The Lloyd Voice

Kaseya Conference 2017 Highlights: Patching & Two-Factor Authentication

Bill Goldin
By Bill Goldin | May 26, 2017 10:00:55 AM

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Earlier this month, our Network Operations Manager Stephen Rettino and I had the honor of attending the annual Kaseya Conference in Las Vegas. Kaseya is our Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool utilized for supporting ourselves and our clients. I have been attending the conference for years, but this year I had a different focus. As Lloyd’s Security Manager, my goal was to find ways that Lloyd can help our clients better improve their security posture.

I included some highlights from the conference below to illustrate how Lloyd and our partners like Kaseya are investing in the future of security.

Patching

Patching has been a huge topic as of late, thanks in most part to the recent headlines for the WannaCry ransomware outbreak. Attacks such as these stress the importance of staying up-to-date on patches and vendor supported software and Operating Systems (OSs).  Lloyd and the majority of our client base who participate in our patching process were protected from the attack since Microsoft released the fix in March. 

During the conference, Kaseya announced they will be releasing a new patching module, that in addition to handling Windows OSs, it will now be able to handle MACs and third-party applications like Java and Adobe.  Kaseya has a library of over 1,000 third party applications that we will now be able to patch.   Lloyd is excited to start testing out the new module and offering this service to our clients later in the year.  Windows are currently the most publicized targets but don’t be surprised if you are reading about a “WannaCry” about MACs or Adobe sometime in the future.

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Two Factor Authentication

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Additional headlines relating to security that you may have noticed are big breaches like that of Target and Home Depot. Last year saw a record number of breaches and 81% of them were from weak or stolen passwords. Unfortunately, when a hacker has a valid username and password it doesn’t matter how many layers of security you actually have.

Kaseya is addressing this issue with a Two-Factor Authentication solution, which is something Lloyd has implemented internally to protect our own network.  2FA, as it is fondly referred to by tech insiders, requires two different means of authentication before providing access to the network. When you enable two-factor authentication and you enter in a username and password, a secure push notification will go to your phone (or other means such as a phone call, special device, or text) for you to approve the request. This way, even if someone knows your username and password, they won’t be able to log in.   If someone does try to login with your username, you will get a prompt which you can then deny. Not only is this convenient and secure, but everything is logged such as time, location, and who is logging in.

 

 

 

 

Kaseya Connect was a great event focused on educating technology providers on advances within the security world. As Lloyd continues our efforts of strengthening our relationships with those in the Lloyd community, it’s great to see one of our strategic partners sharing our dedication to offering more advanced security solutions, giving us the ability to offer these new security services to our clients. Feel free to reach out to me or your dedicated Lloyd team if you have any questions or just want to learn more.

 

Topics: Security, patching, Technology, Kaseya

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