Windows 10 divides updates into two categories, with two different release cadences:

1. Feature updates – which relate to improvements and new capabilities and are released twice a year, during spring and fall, also known as “semi-annual” releases.
2. Quality updates – which are Windows security improvements and are also known as “cumulative updates”. These usually happen every second Tuesday of every month, also known as “Patch Tuesday”, with the most recent one being on April 14, 2020.

Occasionally, if there’s a high-risk security vulnerability discovered, Microsoft releases an out-of-band patch, i.e. in between Patch Tuesdays, that should be applied immediately.

A recent out-of-band security update was released in March 2020 to address an SMB vulnerability referred to as ‘SMBGhost’ or ‘EternalDarkness’ by security vendors. This ‘wormable’ Windows vulnerability, CVE-2020-0796, impacted the Microsoft Server Message Block 3.1.1 (SMBv3 network communications protocol). (Read more about it in our blog Pay Attention to Cybersecurity Warnings).

Patches are cumulative in Windows 10, meaning that if you miss an update one month, it’s rolled into the patch for the next month.

From a business IT perspective, we want to automate the Windows 10 update process using an endpoint management solution. We also want complete control over the process so that we can specify the update schedule and determine which individual devices or groups of devices receive them.

Windows 10 Patching in Kaseya VSA

Kaseya VSA enables you to automatically deploy Windows patches. It also supports native Windows patching. This allows you to configure Windows update settings in VSA and control how Windows manages its own patching process.

You can also enforce the Windows configuration settings you set up in VSA by automatically reverting to them if a local admin makes changes.

Kaseya VSA and Windows Update Group Policy

Using Kaseya VSA, your IT administrators can apply and remove Windows Update Group Policies and set them on all managed endpoints. They can configure many different Windows Update Group Policy options in VSA, such as:

Windows Automatic Updates

This specifies whether a specific computer will receive security updates and other important downloads through the Windows automatic updating service.

Windows Update Power Management

This allows you to wake up a computer to apply the Windows patch update. This could be very useful if you want to schedule Windows updates for remote worker computers that may be turned off after hours.

Control download bandwidth

With Kaseya VSA you can also control download bandwidth used for the Windows update. This can be very useful when managing remote worker computers that may be on lower bandwidth home networks.

Windows Patch Management Best Practices

Here are a few best practices for managing Windows patches:

• Execute your scans throughout the week prior to an upcoming Patch Tuesday to ensure you have the latest information available on your endpoints.
• Distribute your scans extensively. This is important since users are mostly working from home and we want to conduct software patch management related tasks during non-peak hours to ensure the tasks can be completed. Kaseya VSA supports scan distribution windows.
• Distribute your patch deployments. It is no secret that Windows patches are beginning to get larger in size (some over 1GB). This can strain not only your server but also your remote user’s network. We highly recommend staggering deployments with 6+ hour distribution windows if you are deploying during business hours.
• Take a look at scheduling deployment times with expanded distribution windows.
• Review new patches as they are released and create a plan to test the deployment of these newly available patches to a test environment or select group of endpoints before you deploy widely to your environment.

To learn more about patching your systems efficiently and improving your IT security with Kaseya VSA, download our checklist 10 Tips to Improve IT Security.

The post Managing Windows 10 Updates and Patches appeared first on Kaseya.

The Spanning solutions set is now part of Kaseya’s IT Complete platform, an especially important addition, as the use of SaaS applications is growing rapidly in organizations of all sizes, as our 2018 MSP Benchmark Survey indicates.

Now Kaseya MSPs can immediately expand their data protection capabilities, differentiate their cloud services, and generate extra revenue and high margins from their existing Office 365 business.

There is also ample opportunity for internal IT organizations, many of which are moving to Office 365 and other cloud productivity applications. With Kaseya support, Spanning will maintain its laser focus on providing scalable, powerful cloud-based data protection solutions for SMB and enterprise customers.

Kaseya and Spanning had a partnership prior to the acquisition, which resulted in “Kaseya Office 365 (O365) Backup –powered by Spanning,” a new product fully integrated with the Kaseya IT Complete platform and VSA by Kaseya. Learn more about Office 365 backup here.

