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Jim Piazza, Chief AI Officer at Ensono, talked about how legacy mainframe systems fit into the modern AI era and explored the practical strategies large enterprises must adopt to modernize their core infrastructure. A significant number of Fortune 500 companies continue to run their most critical workloads, such as credit card transaction processing, on IBM Z and Power platforms. He categorized the path forward into two distinct buckets: operational modernization, which leverages AI to predict system faults and prevent costly outages, and business modernization, which utilizes AI services to accelerate transactions and enable real-time fraud detection. Organizations looking to modernize can choose between migrating workloads completely to the cloud, translating legacy COBOL applications into modern languages like Python, or implementing hybrid approaches that integrate existing mainframes with distributed cloud environments.

Achieving success with predictive analytics and machine learning on these platforms requires a foundation of robust data engineering. Beyond software and talent constraints, Jim also highlighted the physical and economic realities of modern infrastructure. Skyrocketing power consumption from AI workloads has become the primary near-term constraint for data centers, forcing hyperscalers to invest heavily in renewable energy and advanced cooling technologies. Additionally, the lifecycle for GPU and AI hardware is shortening rapidly, driving hyperscalers toward shorter depreciation cycles. While future innovations like silicon photonics promise to materially lower cooling and energy costs, substantial CapEx savings can be realized today by optimizing software to train large models on previous-generation hardware, or by utilizing ensembles of smaller, targeted models.

Positioning itself at the center of these shifting dynamics, Ensono operates as an AI-first managed services provider dedicated to modernizing large enterprise customers across both mainframe and distributed environments.

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As artificial intelligence reshapes the managed services landscape, MSPs are facing a defining moment. According to the MSP Poverty Line framework, developed by EChannelNews, organizations that fail to evolve risk falling behind, while those that embrace change can position themselves for long-term growth and profitability.

The good news is that crossing the MSP Poverty Line is achievable. Based on industry research and insights from leading MSPs, eight key action plans have been developed that can help any size MSP consistently separate themselves from a struggling to adapt organization into a high-performing one. 

THE EIGHT STEPS

The first step is embracing visionary leadership. Successful MSP leaders approach AI strategically, balancing innovation with strong cybersecurity governance. Rather than viewing AI as a trend, they see it as a core business capability.

Second, MSPs must strengthen their own brand identity. Organizations that define themselves primarily by the vendors they represent risk becoming interchangeable. The most successful MSPs focus on the outcomes they deliver rather than the products they sell.

Third, businesses should integrate autonomous agentic AI across their operations. From service delivery to internal workflows, AI is becoming the foundation of modern MSP operations and enabling greater efficiency and scalability.

Fourth, AI must be incorporated into sales and marketing strategies. Forward-thinking MSPs are leveraging automation, analytics, and AI-powered tools to improve customer engagement, generate leads, and accelerate growth.

The fifth step is developing a deeper understanding of clients’ business goals. Rather than focusing solely on technology, successful MSPs align their services with measurable business outcomes and competitive advantages.

Sixth, MSPs need to stay ahead of industry trends. By acting as trusted advisors and maintaining a seat at clients’ decision-making tables, they become indispensable strategic partners rather than service providers.

The seventh step focuses on building a strong organizational culture. As automation becomes more prevalent, maintaining human connection, collaboration, and employee well-being becomes increasingly important. Organizations with healthy cultures are often more resilient and adaptable.

Finally, MSPs must commit to continuous modernization. The pace of change in the channel is accelerating, and standing still is no longer an option. Businesses that continually evaluate their processes, service offerings, and market positioning are better equipped to respond to new opportunities and challenges.

The MSP Poverty Line is not simply a measure of revenue or profitability. It represents a business’s ability to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a rapidly evolving technology landscape. By focusing on these eight areas, MSPs can strengthen their foundations, create greater value for clients, and position themselves for sustained success in the AI-driven future.

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Presenters: Julian Lee, Publisher, Community Builder, Speaker, Channel Ecosystem Developer with a focus on cybersecurity, AI and Digital Transformation
Paolo Del Nibletto, Editor, eChannelNews
Nim Nadarajah, C.CISO, Cyber Security, Compliance & Transformation Expert | Executive Board Member | Keynote Speaker
Adam Bennett, Co-Founder & CEO at SureStack CEO at Crosshair Cyber
Randal Wark, Owner, MTech Cyber (MSP & Cybersecurity) ★ Conference Host ★ Mastermind Facilitator ★ Podcast Host ★ Journalist

The Cybersecurity Defense Ecosystem aims to assist Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in becoming more cybersecurity-oriented amidst industry disruptions caused by AI and regulatory changes.

