May is Mental Health Month, which makes it the perfect time to talk about something that often gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list in IT and managed services.
The humans behind the keyboards.
At Comet Backup, we spend a lot of time thinking about protection, resilience, and recovery. Turns out those ideas apply to people too.
We have built small wellness habits into our week, like sharing quick tips during our Friday all-hands and keeping a Slack channel full of everything from healthy recipes to reminders to log off and go outside once in a while. Nothing revolutionary. Just simple ways to keep the conversation about workplace wellbeing going.
It is not just posters and corporate emails telling everyone to “prioritize wellbeing.”
It is about recognizing that mental health matters just as much as physical health. It is also about making it normal to say:
“I’m overloaded today.”
“Can someone give me a hand with this?”
“I need a break, I’ve been staring at the screen for too long.”
Mental health conversations are important because burnout rarely appears overnight. It builds slowly through stress, pressure, and constantly running at full capacity without enough time to recover.
And in IT, that can happen faster than most people realize.
Why burnout hits MSPs and IT teams particularly hard
Let’s be honest, this industry can be intense.
If you work in IT or managed services, some of these probably sound familiar:
Always on-call because systems do not care what time it is
Constant firefighting where solving one issue reveals three more
Client pressure and urgent requests landing at the same time
Remote work or solo roles that can feel isolating
The endless sea of tickets in the queue
It is rewarding work, but it can also quietly wear people down over time.
Burnout in MSP and IT environments often looks like:
Feeling mentally exhausted before the day even starts
Struggling to switch off after work
Losing patience faster than usual
Making simple mistakes from fatigue
Feeling like every alert triggers instant stress
That is why protecting mental health at work is not just a “nice to have.” It directly affects team wellbeing, performance, and long-term sustainability.
5 realistic ways MSPs can reduce stress and avoid burnout
No vague “just relax more” advice here. These are practical habits that actually help in busy IT environments.
1. Set boundaries between “online” and “always available”
One of the fastest paths to burnout is feeling like you can never fully disconnect.
Not every issue is a 2am emergency. Define after-hours expectations clearly with both clients and your team. Protecting your personal time is important.
2. Take small breaks before your brain forces you to
Micro-breaks matter more than people think. Even short pauses help reduce stress and reset focus.
Use a timer, like Pomodoro or breaktimer.app, to remind yourself to stretch, hydrate or get a cup of tea, or take a few minutes to look away from the screen (all screens, including the small screen).
3. Automate repetitive work wherever possible
Doing the same manual tasks every day drains mental energy fast.
If something keeps repeating, automate it, document it, or simplify it. Reducing repetitive workload helps lower cognitive overload and gives your team more breathing room.
4. Check in with humans, not just tickets
Make it normal to check in and have a friendly chat with coworkers—not just about tickets or projects, but about how they’re doing.
A culture of openness leads to earlier support and less stigma.
5. Move Your Body
It is easy for conversations in IT teams to become entirely task-focused.
“Any updates?”
“What is the ETA?”
Did the backup complete?”
Sometimes a simple “How are you going?” matters more.
Open conversations help reduce isolation and make it easier for people to speak up before stress becomes burnout.
Comet 26.4.0 Phoebe, our latest Quarterly release, brings new features that expand how you can access and manage Comet Backup. Highlights include a native cPanel plugin for seamless hosting-panel integration, Proxmox guest quotas for better resource control, and Storage Template replication across management consoles for simplified multi-server environments. This release also adds Czech language support, updates to our Ukrainian translation, and an important fix for a Microsoft 365 Graph API issue that affected backup providers industry-wide.
The full set of changes can be found in the release notes.
This Quarterly release is named after Saturn's moon Phoebe.
Fun fact: Phoebe is one of Saturn's most unusual moons. It orbits in the opposite direction (retrograde) to nearly all of Saturn's other moons, which strongly suggests it was captured from the Kuiper Belt rather than forming alongside Saturn. Its surface is exceptionally dark, reflecting only about 6% of the sunlight that hits it, making it one of the darkest objects in the Solar System. NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew by Phoebe in 2004, revealing a heavily cratered, ancient world rich in ice and carbon, a relic from the earliest days of our solar system.
