MSPs Provide Helping Hand To Peers Hit By Kaseya Ransomware Attack
‘The MSP community came together,’ said Huntress co-founder and CEO Kyle Hanslovan. ‘MSPs could have taken a competitive stand and said – “Let ’em burn -- that is my competitor.” But instead of kicking them while they were down, they pulled them up. That is awesome.’
Even as 50 MSPs faced their darkest hour grappling with the fallout from the Kaseya REvil ransomware attack, they were boosted by a community volunteer effort from MSP colleagues that put tech talent and feet on the ground to help get customers back online.
Huntress, the threat detection provider that played a key role in alerting MSPs to the REvil ransomware attack, connected about a dozen MSPs who put boots on the ground to help colleagues that were scrambling to get customers back online after the attack.
“There was a rallying of MSPs offering to help those MSPs that were compromised by the ransomware attack,” said Huntress co-founder and CEO Kyle Hanslovan, who has been working around the clock with his 100-member team since Friday afternoon dealing with the attack. “We were the middlemen in that. We connected those that had technicians that could help with those that were compromised and needed those technicians. Our role was important, but without the community stepping up and helping each other, it would have been rough.”
All in all, 70 members of the MSP community from around the globe offered to help competitors get their customers back up and running, in what is which is now acknowledged as the largest ransomware breach in history impacting more than 1,000 customers, said Hanslovan.
“The MSP community came together,” said Hanslovan, who has been a high-profile advocate for better security among MSPs and vendors. “MSPs could have taken a competitive stand and said – ‘Let ’em burn -- that is my competitor.’ But instead of kicking them while they were down, they pulled them up. That is awesome.”
Hanslovan was ecstatic in a post on July 4 after Huntress connected an MSP in New Zealand who had technicians available to help a competitor.
“We’ve already made a match everyone!” Hanslovan said after making the MSP to MSP connection. “The community outreach/support has been epic. With that said, please keep the New Zealand assistance coming as there’s a chance we’ll run into this same need again as we get closer to Monday.”
Jon Kalaugher, founder and CEO of Flowingly, an Auckland, New Zealand-based managed services provider, offered impacted MSPs the use of his company’s Naverisk RMM platform and 24/7 support team to “assist at no cost until they are operational” again.
“We need to come together as an industry to help those MSPs impacted get through this,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Andy Larin, co-founder and CEO of allCare IT Corp. in Kingston, Ontario, offered his company’s assistance to colleagues in Canada after seeing the Hanslovan post. “You are amazing Kyle Hanslovan!” said Larin in a LinkedIn response. “Any help we can assist with up in Canada, we are between Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, please let us know!”
Hanslovan said it was “super-fulfilling” to see the MSP community rally around one another. “I think it shows the camaraderie of the MSP community,” he said. “It shows we are stronger than just individuals. We are a community. That is why Huntress calls our partners, ‘partners.’ We couldn’t do it without them. They couldn’t do it without us.”