The meeting examined how advanced AI models and automated offensive tooling are radically accelerating zero-day vulnerability discovery, forcing a massive paradigm shift in corporate incident response. The panel highlighted Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and its core security-focused model, Claude Mythos, as clear signals of this new reality. Able to autonomously uncover and chain complex, decades-old vulnerabilities in minutes, these tools are rendering traditional point-in-time scanning and monthly “Patch Tuesday” cycles obsolete. To adapt, the panel emphasized moving toward agent-based, continuous risk prioritization based on exploitability and CVE severity, while utilizing automated testing and seamless rollback capabilities to mitigate the operational threat of system breakage from rapid patching.

The urgency of this shift was framed by alarming defensive metrics, with CrowdStrike’s recent threat data citing a record-setting e-crime breakout time of just 27 seconds and an average corporate compromise under six minutes. The discussion referenced the high-profile ShinyHunters breach of Instructure’s Canvas platform between April 30 and May 7, which disrupted final examinations across thousands of educational institutions. Despite the platform going offline and a ransom reportedly being paid in exchange for decryption keys and certificates of destruction, the panel warned that such outcomes heavily expose organizations to double extortion and severe legal liabilities.

Transitioning to defensive economics, the panel analyzed the broader workforce and infrastructure impact of the AI arms race. The consensus was clear: AI will not replace security practitioners, but practitioners who adopt AI will replace those who do not. Organizations are urged to retool internal roles and consider variable, token-based pricing models for AI compute to shift operational budgets away from legacy per-user SaaS structures. They should also secure baseline infrastructure by enforcing core email security protocols like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to prevent supply-chain vendor spoofing.

Click here to watch previous episodes on Cybersecurity Defense Ecosystem

To learn more on Cybersecurity Defense Ecosystem, visit: https://cybersecuritydefenseecosystem.com/

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Danielle Morrison, National Practice Manager – Healthcare IT Services at All Covered, analyzed the healthcare threat landscape and explored how the industry’s lag in IT modernization has created severe security gaps. With an expanding attack surface of medical devices and legacy systems, under-supported small and mid-size providers frequently suffer from incomplete tooling, misconfigured software, and a critical shortage of internal security expertise.

To illustrate these risks, she talked about a ransomware breach where attackers weaponized dark-web credentials to exploit a legacy server that lacked multi-factor authentication (MFA). With an attacker dwell time of up to two years, the fallout caused widespread downtime, forcing ambulance diversions and disrupting patient care. The panel noted that the intense operational pressure often drives healthcare executives to pay ransoms, yet doing so failed to prevent a secondary attack by a different cybercriminal group.

Drawing on her dual background in nursing and healthcare informatics, Danielle emphasized that solving this crisis requires ongoing, expert human management rather than simple tool purchases. She outlined key defensive priorities:

• Continuous Monitoring: Deploying Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and active threat hunting.
• Proactive Controls: Enforcing mandatory MFA and increasing vulnerability scanning.
• Unified Operations: Leveraging specialized providers like All Covered (Konica Minolta’s IT division) to integrate secure infrastructure with compliant communication tools.

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Manuj Aggarwal, Founder of TetraNoodle Technologies, examined the trajectory of major AI vendors toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) through automated code generation. He noted that while this shift is driving tech-sector restructuring and impacting global spending power, it presents a critical “crossroads” for MSPs. As technical tasks become increasingly commoditized and devalued, the true value of an MSP will shift toward human-centric capabilities: creativity, empathy, and a relentless focus on customer business outcomes.

To navigate this transition, MSPs must pivot toward “Managed Intelligence”—a productized service model that prioritizes strategic insights over mere maintenance. He identified Identity Management and Sales Readiness as the two primary hurdles preventing MSPs from securing these high-value, high-margin contracts.

Finally, he also addressed the macro-risks of the AI era, from rapid vendor volatility and SaaS model shifts to the emergence of a “Cybersecurity Poverty Line.” This concept highlights a growing tier of organizations unable to keep pace with AI-accelerated threats, necessitating a move toward defensive automation and more sophisticated risk classification.

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Antoine Jabari, Co-Founder, GM Channel & Alliances Business at JumpCloud, explored the high-stakes evolution of agentic AI adoption and its profound implications for the channel. He highlighted a widening gap between early adopters rearchitecting their operating models and a long tail of organizations still utilizing AI merely for surface-level productivity. Antoine positioned MSPs as the vital bridge for SMBs during this transformation, noting a distinct market shift over the last six months toward scalable, robust AI solutions that require more assertive leadership from service providers.

Antoine warned that security threats have reached a new velocity. To combat these risks, identity is the definitive new perimeter. In a world where human and non-human (agentic) workflows are distributed across vast cloud estates, treating these identities as core control points is the only viable path forward. He detailed JumpCloud’s strategy to eliminate the complexity of “stitching together” point products by consolidating access and device controls into a single pane of glass. By offering outcome-focused, single-click workflows—such as unified onboarding across devices, VPNs, and applications—JumpCloud provides MSPs with a roadmap for the auditability and guardrails necessary to govern the next generation of agentic identities.