Join us for our Quarterly webinar on Tuesday, May 13th, 2026 (4pm ET / 1pm PT). Comet Backup's Product Manager, Adam Wien, and Engineering Manager, Callum Sinclair, will cover all the latest product updates, with a live question-and-answer session at the end.
Comet Backup is now available as a native cPanel plugin, bringing enterprise-grade backup directly into the world's most popular hosting control panel.
For WHM administrators, this means you can set up, schedule, and manage per-account backups entirely within WHM — no external tools or separate management consoles required. The plugin handles everything from activation and storage provisioning to backup scheduling and per-account restores, all from the interface you already use every day.
Fully integrated in WHM — Create and manage backup jobs, configure schedules, and restore accounts directly from the WHM Plugins section, with no external software or dashboards to manage
Per-account backups and restores — Back up and restore individual cPanel accounts including files, databases, email, and account settings, designed for multi-tenant hosting environments
Incremental and deduplicated — Backups are incremental with server-wide deduplication, minimizing storage usage and keeping backup windows short
Flexible scheduling and retention — Configure backup schedules and retention policies that fit your hosting business, from daily account backups to on-demand runs
Whether you're a shared hosting provider looking to offer reliable backup protection or a server administrator who needs real disaster-recovery capability for cPanel accounts, the Comet Backup cPanel plugin delivers a complete, integrated solution. If you're already a cPanel partner, reach out to your account manager to get started.
Comet 26.4.0 Phoebe introduces guest quotas for Proxmox environments, giving partners fine-grained control over the number of virtual machines and containers that can be backed up per user.
This feature is especially valuable for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who need to manage backup costs and set clear boundaries for their customers' Proxmox environments.
Set a maximum number of Proxmox guests (VMs and containers) that a user is allowed to back up
The quota is configured per user in the Comet Management Console
If a user attempts to back up more guests than their quota allows, the backup job will return a clear error message, preventing unexpected usage growth
Storage Templates can now be replicated as part of the Management Console replication feature. For organizations running multiple Comet management consoles, whether for redundancy, geographic distribution, or organizational separation, this means your storage configurations stay consistent across all consoles automatically.
Previously, storage templates had to be configured independently on each management console. With 26.4.0 Phoebe, when you configure replication between management consoles, your storage templates are included automatically. Any changes made to storage templates on one console will be replicated to the others.
Comet Backup now features a Czech (Čeština) language translation, contributed by the community through our open-source translations repository on GitHub. This brings Comet's total to 17 supported languages, making it easier for Czech-speaking partners and end users to manage their backups in their native language.
We've also updated our Ukrainian (Українська мова) translation with improved accuracy and coverage, which was initially introduced in Comet 26.1.0 Iapetus.
We welcome contributions from the community to help bring Comet Backup to more languages. Visit our translations repository on GitHub to contribute.
Comet 26.4.0 Phoebe includes numerous enhancements across the platform. These improvements increase reliability, streamline daily operations, and address community feedback. A full list of enhancements and bug fixes can be found in our release notes.
Earlier this month, an upstream bug in Microsoft's Graph API caused Calendar Events delta queries to enter an infinite loop, returning unbounded data to any application requesting calendar sync updates. This was an industry-wide issue that affected backup providers across the board — not specific to Comet.
The impact for Comet customers was that some Microsoft 365 backup jobs became stuck or failed due to excessive memory consumption as the backup agent tried to process the never-ending API response.
Our engineering team identified the root cause, traced it back to Microsoft's API behavior, and built a fix into Comet 26.4.0 Phoebe. The fix introduces safeguards that detect when a Graph API delta query returns an abnormally large or unbounded dataset. Rather than consuming memory indefinitely, Comet now identifies this condition, terminates the runaway request, and falls back to a safe recovery path — allowing backup jobs to complete successfully without manual intervention.
We also proactively communicated with all affected MS365 customers as soon as the issue was understood, so partners could set expectations with their own clients.
