What is Remote Monitoring & Management and why do I need it?
Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM), is the ability for you or your IT support company to keep a check on the machines, servers and other devices remotely in your company to ensure that they are up to date and without issues.
Companies with their own in house windows servers sometimes use a piece of Microsoft software called Windows Software Update Services (WSUS) to manage and roll out patches to staff machines that had been approved by the IT team, but this does not update 3rd party software like Adobe, Chrome, and other commonly used applications these would have had to been completed manually by the end user.
With more people going to ‘The Cloud’ with SharePoint / OneDrive, the WSUS (server) option is no longer an option for people so Microsoft have provided a solution called InTune to monitor the Windows patches (£7.59 per user per month), but it does not do the full patching solution only the Windows patching, which is where a dedicated RMM solution works better and is cheaper. Again, InTune and RMM will need configuring to avoid the patches that are available immediately, as these can cause issues, think for example the CrowdStrike instance in 2024 when a majority of computers were affected from a so called ‘Zero Day’ patch release.
So what are Vone offering?
We have trialed many RMM solutions over the last couple of months and have settled on NinjaOne as our preferred choice as we can see many other benefits to our clients as well.
NinjaOne has the option to grow with you as a company, some companies will have their own Antivirus software and might only be looking at the RMM alone, this is our base offering. Some will want to integrate antivirus and for this we are have integrated BitDefender Gravity Zone Antivirus into the RMM, this is the mid package, while lastly some companies will be looking at integrating a full Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) solution.
Endpoint Detection & Response, whats that ?
So normal Antivirus is technically known as Endpoint Protection (EPP) everyone has some understanding of what this does (and should be running a version of it!), focuses on known threats, preventing and detecting malicious software like viruses, trojans and worms, these virus definitions are released multiple times a day.
Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) is more advanced and focuses on identifying and addressing security threats at the endpoint level in real time performing threat analysis based on endpoint activities to detect potential threats before they get established. This is based on constantly updating behaviours and policies in the backend that are aware of traits that happen, for example if you had a Ransomware exploit on your machine EDR knows that one of the first things that happens is that the background of your desktop is changed to a message saying you are infected, it will see this is an unusual activity and see what else it can pickup before making the decision to either stop the processes, and isolate the machine from the rest of the network to stop the spread, all within fractions of a second and with the power of AI.
It is also worth noting that companies looking to comply with CyberSecurity and certain insurance polices may be asked what EDR solution they are implementing, not having it can affect your business insurance.
What else can it do?
The RMM solution can also monitor the hardware in the machines, to spot things like drives getting full, memory issues, as well as the error and event logs, it also gives you the reporting options to report back any machines in your estate like an asset log.
How does it work?
There is a small agent that is installed on the machines which then reports back into the solution so we can see what state the machines are in in real time, very similar to our Zoho software that we use to connect to your machines, you wont even know its there,
Summary and costs.
For those customers on support agreements with Vone we can offer the RMM solution and services at the following rates,
The RMM alone, just the monitoring and updating for all windows patching and 3rd party apps, costs £3.00 per device per month.
The RMM with BitDefender EPP costs £4.50 per device per month,
The RMM with full BitDefender EDR £6.00 per device per month.
Contact us for more information or to request a trial via the normal methods.