Barracuda MSP was in full force at CompTIA’s ChannelCon 2019. Not only did we have a large team, comprised of diverse backgrounds from marketing and channel development to product management, but we also participated in various different aspects of the event itself. Barracuda MSP was a part of the CompTIA Channel Changer award ceremony, industry leadership panels, and even ran community meetings.
Award-winning leadership and insights
We kicked off the week with a private breakout session where we offered breakfast and beverages to MSPs while they soaked up the chance to learn more about our extensive security and data protection portfolio. Neal Bradbury, vice president of channel development for Barracuda MSP, walked attendees through the current threat landscape and explained what it means for MSPs, as well as how Barracuda MSP can help guide, protect, and be a resource for our partners and their clients. We even teased an exciting new product release that we have planned in the coming weeks.
Then, I was honored to watch my colleague Lauren Beliveau, senior content marketing specialist at Barracuda MSP, accept her Channel Changer award in the Future Leaders Community meeting. She was one of four global winners that joined a panel to share insights on internal programs and incentivized teamwork that motivates not only herself, but the many teams that help Barracuda MSP thrive.
Her final words of wisdom to the Future Leaders Community were “being happy is the key to uncovering ways to grow and thrive in your career.” I have been a part of this community for over five years now and I could not agree more. I have enjoyed learning and growing my career in the IT industry, and this is one event that can truly make that happen.
Neal Bradbury, along with other executive council members of the IT Security Community, talked with many attendees on the importance of security training and how it’s the number one tool enabling companies to stay compliant. The main goal is that once a continuous training begins, you keep security top of mind by routinely educating them on how to recognize and avoid attacks. In turn, this will help MSPs save time and resources by mitigating attacks before they even happen.
Another key takeaway was that MSPs need to make sure that their own staff are adhering to best practices, so that clients will also follow suit. If you are lax with your own security behaviors, your clients will do the same. Whatever is good enough for the MSP is good enough for the client, right? It also makes sense for the MSP staff to be aware of the simulations and training that customers are seeing, so the staff can respond and advise appropriately.
To wrap up a week of representation across the board, we were awarded Best Emerging Tech Solution by the attendees. This was not for any one product, but for our advanced portfolio that is available to all MSPs today!
High-profile keynote speakers
ChannelCon attendees were also entertained with two great keynote speakers. First, we heard from Eric O’Neill, the FBI agent who took down the first cybercriminal – another member of the FBI. He made that point that there are no hackers, there are only spies, because hacking is just the natural evolution of espionage. Spies went from collecting and sharing valuable information on paper, floppy disks, and recordings, to now just finding a way into any website. From there, they gather all the information they need with just a few key strokes, before they share it with even fewer key strokes.
One of the most interesting things he mentioned was how 83 percent of all breaches are through guest networks. As an IT service provider, this presents an opportunity. What can you do to help prevent this from happening? The other keynote speaker was basketball star Shaquille O’Neal. He talked about investing his money intelligently. Instead of investing in every opportunity that came his way, he chose to invest in companies, where he already knew how they worked. For example, ‘The General’ was the only car insurance company that would give him an insurance quote that worked with his college budget, which inspired Shaq to help the company reach others like him with limited budgets.
When it came to the tech industry, Shaq admitted he was not very tech savvy by nature, but that by partnering up with and learning from friends who were, he opened up new opportunities to himself, which led him to become an early investor in a company called Google. He is proud to say he attends every technology event he can, calling himself a ‘geek.’ In Shaq’s closing thoughts, he proclaimed that “Geeks rule the world!”
Meeting other attendees
Between all the panels, speakers, and presentations, there was still plenty of time for us meet and talk with the attendees at our booth. One topic that was on everyone’s mind was email security and how to better protect customers from today’s threats. This gave us the opportunity to talk about our Email Threat Scanner. This is a free – no obligation – tool that allows you to scan your customers’ Office 365 inboxes and see if there are any threats that have bypassed your current security filters. After preforming thousands of scans, the Barracuda team found that 95 percent of inboxes have at least one latent threat! Interested in how clean your customers’ inboxes are? Run a free, complimentary scan.
We were excited to talk about our expanded portfolio which now includes Barracuda RMM, a security-centric remote monitoring and management tool. I was thrilled to learn that the attendees were just as excited as us about our ever-evolving portfolio. Together, we will continue to grow and advance our partners to be armed and ready to help their clients, no matter what comes their way.