Even though this was a Microsoft-side bug, we believe Comet should be resilient to unexpected behavior from third-party APIs. This fix makes Comet more robust against similar upstream issues in the future, and we'll continue to invest in defensive engineering to protect your backups. If you have any questions, please reach out to us at hello@cometbackup.com.
It’s that time of year again, our favorite cybersecurity holiday: World Backup Day! Celebrated every March 31st, this day recognizes the essential work of backing up and protecting data.
World Backup Day started back in 2011 with a Reddit post from someone who lost their hard drive and wished they'd been reminded about backups sooner. The timing is perfect too. Landing right before April Fool's Day, it's the universe's way of saying: don’t be a fool – protect your data.
What World Backup Day Means for the Everyday IT Heroes
If you're an MSP or IT professional, World Backup Day is a good reminder to review your backup strategies, share your expertise with clients, and remind everyone why that robust backup solution you implemented was the right call all along. Data protection doesn’t just happen on World Backup Day, it happens every single day.
Strong backup and data protection strategies are what keep businesses running when everything else fails. You're defending organizations against:
Data loss and accidental deletion
Ransomware attacks
Cybersecurity breaches
Hardware failures
System crashes
Natural disasters
Human error (coffee spilling on laptops included)
With a solid backup solution and tested recovery processes, you're equipped to handle whatever comes next. You're not just preventing disasters. You're the reason your clients and end users can focus on growing their business instead of worrying about “what if something happens?”
The backup landscape is evolving, and as an IT professional, you're right at the forefront. Here's what's defining resilient backup strategies in 2026:
Immutable and air-gapped backups: Immutable backups prevent any alterations or deletions during set retention periods, while air-gapping isolates backup data from network access. Together, they create an unbreachable defense against ransomware targeting backup repositories.
Recovery validation over features: Customers care whether their business can recover fast when something goes wrong. The winning approach combines recurring restore testing, documented workflows, and clear backup reporting. It's not about having the fanciest tools. It's about proving you can actually restore when it matters.
Cyber resilience as core infrastructure: Backup and disaster recovery teams play a key role in ensuring cyber resilience as the last line of defense. Your backup strategy is no longer just IT infrastructure, it's critical for business continuity.
Your World Backup Day Checklist for MSPs and IT Teams
Use March 31st as a reminder to run through the fundamentals:
Review backup coverage across all environments, including servers, databases, email systems, endpoints, and virtual machines
Confirm you have layered backups in multiple locations, not a single point of failure
Validate retention policies against current compliance and client requirements
Test restores regularly and document recovery time performance
Verify backup job success with automated reports and alerts
Lock down access to backup repositories with strong authentication and least privilege controls
When you're in the business of protecting data, you need tools that work as hard as you do. A reliable backup platform isn't optional for a strong BDR strategy. It's what lets you confidently tell clients they're covered, and actually mean it.
Here's what makes Comet Backup the right tool for IT heroes:
Easy to use: Comet Backup has an intuitive, easy-to-use web console where you can remotely manage and protect devices. Comet is fast and easy to set up – start running backups and restores in less than 15 minutes.
Versatile storage options: Choose between integrated cloud storage or utilize your own storage, whether that’s an on-prem solution or a S3 compatible storage provider (including AWS, Azure, Wasabi, Backblaze B2 and more). You’re in control of where your data sits.
Fast, efficient chunking technology: Advanced backup algorithm packages data into small blocks for faster uploads and downloads, saving valuable time.
Reliable and Secure: End-to-end encryption during backup, transit, and at rest.
Client-side deduplication: Reduces redundant data, ensuring more efficient storage usage and cost savings.
Incremental forever without full re-uploads: After the initial backup, only changes are uploaded, conserving bandwidth, and accelerating the backup process.
Compression and encryption: Client data is compact for storage efficiency and secured against breaches, ensuring peace of mind.
World Backup Day is a great time to educate and remind your end users and clients how you keep businesses protected and operational. As an MSP or IT provider, you're not just implementing backup solutions. You're delivering confidence, enabling growth, and making sure that when the unexpected happens, your clients and end users are ready for it.
