backup and restore monitor clients’ statistics, and simplify the invoice generation process. This feature helps providers to either sell predefined storage packages at a fixed price or opt to charge clients per GB used.

In this guide we will walk you through these billing features in MSP360 Managed Backup, and describe how to configure limits, customize prices, control storage used, and monitor statistics. Continue reading

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What is RMM
8 min read

What is RMM? Remote Monitoring and Management Basics

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8 min read

What is RMM? Remote Monitoring and Management Basics

Remote monitoring and management, or RMM, tools make MSPs’ jobs more efficient by helping them take a more proactive approach to monitoring and administering the various systems that they manage. RMM solutions also enable automation, which allows MSPs to work faster and operate more effectively at scale.

This article provides an overview of RMM, including what it is, what benefits it offers, and how to use RMM as part of your MSP strategy.

What is RMM?

Remote monitoring and management is an approach to IT management that relies on pre-installed tools for monitoring and managing IT systems resources from any location.

An RMM tool could be an application that lets you log in remotely to a server, or it could be a tool that collects data about the server and streams it to a central dashboard where you can monitor all of your servers.

With RMM software, managed service providers can remotely monitor and manage client endpoints, networks, and computers from a distance.

In many cases, MSPs deploy RMM platforms that combine multiple types of RMM functionality – remote logins, remote monitoring, remote administration, and more – into a single product suite.

Key Features of RMM Tools

Remote monitoring and management software unlocks a wide variety of features that make it simple for your IT staff to effortlessly monitor and manage complex IT assets.

Real-time monitoring

Real-time client system monitoring ensures that a system remains protected against vulnerabilities and is operating efficiently. Every device connected to the client's system must have an RMM app installed. This way, all devices connected to the client's network will appear in a single management dashboard under the managed devices section. MSPs can monitor their performance in real time and install software updates as and when needed. In simple words, software deployment and checking network health status becomes easy. This real-time monitoring of the client base helps your team leader know what's happening all across the organization's system.

System alerts

Imagine that a device in your client’s network system encounters an S.M.A.R.T or antivirus issue. In such a scenario, RMM swiftly sends alerts to system administrators and MSPs, enabling them to promptly address potential issues, ranging from incorrect system time to high disk space usage. This software provides immediate solutions, ensuring that your organization experiences minimal downtime. MSPs can even receive real-time push notifications on their mobile devices, enhancing their sense of security and preparedness.

IT automation and scripting

If you want to save time, you can head to the script library on the RMM software dashboard. Run scripts to automate tasks such as cache cleanup, restarting the system, enabling/disabling WakeOnLAN, etc. This automation boosts your work efficiency and helps you manage multiple devices simultaneously. 

Patch management

Another feature that makes the RMM tool quite valuable for MSPs is that this software will manage and install security patches, driver updates, and software updates. It will keep complete track of patch runs on your system. 

Further reading Patch Management With MSP360 RMM

Reporting and analytics

The RMM tool unlocks customized reports about software inventory, patch history, and system health. Stakeholders can use these reports to make informed decisions based on data, and IT staff can use them as a document for billing purposes.

AI-Powered RMM

If you install AI-powered RMM software, it will help you with proactive maintenance. This tool can quickly analyze historical data and patterns and easily predict potential issues that need a quick fix. Once you know which areas have problems, you can easily find their solution to prevent downtime. Since this tool is driven by artificial intelligence, it can quickly remediate routine issues. There won't be any need for manual intervention for handling routine maintenance tasks. As a result, you will experience a boost in the work efficiency of your IT staff.

Benefits of RMM

RMM offers a range of benefits across different areas of a managed services workflow.

Monitoring and centralized management

RMM software allows your team to monitor systems 24/7 through a centralized dashboard. You don’t have to check each system individually to track its status.

What’s more, because RMM tools work in the background, they collect monitoring data automatically, without disturbing your customers.

Further reading RMM: What Do MSPs Need to Monitor?

Faster Support

With RMM tools, you can provide support from anywhere, regardless of where you or your customers are located. You can also easily support multiple customers at once from a central office.

