ConnectWise revealed a broad range of product innovations and enhancements across the company's cybersecurity and data protection portfolio during the IT Nation Secure event to empower the MSP community with the needed resources to withstand today's sophisticated cyberattacks and help them grow their businesses.

"Cyberadversaries evolve their tactics, techniques and procedures almost weekly," said Ameer Karim, executive vice president and general manager for cybersecurity and data protection, ConnectWise. "As a trusted partner of the MSP community and their hundreds of thousands of clients, ConnectWise feels obligated to constantly evolve the tools and services needed to defend against today's dynamic threats. All the product advancements we highlighted at IT Nation this week are proof of our commitment to providing expertise, streamlining processes and delivering innovative solutions.

ConnectWise has invested significantly over the years to secure its partners, protect their clients and help MSPs grow their cybersecurity businesses. The company shared some of the latest product innovations and enhancements:

ConnectWise Security360

ConnectWise Security360 enables MSPs to establish more connections between solutions, aggregating all the data from disparate security tools (e.g., endpoint detection and response; risk management; vulnerability and patch management; SIEM; and compliance), and then normalizing those inputs to derive an MSP Security Score. This score clearly communicates the risk exposure across the MSPs' client base and allows them to visualize the effectiveness of their security services. This enables proactive threat detection, efficient response and a continuously optimized security posture.

ConnectWise Security360 is delivered on top of the ConnectWise Asio platform, the only modern, scalable and secure cloud-based platform purpose-built for MSPs.

ConnectWise Sidekick for Security

With ConnectWise Sidekick for Security, the company is expanding the usage of its generative AI and natural language processing models to cybersecurity. ConnectWise Sidekick for Security allows MSP owners and technicians to query using natural language prompts to quickly generate an executive report on their — or their customer's — overall security posture and identify high-priority security areas on which to focus their next actions.

ConnectWise MDR for Microsoft 365

The newly launched ConnectWise MDR for Microsoft 365 service empowers MSPs to cover a common blind spot by monitoring, protecting and remediating Microsoft Office 365 (e.g., email, SharePoint, OneDrive, Office applications) exposures and attacks. This new service protects Microsoft 365 environments protected by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and is closely aligned with ConnectWise MDR, which is solely focused on endpoints. ConnectWise MDR for Microsoft 365 is available as a standalone service or paired with ConnectWise MDR.

ConnectWise MDR Executive Report Within Asio

Based on feedback from our MSP partners, ConnectWise has added the ConnectWise MDR Executive Report within the ConnectWise Asio platform. This allows MSP owners and technicians to view analyst activity and service level metrics to better understand their return on investment when leveraging ConnectWise's 200-plus security experts in their day-to-day operations.

ConnectWise Vulnerability Management Enhancement

Combining on-demand vulnerability scanning and seamless vulnerability patching and remediation, ConnectWise Vulnerability Management now extends to the ConnectWise Asio platform ticketing engine, further centralizing all needed remediation actions and increasing MSP staff efficiencies.

ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup Enhancements

ConnectWise Co-Managed Backup allows MSPs to easily integrate their data protection solutions into the ConnectWise Asio platform, making it the single pane to monitor the status of protected endpoints. With the latest release, ConnectWise removed the dependency on having to leverage the ConnectWise RMM agent. In turn, ConnectWise Automate and Security partners can now leverage the ConnectWise Asio platform to co-manage their backup solutions too.

In other news, ConnectWise has announced its authorization as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program. This authorization further solidifies ConnectWise's commitment to cybersecurity and its dedication to providing reliable and comprehensive vulnerability information to the community.

The CVE Program's mission is to identify, define and catalog publicly disclosed cybersecurity vulnerabilities. It is an international, community-based effort that relies on the collaboration of organizations worldwide to discover and report vulnerabilities. As a CNA, ConnectWise will play a crucial role in this process by assigning CVE IDs to vulnerabilities and creating and publishing associated CVE Records for ConnectWise products and services as well vulnerabilities discovered by ConnectWise in third-party products that are not covered by another CNA's scope.

By becoming a CNA, ConnectWise joins a select group of organizations responsible for ensuring consistent descriptions of vulnerabilities and facilitating effective communication among information technology and cybersecurity professionals. The CVE Records published by CNAs enable stakeholders to rapidly discover and correlate vulnerability information, ultimately enhancing system protection against potential attacks.

"We are thrilled to be authorized as a CVE Numbering Authority," said Patrick Beggs, CISO, ConnectWise. "This recognition highlights our ongoing commitment to cybersecurity and our dedication to providing accurate and reliable vulnerability information to the community. We look forward to collaborating with other CNAs and contributing to the collective effort of safeguarding systems against cyberthreats."

The CVE Program is community-driven, relying on the expertise and contributions of organizations from around the world. The CVE Board, consisting of industry, academic and government representatives, drives the program's direction, while CVE Working Groups develop policies in collaboration with the community.

In other news, Service Leadership Inc. has released the findings of its Service Leadership Index 2024 Annual IT Solution Provider Industry Profitability Report. The report features widespread data collection and analysis that provides invaluable insights for TSPs as they navigate the year ahead.

The Service Leadership Index is a leading source of empirical data on TSP performance worldwide. 2024 marks the 19th year of benchmarking to objectively identify best practices for TSP owners and executives in 103 countries.  

The report evaluated TSP performance trends, revealing another monumental year for the industry, and includes key findings such as:

• 2023 marked a record fourth consecutive year of 20%-plus adjusted EBITDA profitability for the best-in-class TSPs, an unprecedented occurrence that demonstrates the sustained success of the TSP industry.
• Highest approximate company valuations since Service Leadership began measuring in 1999, yielding an approximate 22% increase from 2022 across all Predominant Business Models (PBMs) despite macroeconomic recessionary fears and moderate M&A volume due to the increased cost of capital, primarily due to rising interest rates.
• Continued strong MSP total revenue growth of 13.3% with a 27.8% adjusted EBITDA growth, demonstrating that high growth does not reduce profitability.
• While VARs experienced a slight drop in revenue growth from 16.6% in 2022 to 14.1% in 2023, they had a very strong adjusted EBITDA dollar growth of 31.8%.  

"Despite facing heightened recessionary pressures last year, 2023 demonstrated the maturation of TSPs in their business processes, leading to improvements in operations and service delivery," said Peter Kujawa, vice president and general manager, Service Leadership. "Through the adoption of innovative technologies that enhance operational efficiency, TSPs globally are expected to sustain impressive growth rates and profitability into the foreseeable future."

The report also includes two new special sections:

• Impact of hyperautomation/AI on the TSP industry: The section unpacks the opportunity provided by hyperautomation and includes the seven success factors for successfully implementing hyperautomation in a TSP.
• Customer Experience and Profitability: The section explores the impact of customer satisfaction on business profitability and attrition, including the clear correlation between Net Promoter Score (NPS) and profitability.  

"These two special sections in the report — impact of hyperautomation and AI on the TSP industry and correlation between NPS and profitability will be exceptionally valuable to all TSPs," Kujawa said. "With hyperautomation, there's a right way to do it and a wrong way. The report provides best practices for doing it right."

These special sections, and the report overall, empower TSPs worldwide with crucial insights that will drive better financial performance and maximize future growth, profitability and stock value.

To receive a complimentary executive summary and learn how to purchase a full copy of the report, click here.