Ready to see what Comet Backup can do for your backup strategy? Test drive Comet Backup with a 30-day FREE trial, or book a discovery call with our team to learn more about how Comet Backup can help your business.
More 2026 IT Holidays and Cybersecurity Awareness Days
Check out our blog post on 2026 IT Holidays. These holidays and awareness days are a fun opportunity to highlight and teach the importance of cybersecurity to your clients or end users, or show appreciation for your team.
We're excited to announce that support for backing up Proxmox VE is now available in Comet 26.1.0 or later.
Whether you're already running Proxmox or exploring alternatives to VMware and Hyper-V, our Proxmox Protected Item will give you more options to protect VMs and virtual environments.
Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.
Many businesses turn to open-source virtualization to streamline their IT operations through server consolidation. Proxmox VE offers a license-free, fully featured virtualization platform that enhances flexibility, security, and reliability, making it a smart choice for modern infrastructure.
If you are looking to use Proxmox VE, you can find their comparison against VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V here.
Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item will support backing up and restoring Virtual Machines (VM's) and Linux Containers to and from a Proxmox Cluster.
Backing up VMs will also launch with Changed Block Tracking (CBT) support for fast backups as Comet only needs to back up disk sectors that have changed instead of scanning the entire disk to find what has changed since the last backup.
Restore Virtual Machines to Hyper-V, Proxmox and VMware
Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item adds support for restoring VMs directly into a Proxmox Cluster. Once Comet's Proxmox VE Protected Item is launched customers will be able to restore a VM to Hyper-V, Proxmox or VMware hypervisors regardless of which hypervisor the backup was taken from.
Restore Physical Machines from Disk Image Protected Items
Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item adds support for restoring physical Disk Image backups directly to a Proxmox Cluster. This is a great feature for customers needing to restore a Disk Image backup instantly without needing to acquire physical hardware to perform the restore on.
Our new Proxmox VE Protected Item can be used to migrate VMs away from Hyper-V or VMware onto a Proxmox Cluster. There are quite a few benefits for using Comet to migrate your Hyper-V or VMware VMs.
If you have an existing Hyper-V or VMware Protected Item backup, you can migrate to Proxmox quickly without losing your backup history. This allows you to restore an older VM backup if required without needing to use any other systems or manage multiple backup jobs per VM.
Once Comet has performed a Hyper-V or VMware VM backup, if you set the Proxmox Protected Item to back up the same VM to the same Storage Vault as the Hyper-V or VMware Protected Item Comet's chunking algorithm will be able to deduplicate the backups together. This has a large number of benefits such as reducing total Storage required to maintain VM backups from multiple hypervisors and significantly faster backups as the first Proxmox VM backup does not need to re-upload a lot of data.
Comet's Proxmox VE Backup - Full Feature List & Capabilities
Comet 26.1.0 Iapetus, our latest Quarterly release, brings 9 new features and 7 enhancements, and marks an important milestone as our Proxmox VE Protected Item graduates from Beta to General Availability. This release also includes numerous enhancements to performance, reliability, and platform support.
The full set of changes can be found in the release notes.
This Quarterly release is named after Saturn's moon Iapetus.
Fun fact: Iapetus, Saturn's third-largest moon, is the only large moon in the Solar System with a two-tone coloration - one hemisphere bright as snow and the other dark as coal. This dramatic contrast makes it the most distinctive moon orbiting Saturn, with one side ten times brighter than the other, giving it a striking yin-yang appearance from space.
Join us for our Quarterly webinar on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 (3pm ET / 12pm PT). Comet Backup's Mason Giles, Architect, and Adam Wein, Product Manager, will cover all the latest product updates, with a live question-and-answer session at the end.
New Feature: Proxmox Virtual Environment Protected Item General Access
With Comet 26.1.0 Iapetus, our Proxmox VE Protected Item has graduated from Beta to General Availability and is production-ready.
Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete, open-source server management platform for virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor, Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage, and networking functionality on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs, containers and high availability for clusters.
