The MSP Minute ⏱ Tuesday 28 April 2026
For Managed Service Providers worldwide. Today... attackers are calling your clients pretending to be you... a US MSP will become the world's largest SMB IT provider... and great news about IT spend
🔴 A new attack group is overwhelming inboxes with spam… then impersonating your helpdesk over Teams
This one is worth reading carefully, because it targets exactly the trust your clients place in you.
A newly identified threat group tracked as UNC6692 has been using a two-stage attack. It starts with flooding a target’s inbox with thousands of spam emails in a short window, creating panic and confusion. Then, while the victim is overwhelmed, an attacker contacts them over Teams posing as IT helpdesk staff offering to fix the problem. SecurityWeek
Once the victim clicks a link sent via Teams, they’re directed to a fake “Mailbox Repair Utility” page that harvests their credentials. From there, a modular malware suite called SNOW installs itself silently… a browser extension for persistent access, a tunnelling tool for moving through the network, and a backdoor for remote code execution.
Google’s Mandiant team, who published the full analysis, found that attackers then use the access to dump Active Directory credentials and move laterally across the entire environment. The Hacker News
Two things worth doing today. First, remind clients that your team will never contact them out of the blue via Teams from an external account. Any legitimate support request starts with them contacting you, not the other way around. Second, check whether your clients have external Teams messaging restricted. If they don’t need it, it shouldn’t be on.
🟡 A US MSP just acquired the largest SMB-focused MSP in Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines
Do you hear the cash registers ringing? It’s the sound of big deals being done.
Integris, a US-based MSP backed by private equity, announced yesterday its intent to acquire First Focus, the largest MSP serving small and midsize businesses across Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Subject to regulatory approval, the deal would make Integris the largest SMB-focused MSP in the world. PR Newswire
First Focus will keep its existing leadership team and continue its own acquisition strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. For Integris, the play is clear… SMB clients increasingly need IT support that crosses borders, and a single provider that can follow them internationally is a compelling offer.
This is private equity doing exactly what it said it would do at last week’s Channel Partners Conference: Pouring money into MSPs with scale and a clear growth story. The consolidation of the market is real and it’s accelerating. How do you feel about that?
🟢 Talking of cash registers… Gartner just revised global IT spending upward. And managed services is the biggest category of all
Gartner published a revised global IT spending forecast last week. And the headline number went up significantly… from $6.15 trillion forecast in February to $6.31 trillion now, a 13.5% increase on 2025. Yahoo!
KERCHING!! The revision is being driven by AI infrastructure investment. But the number that matters most for MSPs is this: IT services, the category that includes managed services, is the single largest spending segment of all at $1.87 trillion.
Bigger than software, hardware and data centres. Something to boast about at a dinner party this week 😃
There’s a lot of noise right now about tariffs, economic uncertainty, and whether clients are going to tighten their belts. Gartner’s data says the opposite is happening. IT budgets are growing faster than expected, not slower.
Right, that’s Tuesday done. We’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow morning. Enjoy your day.