2021-05 May Roundup Newsletter

Birthdays, babies, and breaches—oh my! Did May seem like one of those 'blink and you miss it' months to anyone else? It feels like just last week we were sending out April's roundup. Anyway—regardless of the perception of time, it passes all the same... and with it comes new things to update you on! Here are the highlights: 
 

  • It's our Birthday, we can brag if we want to! We've come a long way since 2013, and we wanted to share some fun metrics and memories with you in celebration of how we've grown.
     
  • Skout, Skout, let it all out! This month's Vendor Spotlight GeekCast was hosted upside down by our ✨favourite✨ Aussie admin Michael Priest. Michael was joined by James & Daniel from Skout Cybersecurity.
     
  • New Vendor Friends! Yes, yes, yes here we go. Wise-Sync has got the flow (into your accounting package).
     
  • Community Shoutout: Adorable Edition! Meet baby Alexander, our newest geek-in-training.
     
  • VMware? Be aware! Hopefully, you don't have port 443 open on your vCenter servers. But if you do, and your vCenter version is 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0, you need to update immediately—or risk remote code execution.
     

🎉 Happy Birthday, MSPGeek! 🎉

It's hard to believe that it was 8 years ago this May 13th that LabTechGeek was first formed. We've come a long way since then, and we couldn't be more proud of the growth and engagement we've seen over the years. Here are just a few of the more recent growth stats that have given us cause to celebrate.

Holy Members, Batman!

MSPGeek Slack hit 7,000 members last month, with more and more new members joining each day! In May alone we welcomed over 150 new users to our MSPGeek Slack family. Over in the Forums, we're just shy of 19,000 members. A far cry from the 1,500 we celebrated after our first birthday.

Top Bants Innit?

Shoutout to the Brits over in the regional channel #c-uk 🇬🇧. They sent an utterly massive 5054 messages this month—almost as many as #random with 6,700! Quite a feat considering they're only 50 members strong. ✨Colour✨ us gobsmacked. 

The LabTech Geek!

Who remembers Automation Nation 2015... and that space between LabTech and Geek? 👀. Also, note that it's "the" LabTech Geek—just the one?? How did Martyn handle it all? 🤯

Vendor Spotlight

May's Vendor Spotlight GeekCast featured James & Daniel from Skout Cybersecurity. They got down and dirty into the security of your 3rd Party integrations and data residency concerns. Make sure you check out the recording of the session here.

Next on the docket...

On June 17, 2021, at 3 p.m. ET, we’ve got an exciting session featuring MSPGeek's very first vendor partner: Auvik Networks! Kyle Spooner will be joined by Auvik's Technology Advocate Steve Petrychuck, and Engineering Technical Director Michael Brown to discuss why you need to conduct RCAs (Root Cause Analysis), including what level of incident warrants one. Register now to attend. 

Join the #geekcast channel, or visit our Vendor Spotlight page to stay up to date! 
 

Get in sync with Wise-Sync!

This month we had our vendor family grow again with the addition of Wise-Sync. We thank all our new and existing vendors for their continued willingness to be a true partner to Service Providers and we truly appreciate your community contributions!

Wise-Sync brings greater financial efficiency to businesses across the globe through their robust integration, which auto-syncs accounting data from ConnectWise Manage or Datto Autotask PSA to Xero or QuickBooks Online in real-time. Visit Paul, Freddy, and the rest of the Wise-Sync team in #v-wisesync today!
 


 Community Shoutout!

On May 17th, long-time community member Kyle Elliott and his wife celebrated the birth of their first-born son, Alexander. Kyle made our month by sending us this awesome picture of him and our newest little geeklet #twinning in their MSPGeek shirts. 😍 (Check out all the fun ways to celebrate your geek pride in our swag store.)

If you know of someone you would like to nominate for a community shoutout—let us know using our new feedback form!

 

 

Vulnerabilities with VMware vCenter 7.0 and lower.

VMware has issued an advisory stating that an enabled by default vSAN plugin in vCenter allows remote code execution to any attacker hitting port 443. The severity level of this vulnerability is considered critical, and VMware has strongly urged any users with vCenter servers on versions 6.5, 6.7, or 7.0 to update immediately.

Check out the VMware Security Advisories page for more information. 
 

Reminders: 

  • We love growing our family. Do you feel like you have something to contribute? Fill out our volunteer form.
     
  • Want to see a technical, operational, or service-focused topic covered in a GeekCast or blog post? Let us know.
     
  • We maintain a community calendar for participating vendors to earmark events they're hosting in one easy place for reference. These also get announced in the #vendor-events-announcements channel. Join and enable alerts to stay in the loop.

Always be mindful of unsolicited messages. Per our Code of Conduct, all members are under strict agreement for no-solicitation. however—just like any other platform, there may be bad actors who engage for nefarious purposes. Don't give out personally identifiable information or anything that can lead back to your systems. If you get any suspicious DM's or requests for information, please use /adminrequest command in Slack and an admin member will reach out to help you. All Admins are identifiable by name and are listed on our website's About Us page.

We'd like to thank everyone, vendors and MSPs alike, for actively engaging the community and helping make us who we are today, and being the community we love to serve,

MSPGeek Admin Team