Setting up the Proxmox VE Protected Item is very simple and follows the same UX patterns as other Protected Items.
The setup is simple. Install the Comet Backup agent on the Proxmox Host, associate it with your Comet Backup console and enter your Proxmox Credentials into the Protected Item. Once complete, every operation can be done from the Comet Backup console just like any other device supported by Comet Backup.
Changed Block Tracking (CBT) for Faster Incremental Backups
Because we are leveraging Proxmox's backup tools, we can fully support Changed Block Tracking. This cuts down on transfer time of your backup data by only transferring the blocks that have changed since the last backup. For low change workloads like databases and file servers, this can mean a huge speed-up. Combined with Comet Backups proprietary chunking, you're saving on both transfer and storage.
Modern workflows require that we sometimes move on and off certain platforms. Comet Backup is here to help. One feature of Comet Backup is allowing you to backup from one technology and restore to another. In our case, we'll be converting a hardware server to a virtual machine within our Proxmox cluster.
Comet 26.1.0 Iapetus includes numerous enhancements across the platform. These enhancements improve the usability and performance of our product. Improving the concurrency in vault initialization improves large workloads when adding many endpoints or protected items. Better job history formatting for those customers who rely on exporting their job histories for use in 3rd party tools. A full list of enhancements can be found in the release notes.
As we get ready for the new year, it’s a great time to look ahead and mark your calendar with key dates, including upcoming 2026 IT and cybersecurity holidays.
These holidays and awareness days are a fun opportunity to highlight and teach the importance of cybersecurity to your clients or end users, or show appreciation for your team.
The National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) organizes Data Privacy Week to spread awareness about the importance of safeguarding personal data and ensuring online data privacy and safety. Our data is collected everyday – from your computer, smartphone, smartwatch, and pretty much every other internet-connected device. You can check and update the settings on your apps and devices to decide how this data is collected and used.
National Clean Out Your Computer Day was started in 2000 as an initiative of the Institute for Business Technology and falls on the second Monday in February. The event promotes taking time out of your day to do some basic housekeeping on your computer, such as organizing your files and folders, updating software, and removing unused files. Before you delete any files, it’s a good idea to make sure you have a backup of your data, just in case! Don’t forget about wiping the outside of your device, and cleaning the screen and keyboard.
World Backup Day on March 31st is one of our favorite IT holidays on the calendar (for no specific reason). World Backup Day reminds us to backup and protect our data. In today’s digital age, data backup and data protection is critical for businesses and organisations to help protect against cyberattacks, ransomware, system crashes, human error, and more. Having a robust and secure backup solution, like Comet Backup, will help safeguard against these data loss threats.
World Password Day is celebrated annually on the first Thursday of May to encourage people to use stronger passwords and secure their online accounts. Strong passwords are important for protecting sensitive information and preventing unauthorized access. For another layer of protection you can also use two-factor authentication (2FA) to secure your accounts for better security.
System Administrator Appreciation Day (SysAdmin Day) honors IT professionals who work behind the scenes to keep our IT systems, networks, servers, and technology running smoothly at businesses and organizations across the world. Shout out to our everyday IT heroes!
We celebrate IT Professionals Day on the third Tuesday of September to recognize the technical IT experts that make sure our systems run smoothly. Whether its desktops, laptops, mobile devices, printers, applications, servers, networks, databases or cybersecurity, IT professionals keep our businesses humming. IT Pro Day recognizes the critically important role of these technical experts.
In October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month is an international initiative that educates everyone about online safety and empowers individuals and businesses to protect their data from cybercrime. Cybersecurity Awareness Month reminds everyone that there are simple, effective ways to keep yourself safe online, protect your personal and business data, and ultimately help secure our world.
Computer Security Day was first launched in 1988 by the Association for Computer Security. Since then, the way we use computers has changed. Today, we use computers to stay connected almost every day – working from home, shopping online, internet banking, streaming movies, social media, and more. Computer Security Day encourages individuals and businesses to adopt good virtual habits and be proactive in protecting your data in our modern digital world.