See our last interview with Antoine: https://www.e-channelnews.com/update-discussion-with-jumpclouds-antoine-jebara/

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Denis Villeneuve, Cybersecurity and Resiliency Practice Lead at Kyndryl, examined the profound implications of frontier AI models—such as Mythos—for enterprise cybersecurity, framing the challenge as a strategic decision-making mandate rather than a cause for alarm. While core cybersecurity principles remain foundational, the acceleration of AI-driven vulnerability discovery and exploitation marks a pivotal shift from human-speed to machine-speed responses. This evolution is creating a widening “cyber poverty line,” separating resilient organizations from those unable to manage the exponential surge in patch throughput required for modern vendor and open-source ecosystems.

The transition toward agentic AI introduces a new layer of governance and deployment risk. To navigate this, Denis emphasized the necessity of robust agentic frameworks that incorporate human-in-the-loop guardrails and role-based agent deployment within SOC workflows. Achieving C-suite alignment is critical to curbing the proliferation of shadow AI and shadow IT, ensuring that innovation remains under centralized governance. While the tools are changing, the solution remains rooted in the synergy of people, processes, and products, with a renewed focus on the basics: rigorous patching, multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, and defense-in-depth.

Looking forward, organizations must evolve their existing compliance frameworks—such as PCI—and mobilize cross-functional “tiger teams” to manage high-stakes communication and response plans.

See previous podcast with Denis: https://www.e-channelnews.com/kyndryl-on-cyber-resilience-bridging-readiness-gaps-and-navigating-ai-threats/

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Ken Rayner and Kenrick Bagnall of RB Cyber, detailed a comprehensive security architecture designed to bridge the gap between human vulnerability and technical resilience. The strategy centers on two flagship solutions: Watchdog, which provides advanced human-risk monitoring, policy governance, and seamless integration with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and major EDR/MDM platforms; and NeuShield, featuring patented Mirror Shielding technology. This innovative approach allows for near-instant ransomware recovery, with current support for NTFS, OneDrive, and Windows environments, and macOS compatibility arriving shortly. Beyond software, the offering provides a high-touch “A-Team” incident response service via a 1-800 hotline, supplemented by specialized legal and PR support to manage the aftermath of a breach.

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Snehal Antani, CEO and Co-Founder of Horizon3.ai, addressed the tactical reality of AI-driven adversary behavior. AI has drastically accelerated the attacker’s “OODA loop” (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act), citing a documented case of an autonomous compromise occurring in just 77 seconds. Beyond the technical speed, the discussion touched on geopolitical shifts, including Iranian targeting of dual-use infrastructure and a projected surge in unpatched vulnerabilities (CISA KEVs) for late 2026.

To counter these hyper-automated threats, Horizon3.ai is leveraging its channel partners and MSSPs to deploy advanced defensive tactics, such as deception technology and data poisoning. By empowering partners to move beyond traditional scanning and into active, autonomous defense, Horizon3.ai aims to neutralize AI-driven exploits before they can be weaponized against civilian and corporate infrastructure.

See our past interview with Horizon3: https://www.e-channelnews.com/horizon3-ai-grows-its-global-partner-program/

Horizon3.ai recently released new research on how organizations measure security—and whether those metrics reflect real resilience against attackers. The findings reveal a clear gap between tracking completed work and actually stopping real-world threats.

Key findings include:

• Only 11% of practitioners validate or patch within 24 hours of a CISA or ENISA known exploited vulnerability alert, many take a week or more to confirm if they’re even exposed
• 93% of CISOs say they could prove their organization took reasonable, validated steps to prevent a breach, yet only 30% patch and then test to confirm the risk was actually removed
• 97% of CISOs are confident their endpoint protection would detect lateral movement or privilege escalation, yet only 12% have validated EDR effectiveness in the last three months

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Jeff Collins, CEO of WanAware, explored the shift toward Visibility-as-a-Service (VaaS), a model designed to help MSPs manage the increasing complexity of AI-accelerated infrastructure. He defined their core value proposition as “actionable observability”—a method that moves beyond simple data collection to map the complex relationships and “blast radius” of dependencies across cloud, on-premises, IoT, and OT environments. By establishing a real-time knowledge graph, the platform can auto-discover ephemeral or developer-deployed resources that traditional scanners often miss, effectively reducing the noise of false positives that plague modern security operations.

He also addressed the telemetry trap, where organizations collect massive amounts of data in silos but fail to derive automated context. WanAware’s solution uses a lightweight, no-code integrator to ingest disparate APIs and correlate them into a unified view. This architectural approach allows MSPs to capture tribal knowledge from their senior engineers and convert it into automated playbooks. These playbooks are then executed with strict AI grounding and per-action verification, ensuring that incident responses are consistent, documented, and free from the risks of manual, spreadsheet-driven workflows.