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Welcome to the MSP Radio newsletter, catching you up on some stories you might have missed!
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AI from Microsoft detects security bugs
From Monday, April 20th's episode: Microsoft claims to have developed a system that distinguishes between security and non-security bugs 99% of the time, and accurately identifies criticial, high priority security bugs on average 97% of the time. It plans to open source the methodology on GitHub, along with example models and other resources.
Why do we care?
So this is an exciting development. It’s early days, but this is worth tracking. Besides watching for the announcements, here is why this matters.
For those in technology services, a critical eye to their vendors bug tracking and bounty programs now will show which companies are ready to leverage technology like this best. Sure, you can run this on your internal bug repositiory, but it will be even more valuable when coupled with security researchers perspective.
Hold your vendors accountable now.
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Opinions are not Best Practices
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Dave breaks down why he leverages data the way he does, why all consultants are not created equal, and what Best Practices really are. If you think they are "things that work", there is more to it than that.
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Are cloud providers willing to revisit contracts?
From Wednesday, April 22nd's episode: Some cloud customers are trying to reexamine their long-term agreements with cloud providers as businesses have changed. Many signed long term commitments in exchange for discounts on spending.
The big takeaway? The providers aren’t generally budging.
Why do we care?
The headlines are the key here. I’m not at all surprised that there is no flexibility coming out of these companies. Buyers traded discounts for long term commitments, and what that does is transfer risk from the provider to the customer. Now, the risk is on the customer, and they don’t like it. I’m sorry I’m not sympathetic.
Discounts never come without a price, and this is the price. I’m very much against Discounts in general, and channel my Killing IT Co-host Ryan’s statement that it’s a channel cancer.
I offer this also as guidance – you’re not going to get revisions of long-term commitments from vendors. Don’t expect that – and certainly don’t bet on it as your way to get out of a bad situation. If you sense coming trouble, move sooner rather than later. You signed the agreement; you assumed the risk. Harsh reality but one to then work from.
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How has working itself changed?
From Friday, April 24th's episode: From Bloomberg a piece that looks at the change in work patterns due to the pandemic.
Some data:
As of 2017, only 3% of full time US workers worked primarily out of the home, per the Census Bureau.
Now, employees are spending three more hours a day on the job, per data from NordVPN. US workers are logging the most – in France, Spain, and the UK the day has stretched an additional two hours. In Italy, no change.
That same data set shows the wake-up times are later, but peak email time has moved an hour earlier to 9am. And, there are spikes in usage from midnight to 3am that were not present before.
Some research is showing an increase in productivity – but also showing an increase in burn out.
Why do we care?
We care to focus on the business side of the business of tech. My thinking right now is that we’re running a marathon, not a sprint, and it will me important to ensure we don’t burn out employees.
The digital wellness movement is somewhat paused based on the current state of affairs, but that’s not smart long term thinking. If we burn people out trying to survive, that makes the problem worse, and this is something that IS fixable.
Smart leaders who are going to survive are the ones who are focused on managing this over the long term. This is one problem you can work on fixing.
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