While National Cookie Day is not necessarily a conventional IT awareness day, we like to celebrate it each year on December 4th as a reminder to clear your cache and cookies on your web browser. Clearing your cache and cookies can help improve your browser’s performance, protect your privacy by reducing tracking, and free up a little bit of space on your computer.
No matter what time of the year, it’s always important to be proactive and take action to keep ourselves and our organizations safe by backing up data, securing accounts, using strong passwords, and having good cyber hygiene and habits.
If you are looking for a fast and secure backup solution, you can test drive Comet Backup with a 30-day FREE trial! Start running backups and restores in 15 minutes or less.
We’re back with the seventh edition of CometCon, this time as a 2-day mini version of our company-wide internal conference. Each year we host a mid-year and end-of-year CometCon where local and remote team members gather at Comet Backup HQ for presentations, ideation sessions, team bonding, and fun activities.
Here are some highlights of our end of year CometCon:
At each CometCon, team members from all departments are invited to give a presentation. The sessions are focused around how we can improve the product and experience for our partners and customers.
We heard from the dev team leaders, enjoyed a few technical deep dives, and had a great session from marketing. It’s always a highlight to share knowledge across departments and learn from experts across the company.
We also hosted a few virtual sessions, including welcoming a new team member based in the US and a conversation with Christian, CEO of WebPros, our parent company.
This Speaker Series also included an external group, Pākiki Security, who ran an interactive Capture the Flag challenge, testing our cybersecurity skills (leader board and chocolate prizes included).
One of the most valuable parts of CometCon is the time spent together as a team. Connection is a huge part of the Comet culture, and we love having our remote team members join us in person. Throughout the event, we scheduled time for open collaboration where people could brainstorm ideas, work side-by-side, and just hang out (boardgames optional).
This year’s Team Awards featured a special guest presenter and a collection of very niche, ultra-specific awards for everyone on the team. A standout moment: the coveted ‘Meme Lord’ title went to Mike, one of our Dev Team Leaders. It was a lot of fun guessing who won each award, and everyone got to pick out a prize.
As usual, our end-of-year party coincided with CometCon and included a healthy dose of friendly competition. This time we battled it out with darts and a quiz-style gameshow at Serve Social (plenty of laughs, surprises, and bragging rights included).
There’s always a special buzz in the office during CometCon, energizing conversations, creative ideas, and plenty of laughs. Events like this remind us how lucky we are to work with such a talented and supportive team. We’ve loved spending this time together, and we’re excited for what the new year will bring.
We’re updating our quarterly software release schedule to make it easier for you to take full advantage of new features, enhancements, and improvements.
Our Q4 release has traditionally landed at the end of November each year, followed by the quarterly webinar in early December. This can be a busy time for many MSPs and IT teams.
To better support your planning cycles and avoid the end-of-year crunch, we’re shifting our 2026 release cadence so that each quarterly release lands earlier throughout the year.
Starting next year, our quarterly releases will arrive at the end of:
January (26.1)
April (26.4)
July (26.7)
October (26.10)
This schedule gives teams a more balanced cadence throughout the year with more time and space to adopt new features, review changes, and plan upgrades.
We’re excited to bring you another year of enhancements, performance improvements, and new capabilities!
Autumn is here again, which means sweater weather, pumpkin spice lattes, and horror movie marathons. For MSPs and IT providers, October also marks Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a global initiative to raise awareness about staying safe online and protecting valuable data.
In 2025, the cybersecurity “spooky season” is scarier than ever. The villains have leveled up with more sophisticated phishing tactics, AI-generated deepfakes, and ransomware attacks lurking around the corner.
So, what does this mean for MSPs and IT teams? You’re not just the IT providers – you’re the first line of defense against these threats. Your clients and end users trust you to keep them and their businesses secure.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the perfect time to re-engage clients, refresh their defenses, and remind them why you are their trusted IT partner.
Remember when phishing emails were incredibly obvious? Think of the ones from the ‘Prince of Nigeria’ that started with ‘Dear Sir/Madam,’ requesting a wire transfer of $500,000? Those days are long gone. Now, we’ve entered the age of AI-powered cybercrime, where the threats are smarter, craftier, and more convincing.
