Change in' the Channel

Joshua Greenberg, Channel & Alliances Manager EMEA at usecure, joins Michael to talk about human risk for MSPs and ITSPs in Ireland and the UK.

Insurers, customers further up the supply chain and boards have moved on from training completion. They now ask where the risk sits in an organisation and what is being done about it, and that question is landing with the managed service providers who look after them.

Josh and Michael look at how security awareness training picked up its box-ticking reputation, and why two customers with identical completion and click rates can carry very different levels of risk once you look at admin access, payment approvals and multi-factor authentication. Josh explains why the busiest and most senior people in a business often carry the most risk, and why localised phishing simulations catch people out for exactly that reason.

The conversation also covers the three ways a breached customer costs the MSP: unbillable engineer time, a reputational knock and a lost renewal. NIS2, DORA and the UK's Cyber Security and Resilience Bill come into it too, since each one is raising the bar for the evidence partners need to provide.

For the ITSPs and the MSPs listening, there's a practical thread running through it all. Start with the customers already running training, pull together the signals you hold today and present the risk on one slide at the next quarterly review. Once that works, package it into a recurring service. Josh also shares the one question every board should be asking its MSP about its people, and his predictions for human risk and AI governance over the next twelve months.

Whether you run a managed service business, lead a security practice or work in a vendor channel team, this conversation is built around what's relevant to yourselves.

Share this episode with a colleague, and if anything in the conversation raises questions for your business, get in touch with anybody on the Renaissance or usecure team.

Adrian Young, Regional Vice President EMEA at ColorTokens, joins Michael Conway of Renaissance to talk about breach containment for MSPs and ITSPs in Ireland and the UK.

Boards, insurers and regulators now want to know what happens when an attack gets through and how far the damage can spread, and that question is landing with the managed service providers who look after them.

Adrian and Michael look at why cyber resilience has reached board level, and where the gap sits between detection and containment for partners who already run EDR, identity and backup. Adrian explains blast radius in plain terms, and why reusing the security tools a customer already has now puts microsegmentation within reach of smaller estates.

The conversation also covers why a breached customer quickly becomes the MSP's own incident, and why partners who can secure IT and OT together are likely to stand out. Supply chain questionnaires, cyber insurance audits and regulation such as NIS2 and DORA come into it too, since each one is raising the bar for the evidence partners need to provide.

For the ITSPs and the MSPs listening, there's a practical thread running through it all: how containment can become a recurring revenue service, and why being able to prove at renewal that a customer's risk has come down helps you keep that customer.

Whether you run a managed service business, lead a security practice or work in a vendor channel team, this conversation is built around what's relevant to yourselves.

Share this episode with a colleague, and if anything in the conversation raises questions for your business, get in touch with anybody on the Renaissance or ColorTokens team.

The OT Forum with ColorTokens, 20th October and 24th November 2026

If Adrian's episode has you thinking about containment, he'll be taking the conversation further in the OT Forum, a two-part webinar series Renaissance is running with ColorTokens for organisations responsible for critical infrastructure and operational technology. Adrian is joined by David Keating of Renaissance for both sessions, which start at 11am.

The first session, NIS2: The OT Problem Nobody Is Solving, takes place on Tuesday 20th October 2026. It covers what NIS2 board accountability means for organisations running OT, where perimeter security falls short in these environments, and how segmentation and containment allow operations to keep running through an incident.

The second session, When AI Finds the Gaps in Your OT Network, follows on Tuesday 24th November 2026 and looks at how AI is changing the speed and scale of attacks against OT environments, along with the controls that can contain an attack before operations are affected.

You can register here: https://renaissance.renaissance.ie/c/458909/

If you look after customers running OT or critical infrastructure, please feel free to share the series with them.

Norman Newell, Chief Commercial Officer at Renaissance, and Alicia Shepherd, Regional Community Manager for the UK and Ireland at GTIA, join host Michael Conway, MD at Renaissance for a mid-year review of the Irish IT channel in 2026.

What's changed for MSPs and ITSPs on the island of Ireland?

In this episode we cover NIS2 and DORA compliance driving real purchasing decisions across the channel, why AI investment in 2025 distracted managed service providers from core priorities without delivering provable results, the pace of mergers and acquisitions among Irish MSPs and what buyers and sellers are learning, how end clients are pushing MSPs from operational support to board-level business advisory, technical resource scarcity and the demand for turnkey solutions, cyber insurance requirements pushing security standards back up through the supply chain, and the upcoming GTIA chapter launch in Ireland.

Whether you run a 10-person partner business or lead a vendor channel team, this conversation covers the ground that matters heading into the second half of the year.

Share this episode with a colleague, and if you have thoughts or suggestions for future episodes, get in touch with anybody on the Renaissance team.

Connect with Michael: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelconwayrenaissance/

Connect with Noman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normannewell/

Connect with Alicia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliciashepherd/

Follow Renaissance: https://www.linkedin.com/company/renaissanceire/

Follow GTIA: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gtiaofficial/

Michael Conway, Director of Renaissance, introduces Change in' the Channel, a fortnightly podcast covering the commercial and operational realities of the Irish and UK technology channel.

Why this podcast? There's plenty of vendor marketing content and global channel media, but very little that focuses on the Irish and UK market, and even less that comes from the people involved in it day to day. This podcast sits at the intersection of two kinds of change: the structural shifts reshaping the technology partner ecosystem (cloud marketplaces, consumption models, partner programmes, regulation, compliance) and the operational work of adapting a business while it's still running.

Renaissance sits between vendors and partners, taking technologies to market across Ireland and the UK. That position gives us conversations with both sides of the channel, and this podcast brings those conversations to you.

Built for MSP owners, vendor channel teams, resellers, system integrators, VARs, distributors, and anyone building or running a business in the technology partner ecosystem on the island of Ireland and in the UK.

What to expect: commercially grounded, candid and useful conversations. No corporate talking points. No slide decks. One guest per episode, 30 to 40 minutes, released fortnightly.

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube and every major podcast platform. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and connect with Michael on LinkedIn.