Each year, the very best service offerings and the top vendors are recognized at the annual North American MSP Innovation Awards, hosted by Channel Partner Insight. This year, Barracuda is being honored as the RMM Vendor of the Year for Barracuda RMM. This marks the second recent award won by Barracuda in the RMM arena.
Brian Babineau, SVP and GM of Barracuda MSP, the MSP-dedicated business unit of Barracuda, accepted the award as part of a virtual awards ceremony on June 10th. SmarterMSP.com sat down with Brian to get more details on the win and how Barracuda MSP’s RMM tool enables managed service providers (MSPs) to strengthen their own security service offering.
Q&A with Brian Babineau on Barracuda RMM
Q: What are the top trends facing MSPs that Barracuda has noticed in 2021, and how has Barracuda positioned its RMM tool to address them?
Managed service providers are now searching for an RMM tool that can help build and continuously improve security postures for both their own, and their clients’ businesses. Security assessments are among the most valuable resources, that Barracuda RMM alone, offers to constantly monitor for existing and emerging vulnerabilities and maintain strong cybersecurity defenses. Security-centric MSPs will have a different lens on both their business opportunities and their accountability to deliver IT services.
Another aspect successful MSPs are looking to add is the ability to bring their own stack. Integrations with other cybersecurity and data protection solutions make an RMM tool more valuable to a service provider’s business. Having full integration capabilities for all solutions, whether through one vendor or more, makes an MSP’s layered security offering significantly stronger. Barracuda RMM is once again a leader in this area, with full integrations for many other Barracuda products, as well as with other MSP offerings.
Q: What are the most important decisions MSPs in the RMM market need to make this year?
The cyber risk created by the recent shift to hybrid work environments driven by cloud computing is an obligation MSPs assume to aide in their clients’ digital business transformation. Maintaining a well-rounded security-centric posture and going beyond simply trying to prevent threats from entering, will be key to business growth and sustainability in the near term.
The ability to oversee and remediate threats is incredibly important, as well. In some cases, there’s a compliance angle that needs to be covered. MSPs must also understand how to put together a security framework that includes the right tools, policies and expert oversight to effectively protect their customers.
Further, service providers need to have a dedicated security staff. In today’s landscape, businesses of all sizes are frequently under attack (whether they know it or not) and managing dozens or hundreds of customers means an MSP is always going to have to manage those threats. This includes monitoring, policy updates, and attack remediation. Additionally, the threat landscape is always evolving, and requires dedicated efforts to ensure staff are up to speed on the latest threats and avoidance techniques.
Finally, selling security to customers must be a priority. MSPs need to understand how important security is and use it as a differentiator against their competitors. Where possible, MSPs should work with vendors to articulate that value proposition.
Q: How does Barracuda MSP plan to engage with MSPs to help them accomplish a security-centric approach moving forward?
Barracuda MSP is always having discussions with service providers around adding security offerings, hiring security talent, and enabling even the smallest of businesses to use technology as a competitive weapon. Today, most of our conversations are focused on supporting BYOD with Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), which is in line with the widespread move to hybrid work environments.
Barracuda MSP continues to enable partners to put themselves and their SMB clients in the best position possible. Remote and hybrid workforces will remain prevalent, highlighting the need for Zero Trust environments that Barracuda MSP will equip MSP partners to protect with Barracuda CloudGen Access solution for ZTNA.
Further integrations are being built between individual solutions in our portfolio to give our MSP partners a better experience and ease their mind that no vulnerabilities emerge when utilizing the Barracuda offering to protect customer networks.
Thank you to Brian for sharing how Barracuda MSP works to build up the cybersecurity strength of its MSP partners, specifically with its Barracuda RMM tool. Visit barracudamsp.com to learn more about Barracuda RMM and other offerings for MSPs.
Photo: NATNN / Shutterstock
