Well that’s a wrap on another successful Quarterly meeting with our partners!

Spring Quarterly was held at our offices at Legacy Central in Plano on April 11th and 12th, and we had an incredible time with all of you.

Our first day was entirely dedicated to in-depth training session by CloudJumper where they showcased their new Cloud Workspace Management Suite on the new Microsoft Azure Marketplace. This day-long training really allowed Cloudjumper to dive deep into the product and focus our members on the benefits of the new suite that features simplified management, optimized billing, and more automation with control.

The day concluded with 2 demos on ACE and CWA setup, followed by a happy hour sponsored by Cytracom! It was 2 hours of games, music and good times spent with our 20 family.

Day 2 kicked off with Tim Conkle discussing how vision without execution is purely a dream. He also talked about the unlimited potential of growth that exists if you simply reach for it enough. Then, Elite member John Rutkowski of Bolder Designs gave a great presentation on client relations and onboarding.

So much was learned, and so much fun was had – there’s nothing we look forward to more then when we have our partners in town, and in the same room. It’s a tremendous energy, and we’re always sad when it ends!

If you have any questions about future Quarterly events, please utilize our Chat feature on the site, or give us a call! We’d love for you to be a part of our Summer Quarterly in July!

Tim’s opening remarks.

COO Ciera Cole presents.

Cloudjumper presentation.

We kicked off the new year with 2019’s Winter Quarterly on January 17, and it was a wonderful experience! Held at our offices at Legacy Central in Plano, our new space really allowed the event to shine. And as always, getting so many of our partners from around the country conversing in the same room is a real pleasure.

We pride ourselves on creating a family-like atmosphere, so to see the close friendships that have formed between the MSPs is truly amazing.

But to Quarterly itself, it was an incredible 2 days of insight and fellowship.

Tim Conkle of course kicked things off with a lot of energy and some famous “Tim-isms” – always a surefire way to get everyone feeling good and motivated to grow their companies!

It was then time for all of our great vendors to walk us through their amazing products and how MSPs can utilize them to run their IT companies more successfully.

Vendors like:

Deep Instinct, which serves as proactive cybersecurity that applies deep learning techniques to protect against cyberattacks.

Cytracom, which provides VoIP made simple, specifically created for small to medium MSPs.

Itopia: offering solutions that empower enterprises and service providers to deliver and consume cloud in an easy, secure, scalable and cost-efficient manner.

RapidFire Tools, whose offerings include Network Detective for IT assessments, documentation and reporting; Audit Guru for Compliance Process Automation; Cyber Hawk for internal cyber security threat detection and alerting.

Veriato, which specializes in providing insight and actionable intelligence into the activities and behaviors of the user: employees, contractors, and those who seek to steal their credentials.

Compliancy Group: providing everything you need for compliance. They cover every aspect of regulation and document every step of the process. Includes HIPAA, PCI and more.

Then, sprinkled throughout, were appearances by our very own Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Crystal McFerran, our CIO, Jonathan Blakey, our Support Desk and NOC Manager, Zach Eshelman, and attorney Dan Astin, of Ciardi Ciardi & Astin. Crystal broke down the approach of our marketing program, Jonathan spoke on best practices for working with the 20, Zach discussed the onboarding process — as well as IT Glue and their powerful documentation management, and Dan Astin discussed limiting risk and maximizing customer relationships.

So much was learned, and so much fun was had – especially at our in-house Happy Hour Thursday night!

If you have any questions about future Quarterly events, please utilize our Chat feature on the site, or give us a call! We’d love for you to be a part of our Spring Quarterly in April!

Tim’s opening remarks.

Dan Astin presents.

In a very short time, the internet will become a much more secure place.

That’s because the Board of Directors for the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has approved plans for the first-ever changing of the cryptographic key that helps protect the Domain Name System (DNS) – also known as the internet’s address book.

During a meeting in Belgium on September 16, the ICANN board passed a resolution, directing the organization to proceed with its plans to change — or “roll” — the key for the DNS root on October 11 of this year. It will mark the first time the key has been changed since it was first put into use in 2010.

“This is an important move and we have an obligation to ensure that it happens in furtherance of ICANN’s mission, which is to ensure a secure, stable and resilient DNS,” says ICANN Board Chair, Cherine Chalaby.

“There is no way of completely assuring that every network operator will have their ‘resolvers’ properly configured, yet if things go as anticipated, we expect the vast majority to have access to the root zone,” Chalaby went on to say.

ICANN notes that some Internet users might be affected if the network operators or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have not prepared for the roll. Those operators who have enabled the checking of Domain Name System Security Extensions or DNSSEC information (a set of security protocols used to ensure DNS information isn’t accidentally or maliciously corrupted) are those who need to be certain they are ready for the roll.

“Research shows that there are many thousands of network operators that have enabled DNSSEC validation, and about a quarter of the internet’s users rely on those operators,” says David Conrad, ICANN’s Chief Technology Officer.

“It is almost certain there will be at least a few operators somewhere across the globe who won’t be prepared. But even in the worst case, all they have to do to fix the problem is turn off DNSSEC validation, install the new key, re-enable DNSSEC, and their users will again have full connectivity to the DNS.”

The changing of the DNS root key was originally scheduled to happen a year ago, but plans were put on hold after ICANN found and began analyzing some new, last-minute data. That data dealt with the potential readiness of network operators for the key roll.

Ultimately, an analysis led the organization to believe it could safely proceed with the changing of the key. As a result, the organization (after consultation with the community) developed a new plan that recommends putting the new key into use exactly one year after originally scheduled.

In the intervening time, the organization has continued extensive outreach and investigations on how to best mitigate risks associated with the key change.

“This is the first root key change, but it won’t be the last,” says Matt Larson, Vice President of Research at ICANN and the organization’s point person for the key roll.

“This is the first time, so naturally we are bending over backwards to make certain that everything goes as smoothly as possible. But as we do more key rollovers in the future, the network operators, ISPs, and others will become more accustomed to the practice.”