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Further reading The Benefits of Remote Support

Automation

RMM tools make it easy to build automated workflows by, for example, setting up automated alerts for monitoring tools, automatically creating tickets to handle support requests, and using scripts to automate incident resolution. Thanks to its professional services automation feature, your IT staff needs to spend less time on the support desk.

PowerShell Remote Alerts

In this document, you'll find a PowerShell script that checks the status of the services listed below and sends an email alert if any of them is turned off:

  • Windows Firewall
  • Windows Defender
  • Windows Update Service
  • Any installed third-party antivirus
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Reporting

Benefits of RMM also include transparent reporting. Using the data collected by RMM tools, you can create various types of reports about your clients’ systems. For example, you can automatically generate data about how many times you logged in via this remote management software to provide support or how many alerts a client’s system experienced in a given time period.

Simplicity and Transparency

By consolidating monitoring and management operations into a single platform, RMM tools simplify MSP tasks. They also make information more accessible to anyone on your team who needs it.

Scalability

RMM tools are critical for scaling MSP operations. By automating workflows and making it easier to support clients spread across a large area, RMM helps your business grow.

Increased Productivity

RMM tools help your technicians investigate issues faster without having to travel to remote sites. In turn, they increase productivity.

Further reading Core RMM Software Features

Why MSPs Need RMM

RMM tools offer so many benefits that it’s difficult to imagine a successful MSP business operating today without the help of RMM.

RMM plays a vital role in helping MSPs make the jump from a break/fix model to offering proactive managed services. With RMM, it becomes much easier to monitor and manage your clients’ systems on an ongoing, continuous basis. You can identify and fix problems before your customers even know about them.

In addition, RMM helps you deliver more secure managed services. RMM monitoring and security tools can detect threats automatically. You may even be able to use scripts to automate security incident resolution by, for example, blacklisting an IP address that is generating malicious traffic.

RMM reduces downtime, too. By enabling you to find and fix issues proactively, RMM means fewer disruptions for your customers.

Finally, as your customers’ needs change or you seek to offer new types of managed services, RMM provides the flexibility to help you do so. When you spend less time traveling to remote sites or fixing problems manually, you are in a stronger position to offer more services to more customers.

Further reading RMM Security for MSPs: Vulnerabilities and Best Practices

RMM and MSP Profitability

There are hard financial reasons to adopt RMM, too.

Traveling wastes not only time but also money. RMM can improve your operating margins by reducing how much you spend on travel.

RMM platforms that integrate a variety of tools into one suite can also reduce your tool costs. They eliminate the need to pay for separate monitoring tools, remote login solutions, and so on.

By making your technicians more productive, RMM will reduce your labor costs, which may be the single most important factor in boosting your MSP business’s profitability.

Further reading Guide to MSP Profitability

Selling RMM-based Solutions to Customers

The benefits of RMM may be clear to you as an MSP but less obvious to your customers. They often want the cheapest service model rather than one that includes proactive services via RMM tools.

To help customers understand the value of the types of services that RMM enables, emphasize:

  • Faster results: Automation and remote support mean your customers get what they need from you sooner.
  • Proactive service: Ongoing, continuous management via RMM eliminates the need for customers to monitor systems or make changes on their own.
  • Minimal disruptions: RMM helps you deliver managed services with minimal disruptions to your customers. You don’t need to send staff on-site or sit at their desks.
  • Self-service: In some cases, you may choose to use RMM tools to let customers check the status of their systems on their own. For example, you could give them access to monitoring data from RMM tools.

Conclusion

Before any final words, visit some of our most popular articles, like Exchange Online vs. Exchange On-Premises, what is backup software, immutable backups, cost-effective backup solutions, why Amazon's EC2 and S3 are fundamentally different types of service, how to resize partitions in Linux, how to retrieve Amazon Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key and an overview of SQL server backup types.

From faster support to more efficient troubleshooting to less downtime, RMM offers MSPs and their customers a range of benefits. Whether you’re building a new MSP business from scratch or looking for ways to optimize your existing business, RMM should be a part of your strategy.

