George Smith - Essential Strategies to Secure Your M365 Environment

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the latest installment of MSP Business School. As always, I'm Brian Doyle here with you today, but I've got a very special guest joining me and many of you may know him throughout the channel especially if you've been on

[00:00:24] the show circuit a bit, but I want to introduce to you today George Smith from Audement. How are you doing today George? Hey Brian? Very well. Happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, we appreciate you coming on.

[00:00:36] It's always fun getting a chat with you and learning a little bit more about the world of Microsoft. But before we go into some of that world and some of the things that I will be discussing

[00:00:45] today, maybe share with those that don't know you a little bit about your background and how you ended up in the world of MSP. Yeah, sure. So I guess as so many of us find ourselves, I kind of fell into the channel.

[00:00:59] I think there's the expression a lot of people use. I worked at a Canadian MSP or what I call an accidental MSP. It was a software development agency that loved doing custom websites, custom software projects

[00:01:14] and when I joined as their business development officer, I was tasked with kind of holistically growing the business. And one of the things I identified was manage services offering maintenance contracts, developing reoccurring revenue. I'm actually beginning to specialize in the vertical of healthcare.

[00:01:31] So I spent about four years there, had a great time and then have the opportunity to work at an augment in its first year. So truly a start up and that was something I always wanted to do.

[00:01:42] Getting both an attack, start up huge opportunity for learning and growth and been very fortunate to work with Gavin Garbott on direct blare. The guys who started enable back in the day and here we are three and a half years later. That's awesome.

[00:01:57] And I think some of what comes out there too is it's great when you've got people that have transitioned to the vendor side that have spent time in the MSP space as well. I think a lot of customers are really kind of evaluating that these days and saying,

[00:02:11] hey, do you really know what we do? Do you understand what we do? So Kudos that she spent some time there. Why don't you tell us a little bit about augment? So folks have an understanding of what that's all about? For sure.

[00:02:25] So for anyone else who heard of augment, we're a Canadian company that exclusively works with MSPs. Our platform is MSP centric and the problem that we're refixing is that all of the N365 problem for MSPs. So we all know Microsoft is an incredibly complex lab-rumped

[00:02:43] of an ecosystem and in nutshell what we're doing is helping MSPs secure and manage the N365 environment. The reason why that's important for us is because as you know, as many MSPs know,

[00:02:55] N365 is not secure out of the box and not something that a lot of SMB clients probably don't realize. So we have to help them understand that there's work to be done to hard in that environment and MSPs want to get paid for that work.

[00:03:08] But also for MSPs to manage in multiple tenants, Microsoft isn't natively multi-tenant and so it can be incredibly cumbersome, manually intensive job to go tenant by tenant to do check by check by check. And so by the time you've done your third or fourth tenant out of 15 or 20,

[00:03:26] you probably have to go back to the first guy that you did on Monday morning to make sure everything is still still in place. So a little bit we're helping MSPs simplify that by using a combination of dashboards

[00:03:37] including our security posture which we have templates for and on so you can apply the security vast practices with the click of a button, really build that wall, that security wall, hard in the environment.

[00:03:49] And then if the web app thinks often we have alerts to be able to notify MSPs all suspicious activity and risky behaviors and then again, remediate those with the click of a button. So hold it simplifying how three six five security.

[00:04:01] Yeah, and it's amazing you know when you really look at how everything's gone so cloud first in this stage you know with the majority of the customers not only just leveraging Microsoft for email services but expanding out to team SharePoint and so many other services.

[00:04:15] Getting that management capability is really critical. You know security has become much more concerning, you know from that standpoint into your point as another vendor who integrates with Microsoft to a touch there is so much data that comes

[00:04:28] in through that graph just you know API through those systems just filtering it all and understanding what's important and what's not can be challenging. So you know it's certainly great that there's partners like augment out there that can really help their MSPs do that.

