IT Nation Connect: ConnectWise Unveils New RMM, Cybersecurity Capabilities

On day two of IT Nation Connect, ConnectWise unveiled the evolution of its remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution to Unified Monitoring & Management.

ConnectWise also announced innovations for its suite of cybersecurity management solutions, including automated remediation for cybersecurity leveraging the ConnectWise Asio platform. The ConnectWise SaaS Security workflow engine now offers enhanced alerting for threat detection, and monitoring, alerting and incident response for Microsoft 365 environments.

Unified Monitoring & Management includes a host of enhanced capabilities to the ConnectWise Asio platform, including adding support for network, cloud and backup monitoring. Moreover, ConnectWise unveiled a real-time, interactive dashboard as part of this unification.

In addition, ConnectWise at IT Nation Connect announced enhancements to its Business Management Solutions. These updates aim to modernize and streamline how partners manage projects, procurement and the sales process.

IT Nation Connect: Helping MSPs Realize Success

Jeff Bishop, ConnectWise’s executive vice president and general manager of platform, said ConnectWise is reimagining all aspects of its portfolio to help MSPs realize their vision of success.

“Two years ago, almost to the day, I came out here and we introduced Connectwise Asio, a concept that was more than just stitching together integrations,” he said. “Asio was designed as a true modern, multitenant, multi-tier platform as a service that would provide a go-forward foundation for the IT Nation ecosystem, a purpose-built solution for the MSP space. Asio allows us to deliver a modern user experience, centralize disparate data sets, build new products faster, and to create automation that can span the entire ecosystem. This centralization of data allows us to put artificial intelligence (AI) at the center of our platform, creating insights and automation that span products in ways that we never could with decoupled services."

The Asio platform can scale with growing business needs to accommodate increasing workloads and expanding customer base, Bishop said.

"We want this to be the platform that provides you your choice and unlocks your ability to focus on your business, instead of spending so much time integrating and configuring solutions together," he said. "And most importantly, it's real. It's here today.”

Hyperautomation is at the core of everything ConnectWise is doing across the company, Bishop said.

Everything Comes from MSP Feedback

April Taylor, ConnectWise’s vice president of product management, said everything announced during IT Nation Connect resulted from feedback from MSPs.

ConnectWise's April Taylor

“A lot of what we do is we regularly engage with our partners in a number of mediums to get feedback,” she said. “On the business management side, the two big areas where we did a lot of our reimagination were projects in procurement, and that came directly from partners saying that those are two areas that they wanted to see a lot of improvements in as they grow and evolve their businesses. So things like use all of the Kanban [digital project management] board was one of those that partners have been really asking for, and they seemed really excited about it.”

On the business management side, ConnectWise is helping MSPs be more efficient and do more with the teams they have, and save time along the way, Taylor said.

“So there are some things where we're working on that are repetitive tasks, if you will, so we can help free them up,” she said. “That enables them to, on the service side, solve issues faster, which then has a better experience for their clients, which hopefully in turn helps improve their client retention, which helps their business as well. So we're looking at how can we help them be more efficient in their business just to help them get to whatever their vision of success is in the future.”

An ongoing challenge for MSPs is getting time back in their day, Taylor said.

“And so we always look for ways on the business management side that we can enable that,” she said. “And one of the ways is by helping them bring the information and the insight that they need to make a decision or move forward, or take action to help support one of their customers. So from our regard, I think from the business management side, we really looked at how can we give you back more time. So if it's automation, if it's insights, whatever the case may be, we try to enable that as much as we can.”

Solving the Backups Problem

Ameer Karim, ConnectWise’s executive vice president of Unified Monitoring & Management, said a major problem for partners is “all about backups, ensuring backups happen on time and as scheduled.”

ConnectWise's Ameer Karim

“We know many of you have multiple backup vendors that you manage today,” he said. “It can get cumbersome to understand which backups have completed and which have failed. To make your lives easier, we're excited to share the addition of backup monitoring and management to RMM. With backup monitoring, you now have the single source of truth for all your backups. Think of it as a window into all of your client's backup environment, whether it's servers, desktops, virtual machines, or on premises, cloud, SaaS, it doesn't matter. The goal here was to help you save time with an aggregated view of all your backups.”

Rafael Marty, ConnectWise’s executive vice president and general manager of cybersecurity, said ConnectWise makes it easy for technology service providers (TSPs) to build and grow their cybersecurity practices.

In terms of vulnerability management, “you understand what's running on your network, you compile an inventory of all the vulnerabilities across managed and unmanaged devices … and then you can use patching to automatically patch those vulnerabilities found by the scanner," he said.

“That's an incredible time saver, and goes beyond just finding vulnerabilities to letting you actually manage them,” Marty said.

SaaS Security Workflow Engine

ConnectWise’s SaaS Security workflow engine provides workflow orchestration and robotic process automation (RPA), enabling cybersecurity engineers to eliminate manual tasks through configurable triggers and actions. The workflows can trigger cybersecurity alerts, create tickets and escalate remediation issues. TSPs can now increase cybersecurity coverage while meeting or exceeding service level agreements (SLAs).

“We have tied SaaS Security Essentials into the workflow engine by allowing alerts to trigger workflows,” Marty said. “For now, it can create tickets in the Asio ticketing capability, but within the next couple of weeks we'll also be able to launch an automatic remediation where you can lock out users and shut down their open sessions and essential capability to stop hackers in their tracks. We didn't just hook up SaaS security into the workflow engine. We're also finishing up some work to tie vulnerability management into it. Imagine all the workflows you can now create, meshing up vulnerability triggers with RMM triggers and SaaS security actions.”

Liongard-Cork Partnership

Also during IT Nation Connect, Liongard announced starting Nov. 15, Cork’s cyber warranty for MSPs serving small businesses and the ISV solutions they manage will be available to SMB customers through Liongard MSP partners.

“We are excited to be working with Cork to enable our MSP partners to address the rising insurance costs faced by their SMB customers and improve their cybersecurity posture when they combine our configuration change, detection and response (CCDR) platform and Cork's cyber warranty platform,” said Michelle Accardi, Liongard’s CEO. “Our collaboration with Cork expedites the underwriting process and offers near-instant financial coverage and settlements after security incidents, which can lead to greater peace of mind for SMBs.”

Liongard’s CCDR platform delivers continuous cybersecurity posture management through configuration change detection and response, safeguarding customer environments, minimizing downtime and driving growth. Cork offers protection by utilizing data-driven active risk management to monitor, detect and remediate risks in real time. Through data telemetry that evaluates cyber risk, Cork says it ensures a secure environment for SMBs and provides financial remediation in case of security incidents.

“The constantly evolving nature of cyber crime means MSPs must remain vigilant in protecting sensitive information for their SMB customers,” said Carlson Choi, Cork's CEO. “In partnership with Liongard, we are expanding access to the Cork platform to a greater number of SMBs, further demonstrating our ongoing investment and dedication to empowering MSPs to become the cybersecurity and cyberattack prevention arm for their customers.”