Kaseya O365 Backup is now part of the Kaseya Unified Backup (KUB) Suite; providing a single, unified solution for all customer’s entire backup needs, managed from a common interface. With the help of Spanning, the Kaseya unified backup offering covers all MSP and IT user backup use-cases: cloud to cloud, direct to cloud, and a cloud/appliance combination.

The Office 365 Backup Dilemma

Office 365 sounds like it has no real backup issues. After all, all the data is in the cloud — what could go wrong? A lot.

Unless you take extra measures, with Office 365 there is often only one core copy of the data in the cloud – just one tier of storage with no easily accessible additional backup. Much can happen to that one data set. Users could accidently delete information they or others need, and hackers could erase or corrupt larger amounts of data.
Meanwhile, when employees leave, they often delete their data – but that data is not necessarily theirs – it belongs to the organization and should be retained. There are two more reasons to back up SaaS data, a report “Back Up Your SaaS Data — Because Most SaaS Providers Don’t” from Forrester Research asserts. Without backup, there is no recourse when these ills occur:

Prolonged outages. An unexpected and prolonged outage at your SaaS provider can be the remote incident that cripples your business. Unless you have a plan for how to handle such circumstances, it is highly unlikely that you will have access to your data.

Insurance brokerage firms in the UK using services from SSP Worldwide were rendered helpless when SSP faced a three-weeklong outage. Seven different brokers could not issue new policies, look up the expiration dates of existing policies, or communicate with clients. SSP Worldwide could not recover some clients’ data from backup instances — and to brokers’ utter dismay, SSP Worldwide assumed no responsibility for losses they suffered due to the outage.

Data retention policy for audit or compliance purpose. While your organization’s policy or regulatory compliance mandates require you to retain data for few months or years, your SaaS providers will not preserve data for that long.

Organizations must have a plan, and a solution to protect their SaaS, including Office 365, data. “Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a popular element of a sound technology strategy. While almost all SaaS vendors explicitly state that protecting data is the customer’s responsibility, infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders usually send critical data to those providers without any plan for ensuring data resiliency. Back up SaaS data or risk losing customers, partners, and employees,” the Forrester report says.

More telling, SaaS providers do not even know if you have lost data. And even if the provider can get your data back, the process is expensive and can take weeks.

As SMBs have migrated from on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers to Office 365, MSPs are rapidly adapting their service offerings. Today, 87 percent of Kaseya MSP customers provide Office 365 services representing over 9 million deployed seats. Our recent Kaseya 2018 MSP Benchmark Survey also found that 49 recent of MSPs have expanded their Office 365 service offering to include backup. The need for full-service Office 365 support and backup is reaching a critical point for MSPs, which is why Kaseya and Spanning came together to develop Kaseya Office 365 Backup.

The Office 365 MSP Opportunity

With Kaseya Office 365 Backup, MSPs will be able to take advantage of recurring revenue opportunities and significant margin potential within their Office 365 customer portfolios. As the fastest-growing SaaS business product in history, Office 365 offers massive opportunity for IT service providers.

One Kaseya MSP understands the opportunity. “As one of the top IT service providers in the US for the past 25 years, the transformation of businesses to Office 365 has been unprecedented,” said Chuck Bubeck, CEO of Ease Technologies. “The ability to backup and restore Office 365 data is critical and the combination of Kaseya and Spanning provides us with the ability to differentiate our offerings to meet this rapidly growing business need.”

Get a demo of Kaseya Unified Backup (KUB) here. You also get a demo of Kaseya Office 365 Backup here.

The post Kaseya Buys Spanning, Launches Office 365 Backup to Drive MSP Revenue appeared first on Kaseya.

The problem is that managing more than a few users is time consuming – which is costly and the furthest thing from strategic IT work. Meanwhile, PowerShell scripting is often necessary for true granular control, which means  an additional  cost of learning or hiring someone who does this kind of scripting – something IT can ill afford.

This substandard and complex management approach puts IT at risk because auditing and reporting is either less robust, or entirely non-existent.

A great answer is for IT to put Office 365 into the hands of a Managed Service Provider (MSP). But MSPs find it difficult to manage customers that have moved to Office 365 because the hands-on model of managing via PowerShell scripts is simply not scalable. MSPs also struggle to grow revenue from the cloud because they can’t always control client’s Office 365 environments in an efficient and profitable way.