[00:04:42] But I want to kick off a little bit of our discussion today with something you and I were talking about briefly before our call and you were talking a little bit about you know technician efficiency and one of the challenges that you know MSP owners have is when

[00:04:55] they're bringing on new hires can that new hire really step in and do the job because we ask so much of them in this industry. You know we all run lean right so we need to have guys

[00:05:06] that are able to do things beyond probably their skill set right from day one. Yeah absolutely I think you know it's not just I mean there's different layers to this right

[00:05:16] Brian I always make the joke that even any new hire that we have at augment I'm like okay my hot tip for you is you're going to open a word document or a no pad and it's just going to be

[00:05:24] titled acronyms because there's going to be a ton of letters that get out of the way. The alphabet soup right that you will never refer to before and people are going to be talking

[00:05:34] about CIS protocols and how you can implement them with your arm and see the European S.A. and that's going to go over your head if you haven't been in this space before so make sure you write those

[00:05:42] out and get them in there with them and that's just that's as broadly speaking wherever we put more on more technical lands over it you know if you can think think of yourself as a 19 or you know

[00:05:52] 21 year old coming into this space fresh out of school maybe you have some technical experience and background you have a passion for IT but all of a sudden your put in that L one technical chair

[00:06:04] and yeah you have an R and M a PSA a backup you know in most cases well over it does in different very niche very specific software tools that are by nature multi-tannin because of the

[00:06:16] business you're in and you're just expected to be able to know how they work, how they talk to each other if they talk to each other and how either meant it to help you do your job so I think there's a huge

[00:06:28] own-ass on senior technicians on owners to make sure that junior or entry-level technicians are onboarded and helped to you know make their life as easy as possible but also on the banderside as well right to make sure that we're making it easy for MSPs at large

[00:06:47] making their life easy to use the tools that we're providing to them through training through onboarding by listening to their feedback by reacting to some of the things that they're asking for be it technical enhancements or good-a-market materials yeah I mean you know that

[00:07:04] onboarding pieces always a challenge for the MSP because usually you know especially when they're still in that stage of scaling up and really getting out to market or getting to that next level

[00:07:15] people tend to be stretched right and one of the things that could be sacrificed there is some of the hand holding you have with a new employee so you know certainly putting together policies and

[00:07:23] procedures I love that idea of just having them track acronyms doing a daily check in like what didn't you understand that you heard today those are things that would really help accelerate somebody that's getting started make them successful you know one of the things I used to

[00:07:36] say to a lot of my hires when we brought them on is look you're not expected to know everything but you're gonna learn more than you ever would if you were sitting in a corporate seat

[00:07:44] responsible for one type of technology and that exposure will really help connect the dots free long term don't be afraid to ask don't be afraid to tell us where you need support

[00:07:55] because we're not mind readers and we may not know so you know I'm I think there's a lot of maturing MSPs that have really built nice service delivery onboarding capabilities but the reality

[00:08:06] is a lot of these texts are being put in the seat and go here's all the tools explore figure out how you're gonna make them work you know they're asking their fellow text when they're between

[00:08:15] calls right yeah you're absolutely right right still important to foster that environment to all of trust and helpfulness and make sure that people feel okay to be able to ask for help

[00:08:25] and not feel ridiculed or the embarrassed by it there's that you know uh uh been a previous light by I used to work in a summer camp and we have to meet with you stuff to do swim tests

[00:08:36] I'm I used to always remember saying look if anyone can't swim now is the time to let us know because we can help you please do not be that kid that is freaking out right now I can't swim

[00:08:47] has to do the swim tests and just jumps in the water and every year Brian there is one kid couldn't swim you know didn't want to make a big fuss of it but then when all the kids jump

[00:08:56] in the water and start doing their swim tests they would just sink and you're looking there go okay they're gonna come up whereas you know if we've known an advance you can be more helpful so

[00:09:04] that that really blessed it across the business board I think is is you know people don't mind if if you can't swim and you let them know they mind whenever you're driving and didn't tell them

[00:09:15] you couldn't swim so now you know let's kind of pivot that to how augment helps right you would mention that you know one of the things that you're trying to do is bring some of the training

[00:09:24] and but you would also mention that there are some tools really within the tooling that can help a junior person get started or a junior person do really probably level two tasks because they're

