Managed security services providers (MSSP) are being trusted more and more to help small- and medium-sized business (SMB), as well as distributed enterprises, remove the costs and complexity (i.e., headaches) of managing and protecting their digital assets and users.
There is a constant need for easing customer and asset lifecycle management for MSSPs. This includes everything from onboarding new tenants, managing and accounting for assets used by customers (dedicated or shared, leased or co-managed) to granting visibility and control to employees and customers.
For over 15 years, SonicWall partners and customers have used the MySonicWall portal to manage their assets, including registering products and licensing services.
To cater to the changing dynamics of security operations, SonicWall introduces My Workspace to easily manage customers, assets and access control.
Gain ‘snapshot’ view of all tenants, assets
As the new home for MySonicWall users, My Workspace functions as a dashboard offering a snapshot view of all tenants and assets registered to an MSSP with actionable intelligence.
Quick alerts for calls to action, including licenses that may be expiring or new software updates for hardware/software products, guide administrators to where they should prioritize their time for the day. My Workspace is also a shortcut to customer lifecycle management workflows, including tenant management, product management and user management.
Organize customers by ‘Tenants’
Tenants are the new way to segregate assets used by different customers — especially when using cloud services like Capture Security Center, Capture Client, Cloud App Security and WiFi Cloud Manager.
MSSPs can easily onboard new customers by launching the ‘Create Tenant’ wizard to assign a name and instantly provision role-based access control to user groups. User groups are assigned roles to manage and operate assets. Roles are assigned to operate every managed product, including MySonicWall operations as well.
Every tenant can have multiple user groups with access to MySonicWall (e.g., administrators and service line managers within the MSSP teams who need full admin or read-only access, or customer teams that may need varying degrees of privileges depending on their services requirements.)
Simplified product registration, management
Even product registration and product management workflows have been simplified. Registration is as easy as 1-2-3:
- Choose a tenant
- Enter serial number, auth-code or activation key
- Configure management options
Product views are faster and common workflows — like transfers across tenants, updating zero-touch settings for firewalls and activating additional services — are accessible via quick-action buttons. Bulk registrations have been simplified to allow the onboarding of multiple assets for one or more customers at the same time.
Simple learning processes for both end-users and MSSPs
While the user experience and interface are improved, the need for learning or “unlearning” existing practices is little to none. With contextual help available in each workflow, as well as the launch of a newly designed quick-start guide, both new and existing users will easily understand how to make the best of the new workflows to streamline daily operations.
My Workspace is open to all users and not limited only to MSSPs. Even SonicWall end-customers can take advantage of these features to streamline how they manage their own assets. Large enterprises may segregate their operations into multiple tenants based on their IT operating models.
Ready to see My Workspace? Customers and partners can log in to www.mysonicwall.com with their active credentials and take it for a spin!
Suroop Chandran is senior product manager at SonicWall. Read more SonicWall blogs here.
