Today Kyle Spooner is back to talk about all things automation, why it’s beneficial for MSPs to embrace it, and what tasks you should be automating to save you and your technicians more time.
Watch the full episode below or listen on Apple/Spotify Podcasts. (Check out more episodes on our Gone Phishing page!)
Episode 15: Listen on Apple
Full Episode 015 Transcript:
00:00:00:12 - 00:00:23:20
Connor Swalm
Welcome to Gone phishing, a show diving into the cybersecurity threats that surround our highly connected lives. Every human is different. Every person has unique vulnerabilities that expose them to potentially successful social engineering. On this show, we'll discuss human vulnerability and how it relates to unique individuals. I'm Connor Swalm, CEO, Phin security, and welcome to Gone phishing.
00:00:28:12 - 00:00:48:03
Connor Swalm
Hey, everyone. Join me in welcoming Kyle Spooner aboard for another episode, Gone phishin. We've been talking about MSPs for managed services providers. If you talk to about MSP technicians and today we're going to talk about a subject I don't want to say it's near and dear to your heart because I don't know if it is, but automation, maybe it is near dear to your heart.
00:00:48:03 - 00:00:48:14
Connor Swalm
How are you doing?
00:00:49:04 - 00:00:52:20
Kyle Spooner
I am doing extremely well and I absolutely love automation.
00:00:52:20 - 00:00:58:07
Connor Swalm
I love automation. So really broad question what? What is automation?
00:00:59:13 - 00:01:17:20
Kyle Spooner
Automation is basically it's something that happens automatically based on a trigger or a function, like someone doing something, and it's just a set of repeatable tasks that the automation goes through each time that complete.
00:01:18:06 - 00:01:36:00
Connor Swalm
So for those of you listening, we talked about managed services providers, which are people that do the all the things that your business needs to run that you probably don't have the skills to do, which are cybersecurity, I.T., infrastructure, networking, cabling. And I'm sure I'm missing 47 different topics there.
00:01:36:19 - 00:01:37:19
Kyle Spooner
Yeah, MSP.
00:01:38:07 - 00:01:40:00
Connor Swalm
MSP. I said security has it.
00:01:40:00 - 00:01:40:20
Kyle Spooner
Security it's.
00:01:41:06 - 00:02:00:19
Connor Swalm
Included in. And then we talked about the people at those companies which are MSP technicians and the jobs that they'll have. So automation kind of ties into this in a lot of the things you'll do are going to end up being very similar, whether that's I think you brought up password resets 47 times last podcast, but we're here for it.
00:02:01:03 - 00:02:11:18
Connor Swalm
So if you could do it once and then automate the remaining 46, congrats, you just earned yourself a cookie mojito at lunch or something. Whatever. Whatever. You like a cookie? I like a cookie better.
00:02:13:19 - 00:02:21:15
Connor Swalm
So how would automation be beneficial to MSPs? It's going to save some time, but I guess can you give us some use cases that if it's just about saving time.
00:02:23:15 - 00:02:54:13
Kyle Spooner
If this is actually an interesting topic because a lot of it MSPs don't put as much into automation as they need to, they consider it not as beneficial. I think that a lot of them think of it as a instead of something that generates profit, they think that that costs them money, which is surprising when you think about it, because if you spend more time automating the tasks that your helpdesk teams work on, the whole process becomes more efficient.
00:02:54:13 - 00:03:17:15
Kyle Spooner
You need less staff and you need you can hire people. You can get more clients with the same amount of staff as you have because you can do but not everyone has that philosophy and it takes a while to convince people because they don't see the profitability in it. I and the opposite I think we should do all the money.
00:03:17:15 - 00:03:44:09
Kyle Spooner
It's automation because you can do a lot that you don't necessarily know, but you can do with automation. Like for instance, you can do automated backup checks. What is that most backup tools this utilize frame data you can email in to a ticketing system and you can report off that and have it automatically flag one set of warning or error.
00:03:45:20 - 00:03:59:23
Kyle Spooner
That's that's a type of automation. You can even go as far as to use APIs and log in to systems and say, this is the error, this is how to fix it and then fix those errors depending on how much time you want to invest in that specific automation.
00:04:02:10 - 00:04:33:15
Kyle Spooner
You can automate tasks that are repeatable from the helpdesk, like if you get a ticket like password resets, right. Or new user creations. Right. That's a huge one. It's a pain in the butt to have to because each client's got a different, slightly different user creation process if they have one at all. And you can automate that really simply, you just outline what it is, and then you either put that in your I mean, platform or your RPA platform and you just run that with the very little data they need and the client can even provide that data.
