Acronym Soup
This three-letter acronym refers to the practice of remotely monitoring and managing client endpoints, and it's right there in the name of most of our tools.
What is RMM?
This Kaseya-owned PSA, the result of a 2014 acquisition, remains one of the dominant ticketing platforms in the MSP industry.
What is Autotask?
This pricing model, where clients pay a flat monthly fee per user or device for unlimited support, is the dominant MSP billing structure today.
What is flat-rate managed services?
This type of attack tricks a user into clicking a malicious link or attachment, usually delivered via email, and is the entry point for the majority of breaches.
What is phishing?
This Microsoft operating system, released in 2009, is widely considered the company's redemption after the disaster that was Vista.
What is Windows 7?
Often confused with its cousin SIEM, this acronym stands for the detection-and-response layer that lives on the endpoint itself.
What is EDR?
This RMM platform, acquired by N-able and then spun back out, is known for its lightweight agent and is popular with smaller MSPs.
What is N-central?
This metric, expressed as a percentage, measures how much recurring revenue an MSP keeps year over year after accounting for client losses and downgrades.
What is gross revenue retention?
This security principle, often abbreviated MFA, requires a user to present two or more verification factors to gain access.
What is multi-factor authentication?
This protocol, running on TCP port 3389, lets a user remotely control a Windows desktop and is both essential to MSP work and a frequent attack vector.
What is RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)?
This four-letter acronym describes the framework for federated identity that lets a user log into one system and get access to many — Okta and Entra are built around it.
What is SAML?
This documentation platform was acquired by Kaseya in 2021 for around $500 million and triggered a wave of MSPs migrating to alternatives like Hudu.
What is IT Glue?
This industry term describes the practice of an MSP charging for projects and hardware on top of the monthly recurring fee, as opposed to bundling everything in.
What is T&M?
This category of malware, which encrypts a victim's files and demands payment for the decryption key, became the dominant cyber threat to small business in the late 2010s.
What is ransomware?
This file system, introduced with Windows NT in 1993, replaced FAT as the standard for Windows servers and workstations.
What is NTFS?
This acronym describes the Microsoft licensing model that bundles Windows, Office, and security tooling into a per-user subscription, and replaced what used to be called Microsoft 365 Business.
What is M365
This security awareness training company, founded by Stu Sjouwerman, is named for the four ranked positions in chess and dominates the MSP-delivered phishing simulation market.
What is KnowBe4?
This private equity-driven trend, accelerating since roughly 2018, has reshaped the MSP industry by aggregating small operators into platform companies — the model that brought Integritek into Lyra.
What is a roll-up?
This 2020 supply chain attack, attributed to Russian state actors, compromised a network monitoring product used by thousands of organizations including multiple US federal agencies.
What is the SolarWinds (Orion) attack?
This piece of network hardware, operating at Layer 2 of the OSI model, forwards frames based on MAC addresses and replaced the hub in modern networks.
What is a switch?
This five-letter NIST framework, updated to version 2.0 in 2024, added "Govern" as a sixth function alongside Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
What is the CSF (Cybersecurity Framework)?
This 2021 supply chain attack against a popular RMM platform resulted in ransomware deployment to roughly 1,500 downstream businesses and became a defining cautionary tale for the industry.
What is the Kaseya VSA attack?
This annual MSP industry conference, hosted by ConnectWise in Orlando each November, is widely considered the largest gathering in the channel.
What is IT Nation Connect?
This security model, popularized by Forrester analyst John Kindervag and adopted as federal policy under a 2021 executive order, assumes no implicit trust and verifies every access request.
What is Zero Trust?
This 1988 incident, in which a Cornell graduate student released a self-replicating program, is widely considered the first major internet worm and led to the creation of CERT.
What is the Morris Worm?