Host:
- Parry Dhaliwal (Product Manager at Bluechip Infotech New Zealand Ltd)
Panellists:
- Leo Chen (Senior Solution Consultant at LastPass)
- Lewis Pope (Head Nerd at N-able)
1. What are the five best ways technicians can save time using products from your brands?
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- Automation: Automate daily tasks to free up time for more complex issues.
- Documentation: Properly document processes to make future tasks quicker.
- Cycle of Excellence: Continuously review and improve workflows using methods like Six Sigma.
- Re-evaluation: Regularly review and update toolsets to ensure efficiency.
- Offloading Tasks: Use services like N-able’s MDR to handle tasks that would otherwise require significant manpower.
Leo Chen – LastPass:
- Integration with External Systems: Integrate with tools like Splunk, Azure Sentinel, and PSA providers to streamline tasks.
- Automated users provisioning process with IDPS (Azure, Okta, etc.)
- Multi-tenant MSP console on Single Pane of glass
- Policy templates feature to apply to child tenants
- Automated billing with PSA provider (Connectwise, Datto, etc.)
2. How easy is it to implement these time-saving strategies for businesses and technicians?
Leo Chen – LastPass:
LastPass has many things in place to ensure implementing these strategies is quick and easy for business owners and technicians: – Ease of deployment – Provide live weekly training session for MSPs, you can book here. – Intuitive Security Dashboard for Business Owners or MSPs to continuously monitor the user’s password hygiene.
Lewis Pope – N-able:
Implementation is straightforward if the right tools are provided. For example, with N-able’s Cove Backup Solution, monitoring is centralised, simplifying the process and reducing time spent on backups.
3. How do your products help users with basic troubleshooting before contacting a technician?
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- End users can access previous backups via a virtual drive or GUI, allowing them to restore files independently. The system also alerts technicians if backups fail.
Leo Chen – LastPass:
LastPass has two resources available to empower end-users to troubleshoot common issues and tools to ensure they are using LastPass correctly:
- LastPass University for end-user training
- LastPass 101 YouTube channel
4. How does your solution help automate repetitive IT tasks, freeing technicians for more strategic work? Can you give a specific example relevant to IT technician workflows?
Leo Chen – LastPass:
- LastPass has many features in place to help automate repetitive IT tasks, freeing up a technician’s time for more strategic work. These include: – Automated user provisioning with the IDPS (Azure AD for user onboarding and offboarding process) – Sharing capability of the 2FA -TOTP for IT technicians to ensure the accessibility of any applications or web services without relying on a single personal authenticator.
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- Cove Data Protection automatically tests backups, ensuring they are recoverable without manual intervention. It updates standby systems, tests bootability, and provides status reports.
5. Can you elaborate on how your offering facilitates proactive identification and resolution of potential IT problems before they disrupt users?
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- Cove Data Protection: Ensures recoverable backups by conducting regular recovery testing to avoid non-viable backups during incidents.
- MDR (Managed Detection and Response): Offers 24/7 SOC (Security Operations Center) staffing, leveraging SOAR (Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response), behavioural analytics, AI, and machine learning to identify issues proactively.
- User Activity Monitoring: Flags unusual activities, like foreign IP logins, and automates responses (e.g., terminating sessions, disabling users).
- Early Threat Detection: Quickly identifies and responds to early security indicators, such as NTLM hash attacks, through automated threat hunting and SOC interventions.
- Resource Efficiency: Reduces the need for in-house 24/7 monitoring teams, making proactive security measures accessible without extensive staffing or budget.
Leo Chen – LastPass:
- Password Hygiene Monitoring: Provides a security dashboard to monitor user password behaviour and hygiene.
- Automated Alerts: Sends email notifications to users and administrators when poor password practices are detected.
- Dark Web Monitoring: Alerts users and administrators if personal information appears on the dark web, allowing businesses to take proactive measures.
- Secure Credential Sharing: Offers an encrypted tunnel for secure credential sharing among users, preventing insecure methods like spreadsheets or emails.
- Comprehensive Reporting: The admin console features security reports to track and address users affected by credential exposure, ensuring prompt action.
6. Do you have any examples of users troubleshooting themselves, or can your product empower users to do some basic troubleshooting themselves before they reach out to a technician at the MSP?
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- N-able’s code data protection solution allows end users to access a virtual drive with a timestamped folder directory showing their backups.
- Users can restore files themselves from a read-only drive or a GUI interface.
- This self-service reduces support calls related to file restoration, maintaining data integrity as users cannot modify backups.
- Even if an endpoint is compromised, the backups remain immutable, and the system will alert if backups have not been conducted within specified time frames.
- The system dashboard provides visibility into backup status, preventing unnoticed backup failures.
Leo Chen – LastPass:
- LastPass offers educational resources through LastPass University and YouTube channels for both end-user and admin training.
- Users can follow micro-demos and training materials to solve common issues independently.
- The browser extension includes a “Fix a Problem Yourself” feature for step-by-step problem-solving guidance.
- LastPass’s zero-knowledge security model ensures that users must remember their master password, as it is not stored or known by LastPass.
7. In today’s complex IT environment, how do LastPass and N-able integrate with existing tools to streamline the workflow and minimise context switching for technicians?
Lewis Pope – N-able:
- N-able is focused on enhancing its API, particularly the REST API, to facilitate integrations.
- N-able’s systems support a wide range of endpoint security solutions and firewall appliances, making them agnostic and flexible.
- The code data protection platform supports multi-tenancy, reducing the need to switch between different management interfaces.
- N-able supports various recovery scenarios, including bare metal recovery, physical to virtual, and virtual to different virtual environments.
- This flexibility allows seamless migration and recovery across different systems, ensuring technicians can maintain focus on more critical tasks.
Leo Chen – LastPass:
- LastPass provides out-of-the-box integration capabilities with major IDPs, PSA providers, and SIEM systems.
- These integrations automate user management and security monitoring.
- Continuous expansion of integration features aims to minimise context switching and streamline technician workflows.
Conclusion: The webinar highlighted practical ways for technicians to save time using tools from LastPass and N-able. Automation, proper documentation, continuous improvement, regular re-evaluation, and effective task offloading were emphasised as key strategies. Both companies offer solutions to streamline processes, making technical roles more efficient and productive. If you would like to see the full webinar recording, click here.