00:04:34:08 - 00:04:46:19
Kyle Spooner
First name, last name, email address, job title. Do we get a copy of user? All that stuff can be automated and save you countless hours, countless times. But not many people want to put the effort in to do it.
00:04:47:19 - 00:04:51:04
Connor Swalm
Or everyone that's listening. What's what's an R.M. and what's an RPA.
00:04:51:18 - 00:05:02:07
Kyle Spooner
In our members? A remote monitoring and management platform applications like Ninja one. ConnectWise Automate I think was R.M. Synchro.
00:05:03:12 - 00:05:04:05
Connor Swalm
And what do they do?
00:05:04:22 - 00:05:25:23
Kyle Spooner
They basically are a tool that just has an agent on the machine and it allows you to execute commands, which are the way that automation works generally. They can run things like PowerShell or Bash or batch scripting that can automate things on the machine. They also monitor for things so that look at event logs, keeping memory, all that good stuff, errors.
00:05:26:03 - 00:05:54:20
Kyle Spooner
But they just they allow you to to check the machine health and do things in RPA platform such as roost basically is a process automation tool. So you say you built a giant if then statement if this, then do this and if this and do this and it's just a giant tree that you go through and you can do things like Let me create this username and add in, what's that successful?
00:05:54:20 - 00:06:13:05
Kyle Spooner
Then you create the user email address and assign it this license. You purchase this license through pax8 or whatever, and then you can just have it run through that whole process. And it's the same for 90% of the clients. And then those single clients, you then run that process and then kick off the new process for that individual client and you adapt the changes.
00:06:14:02 - 00:06:24:08
Connor Swalm
So you mentioned that putting time, effort, energy and money into automation is a hotly debated topic. Why? Why is it debated right now?
00:06:25:19 - 00:06:47:15
Kyle Spooner
Like I said, it's just people don't see the value in it because the most the most expensive thing in an MSP is the employees. Right? It's any business. It's the employees. Right. Staff is extremely expensive. And if they're not closing tickets, they're not making the clients happy. Therefore, they're costing me money. It's generally how I, I don't know how I'd see them viewing it.
00:06:47:15 - 00:07:17:00
Kyle Spooner
I don't know that for sure. But the way I see that is if we're wasting time closing tickets, that we can automate things and you can check your tickets. Now, pull up list of tickets. You have something that's that's a repeatable process. That's a repeatable thing you could do. I'm sure there's hundreds that come in at least monthly that you can build a scripted PowerShell or your admin platform or the RPA platform that you may have.
00:07:18:01 - 00:07:40:08
Kyle Spooner
And instead of spending 20, 30 minutes doing that process, you press a button and do that process and it does it for you. And then once it's done, you close to ticket. So instead of spending 30 minutes in closing the ticket and then next week spending another 30 minutes, you've now exponentially increased your profitability from that single test.
00:07:40:16 - 00:07:48:18
Connor Swalm
That sounds like there might be some debate over how how much additional investment is required to automate those things versus how much time you end up saving.
00:07:49:01 - 00:08:09:05
Kyle Spooner
It's a lot. I don't want to fool anyone. You're spending hours troubleshooting and making sure it is your software development. Develop DevOps, right? You're doing development work and making sure it works within the system and that the environment that you're in.
00:08:10:21 - 00:08:19:22
Connor Swalm
Where what are some areas that would be ripe for automation and you can't I'll take the easy ones away from you and password resets. Take the easy one away.
00:08:20:08 - 00:08:42:11
Kyle Spooner
It's everything. Everything is technically a repeatable process when someone calls like the I.T. craft. Right. The first the very first intro to the show is, have you tried turning it off and on again? That's a repeatable process. I'm not saying you should reboot your clients machines every time they open a ticket, although that might solve 90% of issues.
00:08:42:15 - 00:08:44:09
Connor Swalm
Although they should ship first, they go.
00:08:45:05 - 00:08:48:20
Kyle Spooner
Exactly. Except when they cut. Yeah. Rebooted it. It's uptime. Six weeks.
00:08:49:14 - 00:08:53:02
Connor Swalm
You show me the button, you press. That was the light switch on the wall.
00:08:53:06 - 00:09:24:00
Kyle Spooner
Yeah, but it's, it's just your helpdesk. Your helpdesk is a plethora of automation opportunities to have someone look through tickets, incentivize your technicians to be able to automate what they've done, especially your higher level techs, as the stuff flows up. If they can automate some of those fixes, then it doesn't have to flow up as much. I mean, a level one who doesn't necessarily need to know the exact details can press the button and have the same effect as a level three.