[00:09:35] automated within the platform maybe you can speak a little bit to some of those capabilities yeah I think it's I think it's it's technicians across the board so if we start with a junior

[00:09:44] attacker even someone who's not technical you know anyone in the office they can hop into augment and I already begin to help out with some of the most common tickets that come through

[00:09:55] for Microsoft because again with a click of a button you can do things like reset a password onboard, offboard, turn MFA, on change someone's license all that kind of thing is really really

[00:10:06] helpful to be able to spread the load and also empower other staff so now you can have an office administrator or sales person begin to resolve those tickets you can have an

[00:10:15] intern who's maybe with you for you know two or three months in the summer what am I going to get this kid to do by talking to me about the update. We'll say up in augment at any of these seven

[00:10:24] things happen you click this button you resolve the ticket you log of here that's a good job that's what success is for you we'll give you a glowing review right you know having the ability

[00:10:35] to equip other people that need very specific information the example I like to use is at the end of every month there's probably someone in operations or finance that wants to know what is the

[00:10:46] status of our Microsoft license. We're an MSP you'll see SP I may license as do we have are those split up across the tenants who has what and what do you think they do you brine they don't

[00:10:58] have access to that they're not savvy in the you know the dark arts that might go forward what do they do they kick it to a technician and some per technician has to go and pull all that stuff

[00:11:07] manually. With augment we built that feature based on direct partner feedback they said heavy like what you guys are doing one of the things that would be super helpful in terms of bringing multi-tenancy to them at Embruset's 5V ecosystem is that licensed report or we can see

[00:11:22] you know at a high level where all the licenses are assigned drill into each tenancy who is got what see who high that's changed over time see what's left over how we can reassign all

[00:11:32] that information in a nice neat dashboard so that whenever our you know had a finance or CFO once that information we can just click a button and say I'm not to you but I think you know

[00:11:43] more generally speaking if you think of life as an MSP technician and and Brian maybe be now yourself there are a lot of noise happening all the time right like maybe you work with a sock

[00:11:53] and so there's periods during the day where the socks says hey this thing's happening we're escalating the stew like you should definitely be aware of this and check this site so there's one

[00:11:59] value in and over there you know then you've got a one technicians or this junior guy saying look I've been on a like how with this ticket that's come through Brian like I'm escalating it to you

[00:12:08] because I don't have the technical progress to be able to resolve it that's why you get paid the big bucks you know over to you then you've got sales guys you're like Brian like I need some of this

[00:12:18] technical information these guys have questions like can I get the support can you add this thing in this slide that's PowerPoint and then to my point as well you've also got people in

[00:12:26] finance or all variations that want to know some of the internal you know uh oh not enough stuff there's a lot of noise happening so being able to quickly gather that information or indeed

[00:12:38] to say hey guys like it's an augment go to this dashboard x-port or report to a PDF email to yourself however you want to uh at Don't Know That Information it's accessible to you and I actually don't

[00:12:49] need to give you all the answers and all the keys to the kingdom of n365 we'll just set up an augment and you cherry pick what you need yeah and I think the ease of some of the tools that are

[00:12:59] coming into the market today and giving those people that information quickly in in a shareable format is critical because you're spot on there are balls coming from all directions and you're just

[00:13:10] batting them off all day long and it could be challenging and you know some of those things are really important too when you look at licensing you know obviously it's always to your benefit to be able

[00:13:19] to show a customer when they might be over licensed and potentially come down but you could also be leaving revenue in the table growing your MSP as well and that really can eat into margin when

[00:13:28] you're not getting the right license counts in there because you're purely paying 100% of that customer's freight at that point in time so great stuff now you were also you would said a very

[00:13:39] profound quote earlier today so you know I don't want it to steal your thunder but uh let's talk a little bit about how you view kind of the vendor community and what we should be doing as a

[00:13:49] group to kind of help our clients oh right yes my the quote it's like I forget what we're really really doing anymore more this yeah I've been kind of using the quote a lot like educate to

