The first day was phenomenal here at #KaseyaConnect24! With thousands of people gathered from across the MSP, MSSP, and IT community, the event started off with a bang. As fantastic as it was to meet up with colleagues and friends at Monday night’s welcome reception and (quietly!) jam at the Silent Speakeasy hosted by SonicWall and Liongard, the real meat of the event began Tuesday with Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola’s keynote and big announcement. 

Kaseya has been teasing a game-changing announcement for some time now and the air of secrecy around the reveal brought speculation to a fever pitch in the online MSP community. Many (myself included) speculated that the reveal would be a major acquisition. 

It was standing-room only and the anticipation was palpable when Fred Voccola took the main stage. There, he built up the hype with new offerings like Kasyea’s Partners First Pledge that includes initiatives like FLEXSpend, Price Lock Guarantee, and Catastrophic Client Loss Protection, before finally revealing Kaseya 365. 

In Kaseya’s press release on Kaseya 365, Fred Voccola stated, “With Kaseya 365, MSPs powered by Kaseya have a tremendous financial and operational advantage over their peers. Not only are their profits 30-50% higher, but they no longer have to make hard decisions about what technology to include for their customers based on cost.”

Excited as I’m sure many Kaseya users are about this announcement, it wasn’t the only talk worth tuning in for at KaseyaConnect24! Earlier this week, I shared a blog post about the talks I’m most excited for at the event. Here’s what we learned of the ones that have been held so far!

– How AI is Reinventing IT Operations

At this talk on the future of automation, Jeanette Haugen, Chief of Product Development and Anya Perelyhina Director of Product at Kaseya offered insights into where Kaseya is brainstorming new ways to incorporate automation into its offerings. As Haugen noted, IT spending is up ever since Covid, which means more work for MSPs, and automation will be key to relieving that workload across the board. Here at Seceon, we obviously couldn’t agree more given our automated MSP/MSSP security services that are powered with AI and ML. So it was inspiring to see where Kaseya is planning to bring AI to the business lifecycle. 

For example, a smart cash flow heatmap is planned by 2025, which will offer a predictive profit and loss dashboard. Another offering was a smart assist feature to remove unused, expired, or duplicated documents and zero-in on useful ones for your business. And finally, slashing Level 1 support tickets with smart PSA automations. We look forward to seeing these offerings as they roll out in the coming years!

– Unleash the Power of Automation: Elevating Network Security Through Automated Pentesting

Ky Tran, VP of Operations at Vonahi, which was recently acquired by Kaseya, explored how automated penetration testing, or pentesting, can make MSPs more efficient and secure. Pentesting is an authorized simulated cyberattack on a computer system, performed to evaluate the security of the system. However, pentesting is traditionally expensive and labor intensive when performed by a team of humans, and requires a great deal of coordination. By contrast, automated pentesting with services like Vonahi would allow much more regular pentests, as much as daily rather than quarterly or yearly or more, as would be done with a human team. These automated pentests are particularly focused on the smaller, daily vulnerabilities like misconfigured systems. The idea is to have the computer rapidly test the low-hanging fruit of easily detected vulnerabilities, and free up the human teams to go after more creative attacks that an attacker might leverage against a business. With automated pentesting a rapidly growing space in the cybersecurity world, automated pentesting as seen at Vonahi and other similar companies is definitely something that MSPs and MSSPs will want to consider adding to their offering for their clients.

– How Compliance and Risk Management Play Into Your Cybersecurity Strategy

Compliance is anything someone else makes you do (e.g. the government). Governance is anything you choose to do as an organization. In this informative talk by Max Pruger, General Manager, Compliance in Finance at Kaseya discussed the essential steps needed to align risk management practices with cybersecurity objectives for your governance and compliance strategy. While offering an overview on Kaseya’s software services that can assist with compliance, such as with their risk register and compliance manager, Pruger also gave insights from his decades of experience in the field. My favorite insights were his recommendation for businesses to step up their risk reviews from yearly (or longer!) to ideally a quarterly model. In addition, he offered an immediate, actionable cybersecurity tip which is to require two executive signatures for any wire over $5,000. This is because attackers are increasingly scamming businesses into wiring away funds on false premises and of course, once that money is sent, it’s gone forever! By leveraging risk assessment and good policies, organizations can enhance their security posture across the board.

We’ll post a round-up on our experience at #KaseyaConnect24.