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MSP360 Managed Backup product article blog header
3 min read

Introducing Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace Backup 3.5

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3 min read

Introducing Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace Backup 3.5

We’re excited to introduce MSP360 Managed Backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace 3.5! You now have the ability to restore Drive files to a different user, back up OneNote files, and easily restore all subfolders within an email account by selecting the parent (root) folder alone. Continue reading

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How to be Protected Against Ransomware
4 min read

How to Protect Against Ransomware

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4 min read

How to Protect Against Ransomware

Ransomware has been around for decades. So you might be tempted to feel complacent about it; after all, if ransomware has existed for so many years, the tools and strategies required to address it must be well developed by now, right?

Well, not exactly. Although the first ransomware attacks occurred many years ago, the threat posed by modern ransomware is much more intense. Ransomware has become more pervasive than ever, with ransomware attacks causing many millions of dollars’ worth of damage each year to organizations across a range of industries. At the same time, the number of ways in which ransomware attacks are executed is greater than ever, making it harder to prevent attacks.

For all of these reasons, it’s critical for MSPs to protect all of the data and devices they work with -- both their own and their customers’ -- from ransomware. Having a ransomware defense plan in place is the only way to keep data and devices safe, while also protecting your business’s reputation.

This article offers an overview of ransomware protection strategies, and tips on using backups to keep your own business, as well as your clients’ businesses, safe from ransomware.

Ransomware Attack Scenarios

A first basic step in ransomware protection is to understand all of the attack strategies that can be used to install ransomware. Here are four of the most common attack vectors:

  • Phishing: In a phishing attack, attackers convince users to click a malicious link or install a malicious package that contains ransomware by sending them an email, SMS, or other messages.
  • RDP: The RDP protocol (and similar remote-access protocols, like SSH and VNC) can be used by attackers to gain access to systems and install ransomware on them.
  • Application exploits: Flaws within applications make it possible for attackers to gain unauthorized access and install malware.
  • Physical intrusion: It’s easy to overlook the risk of unsecured physical access, but it’s a serious one. Without strong physical security, an attacker can simply walk into an office or data center and install ransomware.

There are various steps you can take to respond to these threats, such as monitoring messages for signs of phishing, keeping applications up-to-date and -- most importantly -- making sure you keep multiple backup copies of data so that you can use it to restore systems in the event of a ransomware attack.

Further reading Ransomware Attack Scenarios

FREE ASSETS
MSP’s Assets to Stay Safe from Phishing
Check out our assets that will help you to minimize the risk of a phishing attack, reduce the possible damage, and increase security awareness.
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How to Protect Your Customers’ Data

Complicating the threat posed by ransomware for MSPs is the fact that many of your clients may not take ransomware seriously. They mistakenly believe that their business is not important enough to attract a ransomware attack, that they don’t have any sensitive data, or that the basic security measures they already have in place are enough to keep them safe.

Defending your clients from ransomware requires, in part, dispelling these notions, so that your customers understand just how important it is to take extra steps against ransomware. There are several ways to go about this:

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  • Consultations: Devote time to consulting with your clients specifically on the topic of ransomware. This is not usually a discussion that you’d otherwise have in the context of providing managed services, so providing a consultation is an opportunity for you to explain to them the risks that ransomware poses to their particular business, and how you can help protect against them.
  • Create educational content: Consider creating materials about ransomware that you can distribute by email or publish on a relevant blog to help educate your clients.
Poster Pack
MSP's Ransomware Awareness Poster Pack

4 white-label posters to help you educate your end-users on how not to get hit by ransomware.

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  • Emphasize constant updates: You want your clients to understand that they can never be up-to-date enough. All systems, whether you or they maintain them, should be updated continuously.
  • Offer clear ransomware solutions: Getting your clients to take ransomware seriously isn’t just about scaring them. You must also offer clear solutions to help them address the threat, whether they are managed services offered by you, or software tools the clients can install on their own.

Further reading Ransomware End User Training

Conclusion

Ransomware may be decades old, but it’s a more serious cybersecurity threat than ever. Keeping your own and your customers’ businesses safe from ransomware requires understanding all the ways in which ransomware attacks can occur, as well as educating your customers about ransomware dangers and ways they can respond.

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