[00:14:03] proliferate recently you know it's nice because it it kind of rhymes a little bit so it's memorable but I think it's it's just getting behind the idea that you know technology is moving so so rapidly

[00:14:15] even for people who who are in the technical space like there's just so much new stuff coming though it's very very exciting but it's also worrying because we know you know everyone's talk about

[00:14:24] about AI and that you can do a lot of good stuff and also do a lot of bad stuff right so so even within the channel on the IT community things are are getting a little crazy so imagine what it's

[00:14:35] like at the SMB level where someone's just trying to run you know their shop or a retail store or a factory and and they want to outsource IT so I think it's really really important for

[00:14:47] we in the channel as vendors as MSPs everything within that ecosystem to talk you know to start leveling up our our our education practices of how we're helping ensure you know our SMB clients

[00:15:01] kind of understand where some of the threats are the value that the MSPs provide and was why it's important like raising that digital IQ has to be you know a real focus point for MSPs

[00:15:14] I think in in this modern digital era because if you're working with a lot of non-technical clients that's just going to create more and more problems for you because they're going to be higher risk

[00:15:25] you're going to be having more and more difficult conversations around why they're paying for stuff all the time so it's worth your while as an MSP I think to help your clients understand

[00:15:37] some of that the digital best practices that the deal needs to level up on. Yeah I think you know thought leadership all around is critical these days you know one just helps spread the word so people can

[00:15:47] stay vigilant from a security perspective but thinking you know when you think about it even bigger picture sales is a different animal today and we talk about that a lot on the podcast and

[00:15:56] you know the days of fully just picking up a phone call making a hundred dials knowing you're going to speak to 30 people and you're going to you know get three or four appointments those days

[00:16:04] are long gone and thought leadership is becoming one of the biggest tools to not only help educate people to what you do but also provide them the information so they know like and trust you

[00:16:13] when they engage you as well and you'll see that the vendors that are doing a really good job of kind of sharing that information tend to be the ones that are on the tip of the tongue of their customers

[00:16:23] and MSPs can do the same thing in their region you know by approaching that same piece of it so I love that concept of educate and proliferate it's a great statement. Yeah I think I think it's just

[00:16:36] important for like for like to acknowledge like high difficulties it is in this day and age to be an MSP and to be selling to clients right like it's incredibly tricky getting into this conversation is where

[00:16:48] something maybe ever would think certain expert on IT and the other challenge is you know something that's maybe not talked about as often as it should is there's no standardization within managed services you know Brian you and I can spin up a business name and prol ourselves

[00:17:01] in MSP tomorrow and then I'll also go under cut people in our neighborhoods and I'm not so challenging I think MSP spaces you know hardy you compete against the the Oregon bucket MSP that's

[00:17:12] I'm you're cutting you on price and if you haven't established one that trust and to that education that then leads into the value that you provide becomes really really challenging to justify why you're double the price of someone else if your clients don't really understand what

[00:17:28] it is you do and the higher health and yeah I mean it is so difficult that way and there's so much noise coming at the customer as well it's important for us to be kind of that point

[00:17:37] that can funnel through that noise when we do get to that advisor role that most MSP's role into and I think that kind of dovetails into another part that you and I were talking about pre-interview

[00:17:48] you know raising the technical IQ of those that are in the market place it's you know I I think you had a very interesting story around fishing that I think you might want to share

[00:18:00] and it kind of helped level set this discussion for our listeners yeah so this is a this is actually my story was another child I was having with a former MSP that suffered you know

[00:18:13] around somewhere I talked on one of their clients back in 2014 I think it was and you know it it's stemmed from a fishing email and whatever they got whatever they were going through the

[00:18:22] forensics and explaining the severity of the situation to the client CEO and owner at the time he was a little bit perturbed because he said come for your fishing email like that's

[00:18:33] just someone's failed an IQ test at my company and you know we can kind of jook a bite it now but yeah that's not a bad way to put it and then I think that the MSP at the time was like

[00:18:44] yeah that's actually kind of accurate so what are we doing to help raise the digital IQ I mean everyone jokes about the Nigerian prince who's got a big bag of money and just email