Why MSPs Should Consider Office 365 Services Done the Right Way

MSPs all know their customers are moving to the cloud. One of the main things organizations do with on-premises gear is run productivity suites, which means Microsoft Office. At the same time, there is database, e-mail servers collaboration and unified messaging that can run in-house.

Your client can do all this in the cloud with Office 365. And if they make the move, you may lose a lot of business. You can get ahead of this curve by offering Office 365 management services. The best part is you could be pitching these services before customers even think of moving to the cloud. And this cloud management service is a great selling point for new prospects.

At the same time, you could be a trusted cloud advisor. Many of your customers and prospects only think about the benefits of Office 365, and aren’t usually technical enough to know about the downside.

They think about the move from CAPEX to OPEX, and the ability to access your software and data from most any device, and see nothing but blue sky.

The truth is Office 365 is a complex set of applications to manage. The management and oversight needed to make it work properly and keep it doing so is enormous. Migration can be tough as well. You can be a partner that helps making the Office 365 migration smooth, and as part of your service also deal with any glitches that occur.

Your help can insure a client’s migration isn’t a disappointment or total debacle with the right approach and solution.

Management Software Built Just for Office 365

As an MSP looking to be responsible for Office 365 customers, you need a solution that saves time and money while reducing risk. Microsoft has its Office Portal, but that is a bit bare-bones and has drawbacks and limitations that restrict what Managed Service Providers can do. Kaseya’s 365 Command overcomes those limits by:

Eliminating the need to learn and use PowerShell – To achieve any automation or granular control with the Microsoft Office Portal, you must use PowerShell. Scripts take time to learn and write. Bypassing PowerShell speeds up and greatly simplifies management. Kaseya 365 Command uses a web-based portal, so any level of user can use it – eliminating errors, saving time, and slashing management costs.

Supporting multiple users/customers from one console – Trying to manage on a device-to-device basis is time consuming, if not nearly impossible – especially with mobile and BYOD gaining such widespread acceptance. IT managers can handle this device explosion by overseeing Office 365 for all users and devices from one single console with Kaseya 365 Command.

Meanwhile, MSPs can view usage, create reports, and more for each and every client – all with one login to the 365 Command console. Administrative costs are slashed for MSPs.

Increasing Security – The right management software allows role-based administration to control user access and permissions for greater security. With Kaseya, only those who are authorized can view or use specific features of Command 365 based on policies you create and roles you establish. Microsoft’s Office Portal does not allow role-based security.

Improving Auditing and Reporting – In-depth analysis and usage insight can be gained through tracking and gathering reports. 365 Command provides over 40 reports not available with Microsoft’s Office Portal, so you have access to critical details you could not otherwise easily find. Kaseya 365 Command reduces risk because you are better able to see exactly who is using Office 365, and where and when it is being used. Unlike some tools, 365 Command does much more than create reports on Exchange;  it looks at SharePoint, Lync, OneDrive – in fact all the tools in Office 365.

Providing scalability – You don’t want to be forced to learn new management tools as you grow or adopt new technology. When it comes to Office 365, Kaseya 365 Command is all you need. Once in place, there is no need to download or uninstall software or apps on individual devices. IT managers and MSPs use the same portal to manage users or clients – from one to an unlimited number.

Simplifying and expanding Microsoft Office Portal functions – Recent updates to Microsoft Office Portal have added some functionality. Even so, multiple steps or PowerShell are still required for most tasks. Kaseya 365 Command provides the same functionality with just a few clicks – and takes that functionality far further, making Kaseya the efficient, time-saving choice for effective Office 365 management.

Kaseya 365 Command Is Your Solution

From adding or removing users, to generating reports for auditing assets and compliance, Kaseya 365 Command makes it possible for any level of user, from novice to expert, to easily manage Office 365.

If you want to see for yourself now how 365 Command by Kaseya gives you more effective management over Office 365, you can take a free trial and call 305-537-1406 for a price quote today!

The post How MSPs Can Make Office 365 Management Easy appeared first on Kaseya.