00:09:25:19 - 00:09:33:19
Connor Swalm
Or a level infinite. Check that the mythical level of sanity to. Yep. Okay. Where should companies start?
00:09:34:03 - 00:09:57:00
Kyle Spooner
They starting with automation is picking out the toolset. You got to have a toolset that's going to that you're going to be familiar with and you're going to have someone dedicated to. You can't you can't force it. Pardon the language, too. You can't have someone part time in the in the application and not being able because you're going to get the full utilization of that application.
00:09:57:21 - 00:10:17:23
Kyle Spooner
A lot of the admin platforms which are used by most MSPs are extremely cumbersome and complicated, and it takes an expert to deal with them. Even in automated passion. Like a lot of our members will talk, that's one of their selling features. They'll automate patching for you, but that has to be set up, that has to be built, there has to be testing procedures.
00:10:17:23 - 00:10:41:01
Kyle Spooner
You don't want to roll out patches. I mean, Microsoft's fantastic for passing, right? You've never had a bad patch for Microsoft. It's never blue screen your terminal servers or taking down the entire infrastructure in one update. I've never seen that happen before, but I mean, you got to have a testing procedure and someone's got to own that and someone's got to be able to see that, recognize it, and not push those patches out.
00:10:41:05 - 00:10:53:14
Kyle Spooner
What they're testing doesn't work, right? You got to get a dove in and you got to do it first. And then once that person's comfortable with the system, you start putting more people into it.
00:10:53:14 - 00:11:13:12
Connor Swalm
That when I first got into this industry, that was one thing that surprised me is there were companies that sold tools and then there were entire industries built around being experts at those tools that weren't a part of the original company selling the tool just to consult and do some of the work to help set it up correctly.
00:11:14:00 - 00:11:37:09
Connor Swalm
Like I can't even imagine, you know, I was a very bad software developer, which is why I am no longer a software developer. Fan. But yeah, it was smart for all of us, for sure. Yeah. I couldn't imagine how complicated something would have to get for like an external person to be a certified genius at at all in order to help somebody else use it.
00:11:38:11 - 00:11:57:21
Kyle Spooner
Yeah, that's all I mean. And they're consultants with all the arms out there you can hire and you can even hire from the company themselves nowadays. But it's always just it's a beast. All of them are, and it's a lot to put on half a person's shoulders at a minimum place.
00:11:57:21 - 00:12:03:12
Connor Swalm
Why managed service providers are needed is you're not going to have somebody in-house owner of a business. Can't really do that.
00:12:04:02 - 00:12:12:21
Kyle Spooner
If there are no I mean I think our we're up to five or six people now at our proactive department. Well.
00:12:14:09 - 00:12:28:17
Connor Swalm
If I put you on the spot last time, I give you three more seconds. Well, what is the sense? What is what's what is one piece of advice or one thing you'd like to say to anyone listening about what we talk about today.
00:12:29:17 - 00:12:41:08
Kyle Spooner
To join the community? It doesn't have to be misspeaking. It doesn't have to be, you know, anything just to join the community, connect, get to know people, ask questions, help people.
00:12:42:07 - 00:13:01:11
Connor Swalm
Yeah, I can be the first to attest to the community is you're willing to help yourself. They're willing to help you. Most people, you know, it's you know, it's real life out there. Not everyone's going to be helpful. Not everyone's going to care for you or like you. But the overwhelming majority of everyone I've met so far was incredibly helpful.
00:13:01:11 - 00:13:16:14
Connor Swalm
And if I was willing to put an effort, they were really to match the energy. So it was really exciting to see. And conferences are always fun. Feels like you're getting together with a group of old friends most of the time and it's just, just great to sleep. Well, thank you for joining me, Cal.
00:13:17:07 - 00:13:17:18
Kyle Spooner
Anytime.
00:13:18:12 - 00:13:48:09
Connor Swalm
Yeah, well, you heard it here. First join the community. I hope this is the first time you've heard that, but thank you all for listening. This was another episode of Gone phishing, joined by our wonderful special guest, Kyle Spooner. And I will see you next time. Thanks so much for tuning in to Gone phishing. If you want to find out more about high quality security awareness training campaigns, how to launch them in ways that actually engage employees to change their habits.
00:13:48:15 - 00:14:03:10
Connor Swalm
Then check us out Phin security at Phin sec, not IO. That's in as you see that or it's like all of the wonderful things in our shooters. Thanks for phishing with me today and we'll see you next time.
