OpenDNS Launches Management Console for MSPs

OpenDNS, which offers cloud-delivered Web security services, has announced a new management console and business processes for managed service providers (MSP) delivering Umbrella by OpenDNS, which offers protection against malware, botnet and phishing threats.

MSPs now have access to a multi-tenant dashboard for centralized provisioning with monthly billing and volume pricing, for simplified activation.

“The new Umbrella by OpenDNS MSP Console is drop-dead simple,” said Dave Bell, president of cyber solutions. “It allows us to seamlessly onboard our clients and protect all their networks in under five minutes. With Umbrella, we can extend powerful malware protection to laptops that leave the office through a simple deployment using our remote monitoring and management (RMM) software. It’s great that we can protect our clients’ employees no matter where they use their devices.”

Each day, Umbrella blocks 80 million requests for malware, botnet and phishing sites. Meanwhile, the Umbrella Security Labs research team discovers hundreds of thousands of new malicious sites daily and adds these to Umbrella’s block lists.

The new OpenDNS management console provides partners with centralized control over a shared pool of Umbrella licenses that can be deployed elastically to enforce appropriate use policies. It enables MSPs to perform a variety of functions, including the provisioning of new customers with one click; de-provisioning of customers with one click to reclaim licenses; access to a centralized view of customers and licenses; assignment of monthly billing; updates for credit card/self-service information for recurring billing; and ready-made scripts for RMM deployment to laptops.

The MSP market is a key growth sector for OpenDNS, it said.

“Small and medium businesses, which typically lack in-house IT expertise, are increasingly being targeted by attackers. For MSPs, Web security as a service is a very large, zero-friction market opportunity,” said Dima Kumets, MSP product manager for OpenDNS. “OpenDNS has invested in and built out a management infrastructure that enables MSPs to rapidly provision Web security services for large user populations. These capabilities dramatically decrease the time they would otherwise spend cleaning up infections, thus increasing margins.”