[00:18:54] and back but you know I both know that here in 9 2024 it's way more sophisticated than that and kind of back to our earlier point on AI and people are using it for you know productivity gains

[00:19:07] it's the same thing for for bad actors right some of the things you can do with imagery with voices with video you know to to deceive people is getting really scary yeah I mean when you really look at

[00:19:19] the different ways that people can kind of come in through social engineering and coming at the human piece of it even the best of us can make mistakes at this stage right you know it it's

[00:19:30] those little things like the Cyrillic um I'm saying that correctly language where the A looks a little bit different but everything else looks fine in those emails and you know when you see

[00:19:39] those different ways that people get in it's tough to say hey anybody failed an IQ test I don't think we can say that anymore but I think it's hey how do we get people the knowledge that they need

[00:19:49] so they can be a little bit stronger or a little bit more intelligent about what they do click on or what they do answer to or what they do respond to and I think you know all of us in the community

[00:20:00] you know MSPs vendors organizations like CompTI we're all trying to bring that education out to the customers because we all benefit by the more everybody knows right yeah 100% so I think

[00:20:13] at anything that you can do to help raise your your customers digital IQ um it is helpful and a big part of that is just understanding what what they value and what their emotions are tied to

[00:20:24] and then present data that that you know supports um whatever type of action you want them to take you know that's that's why you know platforms like BCI toolbox like augment that have that data

[00:20:35] readily available and kind of make it easy to present and allow you to structure a story I think a really really horrible tools and platforms that that every MSPs should be leveraging

[00:20:49] Yep and that goes from you know the the end user level right back to you know we've come full circle back to your technician efficiency we're mentioning in the earlier how you know the augment has prebuilt policies that could be applied very easily across your entire enterprise

[00:21:03] those things harden the environment so we're reducing some of the risk as well you know and that's that's exciting to see too like you know each vendor is kind of taking their different way to help with

[00:21:13] hardening the environment securing the environment and then where applicable you know educating the environment are educating the users as well yeah and I would say it's amazing we were I was

[00:21:23] chatting with some partners the other day and we were going through setting up the templates and I was saying you know this is you know this is you know this is a hardening project you know chart for it and

[00:21:31] they were kind of like oh yeah that is a good idea I was like it like I guess it's not being much you try to take 500 bucks a grant you know uh and just say look what this is work that we're doing

[00:21:40] they don't necessarily need to know that it's only going to take you five minutes because augment makes it easy for you but it's also a touching value to the work that you're doing

[00:21:48] and I was saying like look we are setting this baseline of security here and we do not want to drop below them so you know we're charging you a hardening project fee and then here's

[00:21:59] what gonna be charging you per month per user for this enhanced security service to make sure it stays there because it is not a saddening forget it you know another quote not mine but when I love

[00:22:09] is you know security is a discipline not a product so you know we have to be continuously managing and monitoring an an alerting on this environment and bring it back to particularly with

[00:22:21] Microsoft it's a group is to start if your Microsoft goes down your business is going to it's is over right and I think you know as an industry we're starting to get better at the concept

[00:22:31] of governance right we've certainly seen that come into different you know different frameworks out there and this two two point I'll obviously brought the governance layer in CIS just did an update last week which introduced governance into the version eight as well and really what we're

[00:22:46] talking about here is because there's so much change you need to continually review and see do you have the right policies do you have the right procedures do you have the right process against all

[00:22:55] your tools and then you know as as vendors it's part of our responsibility to help you get their quicker get their faster and be looking at the things that you might not see earlier as well and

[00:23:06] it sounds like augment stewing that today yeah I think you know that's that's a whole counter where is in itself we could do another half hour and that very easily right yeah one

[00:23:16] thing I will say is I think there's actually a big opportunity for maybe people more on the consultant side of things what we're maybe looking for or a new niche to hold in on here

[00:23:26] and that is it going governance so to give it to give us stories an example you know everyone's talking about Microsoft co-pilot and how it can be used and how great it may or may not be the

