Dive Brief:
- ConnectSecure added auto-remediation capabilities, AI-powered training assessments and a patch management tool for Microsoft 365 to its platform, the security provider said Tuesday.
- Managed service providers can use the platform to address security findings, create and measure assessments and coordinate Microsoft support for their clients. The auto-remediation tool lets MSPs approve fixes and apply them automatically across multiple customers for supported M365 security findings, rather than creating tickets and manually updating settings for individual clients.
- “Microsoft provides strong security tools, but they weren’t designed with MSPs in mind,” Shiva Shankar, CTO at ConnectSecure, told Channel Dive. “Most security management happens tenant by tenant, making it difficult to scale across many clients. Ultimately, MSPs need more than visibility. They need a way to deliver security as an efficient, repeatable service.”
Dive Insight:
Microsoft 365 environments are as challenging to manage as they are ubiquitous. Enterprises rely on the software to support email, files, identities and, increasingly, AI tools. Attackers can gain access to everything via the sprawling office productivity suite.
“The biggest risks we see include weak identity controls, misconfigured settings, risky third-party app permissions, and confusion around the shared responsibility model,” Shankar said. “Many customers assume Microsoft secures everything, when securing the tenant itself is up to the customer and their MSP. For MSPs, the challenge is multiplied across dozens of client environments, each with different security settings and risk levels.”
In addition to M365 Auto Remediation, ConnectSecure’s new platform embeds training assessments that use AI workflows to build and distribute security assessments across companies.
Users can generate assessments from a topic, pasted source text, uploaded content or templates, then review and edit the generated questions, answer choices and explanations before publishing, according to ConnectSecure.
The platform also gives IT managers access to the Patch 360 patch management tools, which provides pilot-first validation, risk-based prioritization, staged rollouts and approval workflows.
Shankar said that MSPs are essential to keeping M365 secure.
“For many small and mid-sized businesses, the MSP is the security team,” he said. “These organizations often don’t have dedicated security staff, yet they face many of the same threats as larger enterprises. Our goal is to help partners turn security into a scalable, profitable service rather than a collection of one-off tasks.”
