Why Endpoint Security Is A Must-Have For All VARs, MSPs
By The Business Solutions Network
An MSP’s endpoint security upgrade leads to a stickier client relationship, efficiency gains, and increased profitability.
Solutions providers sometimes find that projects don’t yield a lot of revenue, but still have positive effects on your organization. Such was the case with a recent antivirus upgrade North Carolina-based MSP Championship Networks performed for one of its customers. The customer, a large furniture manufacturer, had been a client of the MSP for a few years. While the manufacturer has its own IT department, over the years it’s been outsourcing more to the MSP. Currently, the MSP handles desktop and server support for the manufacturer. This included inheriting a problem with the manufacturer’s existing antivirus solution.
The manufacturer was using a cloud-based Security-as-a-Service solution that was causing many problems. First, as Kyle Barker, support analyst II for Championship Networks explains, the software had poor detection capabilities.
Second, updates were resource intensive. “The furniture manufacturer uses a lot of old computer hardware and still runs Windows XP on many machines,” he says. “When updates would occur, the machines would slow to a crawl and interrupt users.” The MSP was getting calls as often as four times a week concerning PC trouble that ultimately originated from virus updates. Unfortunately, there was no way to control the virus update schedule to have updates occur overnight or on the weekends.
The final straw was a false positive that flagged an AS400 emulator as malicious. Because the entire plant used the emulator, the company was effectively shut down until the problem could be resolved.
It was time for a change. The MSP recommended installing the Avast endpoint protection suite on the manufacturer’s 200 machines. The biggest challenge the MSP encountered was uninstalling the previous antivirus solution. A login script was created which ran a cleanup utility upon PC startup. The cleanup utility was supposed to remove the outgoing antivirus software, but the MSP found that many machines required a technician to manually remove the software. In the end, the antivirus removal took about a month to complete.
Endpoint Security Automation = Efficiency Gains
When it came into installing Avast, the software features an automated deployment feature. Barker explains that the software was able to scan the network for endpoints and install itself automatically on the devices it found, saving the MSP a lot of time.
Another important benefit of the Avast software is that it is low on resource utilization, so the XP machines don’t suffer when updates are performed. In fact, Avast offers a streaming update service whereby virus definitions are updated in real time from the cloud, rather than having to wait for traditional scheduled updates.
For added security, Avast has a feature that creates a virtual sandbox-type of environment. If users encounter an email attachment or other file that they’re unsure about, they can run it in the sandbox. If the file winds up being 
malicious, the users can exit the safe zone with no changes having been permanently made to the PC.
Finally, Avast includes a behavioral analysis that constantly monitors running processes for any unusual behavior as well as a file reputation system that leverages the experiences of other Avast users concerning files of the same type. The two combine to improve the effectiveness of protection from malicious code.
The total cost of the solution to the manufacturer was $3,000. While the upgrade didn’t bring a lot of revenue, Barker believes that the project is very important to the MSP’s business. First, with the upgrade, the MSP has further entrenched itself as the customer’s trusted advisor and made its relationship stickier.
Additionally, there are operational benefits to Championship Networks. “As an MSP, we want to be as efficient as possible to increase our profitability,” he says. “Every call we receive from customers has a cost associated with it. Instead of getting many calls every week, now we get maybe one a month, which allows us to be more efficient and profitable.” Additionally, Barker believes that security solutions are a must-have piece of every MSP’s line card. “Customers want one vendor to deal with,” he says. “To compete, you need to offer a total solution. Every VAR and MSP, regardless of vertical or customer type, should offer endpoint security solutions.”