About
Steven Burke has been reporting on the technology industry and sales channel for 30 years. Burke joined CRN in 1993 and has teamed with fellow editors numerous times to win American Society of Business Publication Editors and Jesse H. Neal journalism awards. He is passionate about the role of partners using technology to solve business problems and has spoken at conferences on channel sales issues.
-
-
ConnectWise Control Was Used By Bad Actors: Blackpoint Cyber
by Steven Burke
“We hate to see any software products used for malicious purposes, but unfortunately, remote control tools are used for this purpose all too frequently,” said ConnectWise Chief Product Officer Jeff Bishop in an email statement to CRN.
-
Free Trials Of RMMs Are Being Used By Bad Actors: Blackpoint Cyber CEO
by Steven Burke
‘What we are watching the bad guys do is they get free trials of an RMM, then they phish you, they log into your VPN with stolen creds [credentials], they put the RMM down and they use that to put the ransomware down,’ says Blackpoint Cyber founder and CEO Jon Murchison.
-
Government Agencies Warn MSPs To Prepare For More Attacks
by Steven Burke
'The United Kingdom, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and U.S. cybersecurity authorities expect malicious cyber actors—including state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) groups—to step up their targeting of MSPs in their efforts to exploit provider-customer network trust relationships,’ said the joint cybersecurity alert from the five countries.
-
New Era Of ‘Organized Gangs’ Are Infiltrating Software To Take Down MSPs: ThreatLocker CEO Danny Jenkins
by Steven Burke
‘Today, we are not defending against schoolyard bullies,’ says ThreatLocker co-founder and CEO Danny Jenkins. ‘We are not defending against enthusiasts that just want to write malware for fun. We are trying to defend ourselves against organized gangs…We are fighting sophisticated businesses.’
-
ThreatLocker Alert Warns Of Increased Ransomware Attacks Using MSP RMM Tools
by Steven Burke
“This is the second-largest number of attacks we have seen in the seven year history of ThreatLocker,” said ThreatLocker co-founder and CEO Danny Jenkins. “MSPs need to make sure that their RMMs are locked down and that calls like [Microsoft Windows] BCDedit can’t run on their machines and that the RMMs are limited in what they can do.”
-
Huntress, Sophos, Kaseya See No Sign Of Widespread Coordinated MSP Attack Following ThreatLocker Bulletin
by Steven Burke
“There is nothing to make us believe there is a coordinated attack on MSPs that is leveraging a specific RMM tool and bypassing two-factor authentication,” said Huntress Vice President of Sales Andrew Kaiser.
-
Mainline Information Systems CEO John McCarthy Is Out As Interim Chief Takes Helm
by Steven Burke
‘John McCarthy took a business that had a bad portfolio of services and products and dramatically improved it,’ says martinwolf M&A Advisors founder and Managing Partner Martin Wolf. ‘Strategically he was a genius.’
-
D&H Creates New Modern Business Unit To Accelerate Everything-As-A-Service Sales
by Steven Burke
“This is by far our biggest investment in over a decade, over $5 million invested in new roles, and also the biggest restructuring in our go to market that we have ever had,” said D&H Co-President Dan Schwab.
-
HPE’s Open RAN Telecom Blitz: 5 Big Things To Know
by Steven Burke
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Thursday stepped up its Open RAN initiative aimed at dramatically reducing the cost of operating massive telecom networks with new RAN Automation software for service management and orchestration.
-
ThreatLocker Scores $100M In Funding Led By General Atlantic, Zeroes In On $1B Unicorn Valuation
by Steven Burke
“I’m confident we are going to hit unicorn valuation this year,’ says ThreatLocker co-founder and CEO Danny Jenkins. ‘Our valuation has increased 500 percent in the last year with our business growth up 540 percent. We have created a great product that works and solves a problem and we have backed it up with support. It is not brain surgery.’
-
General Atlantic’s Gary Reiner On Why ThreatLocker Is A Ransomware Killer And MSPs Are ‘Incredibly Strategic’
by Steven Burke
Gary Reiner, operating partner at private equity powerhouse and growth equity investor General Atlantic, which just led a $100 million Series C investment in ThreatLocker, says the cybersecurity highflier is locking out the ransomware threat looming over businesses.
-
COLUMN: Missing Out On The Everything-As-A-Service Boom
by Steven Burke
CRN Executive Editor Steve Burke says some vendor channel programs and compensation models favor direct sales and are holding back the Everything-as-a-Service model.
-
Channel Superstar Jason Wright Buys Avatar, Aims To Build Next Generation MSP
by Steven Burke
“We are supplementing the bread and butter MSP business with a big focus on employee productivity in this new age of remote work,” said new Avatar CEO Jason Wright. “We’re an IT services firm with a hyper focus on employee engagement and retention. Employees want flexibility. Companies want accountability. We provide the platform that provides visibility.”
-
Kaseya-Datto Deal Creates New MSP Leader, Puts Pressure On Rival ConnectWise
by Mark Haranas
‘This deal topples ConnectWise as the king of the hill of the MSP market,’ says US itek CEO David Stinner. ‘This has the same kind of impact on the market as when Tech Data bought Synnex and became the No. 1 distributor. Kaseya is now No. 1 with its acquisition of Datto.’
Video
