Most business owners today understand how critical cybersecurity is to their livelihood – and to ensure they’re adequately protected, they may choose to partner with a team of IT specialists. When considering options for outsourced IT, two choices will surface: A managed services provider (MSP) or managed security service provider (MSSP). MSPs and MSSPs both provide security solutions, but there are distinctions to be considered between the two. Let’s examine the similarities and differences between an MSP and MSSP to better understand each offering.
Email marketing is a cost-effective, easy-to-track tactic to reach your target customers with personalized and relevant content related to your business’s products and services. The goal of email marketing is to build customer relationships and ultimately drive sales – but to be successful, a thoughtfully planned strategy is key. Follow these five steps to get started with email marketing.
For an MSP, project work is a routine part of doing business. Things like server upgrades, email migrations, and data transfers are important tasks to keep your customers’ environments safe. Your team has the knowledge and expertise to execute these things, but they all require substantial time and resources. In this blog, we’ll cover different kinds of project work, and consider the benefits of outsourcing certain projects versus keeping the work in-house. Read on for examples below – and areas where Collabrance may be able to help.
In today's digital world – where nearly every function of business happens online – cybersecurity is a topic that should be at the forefront of every business owner's mind. As a master managed services provider, Collabrance provides the security solutions IT providers need to deliver comprehensive security to their SMB customers. In this blog, we'll discuss essential cybersecurity best practices you can share with your customers to strengthen their defenses and protect sensitive data.
Did you know compromised user passwords are among the most common causes of security breaches? According to the National Cybersecurity Alliance, 81% of all hacking-related incidents are due to weak and stolen passwords. Cyber criminals know a company’s passwords are the keys to its tools and accounts – and if cyber criminals are able to get those keys, they gain control of a business’s data, workflow, and reputation.
By now, providers of managed IT are well aware of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and its critical role in IT security – but small to medium sized businesses can be slow to embrace a new technical tool. Your customers may see MFA as an unnecessary added step that will only slow down productivity. In this blog, we’ll share ways to demonstrate to your customers that MFA is not only useful, it’s essential to their security strategy.
Different sources will cite different timelines for the evolution of managed IT. Some date the conception of managed services back to the 1990s; others to the early 2000s. Regardless of origin – and the many metamorphoses that have transpired since – the model for managed services providers (MSPs) has remained relatively straightforward: An organization opts to outsource its IT operations to a third-party vendor, presumably to preserve resources in personnel, budget, and expertise; the vendor – the MSP – provides comprehensive IT care and proves itself invaluable to the organization’s bottom line, and everyone lives happily ever after. Right?
At Collabrance, a persistent challenge we hear from MSPs is the difficulty of hiring and retaining technical talent. And while working with an outsourced provider can relieve the strain of an understaffed team, it doesn’t eliminate the need to create a positive work environment. Keeping our team of service desk technicians engaged is something I think about a lot in my day-to-day, and I’ve learned a few things about employee satisfaction over the course of my career.
Business email compromise – abbreviated as BEC – is evolving every day. Yahoo business predicts the cost of BEC exploits to eclipse $3.3 billion by 2028. With attacks becoming progressively more sophisticated and deliberately targeted to specific industries – like financial services companies that manage accounting and online banking, among others – it’s imperative that all levels of a company’s employees be cognizant of what information they are receiving electronically and how to identify potential “spear phishing” attacks.
Last year, I took on the dauting task of redesigning the Collabrance website. The “old” website wasn’t that old, and it wasn’t bad; it had just become overgrown with too much information. Not only was it difficult for prospective customers to find the information they needed, it was difficult for us – Collabrance – to ensure the information we most wanted our customers to see was the information being surfaced. It was time to de-clutter.