[00:23:37] story I like to tell is yeah it's great until you know you have an intern or junior stuff so that's hey co-pilot go make me a spreadsheet of everyone's salary information right is that something

[00:23:47] that you won't readily available and the problem is is what a lot of you know SMB companies don't understand is co-pilot is trying to do what it's told to be helpful and unless you have

[00:23:58] some type of framework or or or corporate governance in place there is is informing it of what it can and can't look at and share with who you're in permissions you know that's really what

[00:24:08] you have to build so if we call that kind of corporate IT governance like that's a whole project in itself and I think that that's something that NSPs can hold into is like do you have corporate IT

[00:24:19] governance like do you have things listed logged tagged with who has permission to this who how you can see this because if you don't you really shouldn't be using AI I think there's there's

[00:24:30] a an opening in the market for that to be able to specialization that some type of Dandor tool or consultant becoming and say from not sit to not like I will I can do that for you

[00:24:42] I can help you build that that corporate governance and structure yeah and again governance requires evidence and you've got some great reports within that augment that are really helping that process and helping folks understand how you know what they've done inside Microsoft is it

[00:24:59] violating any regulatory terms or is it actually adhering to it that's critical too yeah 100% I mean you mentioned like in instance the IS we have a lovely little column and augment that could actually connect the dots between all of the various security posters and policies

[00:25:12] that Microsoft say should be implemented but aren't implemented are the box so from the MSPs side you can clearly go ahead and say okay all these things are green and that's taking the box for

[00:25:21] CIS 1.1 or whatever it might be right going into some of the details around that so you know I think smart MSPs are seeing this coming Brian in terms of the rapid acceleration towards

[00:25:35] compliance and governance and the second phase of that will be adding teeth to some of that legislation and look that will come audits and so smart MSPs today will be taking steps to kind of get their

[00:25:46] house in order and make sure they have their paperwork trails and hold those bits and pieces lined up and that's something that that I'll make and help with as well you know our MSP reports are really

[00:25:55] good example fully multi tenant breaks everything down you can drill right into the tenant and user level to say you know George Smith has this type of license he has MSP turned on he's using Microsoft authenticator he's registered for this yes he is protected so ultimately if you're

[00:26:11] my MSP Brian in the future if there's an incident maybe it's an application for cyber insurance and they're like can you prove that Georgia is MFA and that's good here's the ultimate report

[00:26:21] next question terrific so we're getting near the end of our time George you have any closing thoughts you want to share with our audience and of course tell us where our audience going to be over the

[00:26:30] next few months yeah for sure so our next big show will be comtea channel call so super excited to get to that kind of educational event it's always a great time in this year Donna Landa so I'll be

[00:26:42] there myself anybody's headed down to Atlanta in Georgia at the end of July please come by and say hello at the booth but would love to meet in person and then after that we'll also be at

[00:26:56] vision 24 uh Dynne and Texas at the end of August so the last thing I would mention is we begun to open up our kind of partner calls so every month we actually have a partner call that

[00:27:10] traditionally was just for our paying partners but we built it up to anybody so if you're interested in augment and you'll kind of want to come and skip the whole demo sales presentation and just get

[00:27:21] a feel for what our current partners are saying and asking maybe get some insight into what we do at a high level as well as what we're going to be doing on the product roadmap please look into

[00:27:31] that you can sign up on our website under the webinars page sure if it will George I really appreciate you joining us today again anybody that wants to get in touch with George you can or get in touch

[00:27:43] with augment and go straight to their website augment.com but also we'll be including George's LinkedIn bio where we post the podcast the podcast of course is available anywhere that you can download

[00:27:55] your podcast as well as YouTube and um you know we'd love to add you come see the video version as well but George I really want to thank you for joining us today I'll be down at channel

[00:28:04] content too so we'll have to make sure we catch up while we're down there and you know really excited to see the things that keep changing over at augment I want to thank you for joining

[00:28:14] it today yeah thank you for having Brian really appreciate it loving the podcast and all the good things you guys are doing over at BCI or toolbox as well alright George so we'll talk soon and thanks for joining