The Rise of the Machines: AI-powered Scams & Deepfake Attacks
Attackers are now using AI to craft highly realistic emails, texts, WhatsApp messages, fake voices, and even video messages. Generative AI makes vishing (voice phishing), impersonation, and fraud not only easier but nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
Cybercriminals are now using AI to clone voices with scary accuracy. Imagine getting a voicemail from someone who sounds exactly like your boss asking you to pay an invoice. Plot twist: it's not actually your boss.
Every business, no matter how big or small, is now a potential target for these sophisticated impersonation scams and attacks.
While everyone's talking about AI this and machine learning that, the truth is that cybersecurity still comes down to people making good decisions. While technology is critical, people remain a target. Studies consistently show that poor training amplifies breach risks.
This is where your expertise as MSPs and IT providers shine. You're not just managing servers and fixing printers (we know you do that too, and we appreciate you for it). You're educators and translators, helping clients understand cybersecurity in a practical, business-friendly way. By training end users to spot and stop attacks, you help businesses build a stronger first line of defense.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month Action Plan for MSPs & IT Providers
Here are three practical ways to put Cybersecurity Awareness Month into action with your clients this October:
1. Educate Your Clients About AI-Powered Threats
Your clients need to know that the game has changed. That suspicious email might not have obvious red flags anymore. The text message from the bank might seem legit. The person calling about "urgent payment verification" might sound exactly like their trusted vendor. Help your clients build the mindset that healthy skepticism isn't paranoia – it's survival.
2. Implement the "Core 4" Cybersecurity Practices
Remind clients and end users of four simple but powerful habits:
Use strong passwords and a password manager: Unique passwords, passphrases, biometrics, or secure password vaults make life harder for attackers
Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA): But don’t blindly hit “approve.” Always double-check: was that login really you, or was it someone else?
Recognize and report phishing and scams: Look out for typos, spoofed domains, or “urgent” requests that don’t quite feel right.
Keep software updated: Hit “update”, get another coffee, and let the security patches and software update.
These aren't new concepts, but in 2025 they're still critical steps that anyone can take to stay safe online.
3. Backup, Test, Restore, Repeat. (Did we mention backup?)
We might be a little biased here, but backups are like your insurance policy against ransomware and data loss. A backup is great, but a tested restore is even better. Make sure to verify that the backup has run, and that you can restore the data from the backup.
The National Cybersecurity Alliance and Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have put together some excellent free resources that you can use with your clients.
These resources are perfect for client newsletters, security training sessions, or quarterly security reviews (when you remind clients that yes, they do need to take cybersecurity seriously).
We sat down for a chat with Benj Sarmiento, one of Comet’s Technical Support Engineers who has been with the company since July 2024. This piece has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What does a typical day look like for you as a technical support engineer?
My day is usually a combination of handling simple and complex issues raised by clients. I work closely with our Support Team Lead for any escalations, and I also coordinate with the dev teams to raise any issues with them, when needed, so I can deliver fixes to customers as quickly as possible.
You mentioned working with the developers. What does that collaboration look like?
Because not all issues can be fixed by the support team alone, sometimes we need the developers to apply patches or hot fixes. The devs recommend things we can do for the clients, which helps us resolve the issues faster. So instead of the clients waiting for solutions to come out in a future software release, sometimes we grab them directly from the devs to get clients support quickly.
Is that unique to Comet, or is it common in other software companies?
At Comet, it’s easy to approach the developers and I can reach out directly to who I need to talk to and get quick responses.
At other companies I’ve worked at, there were longer escalation processes or multiple steps before we could even get access to the developers. But at Comet, we have direct access to talk to the devs, so we can help our clients faster.
What do you like most about being technical support?
I've been doing technical support ever since I graduated from university and I still enjoy it. I get a lot of satisfaction and I’m happy when I get to help customers and fix their concerns, especially if they are facing complex issues. I like being able to solve problems and contribute to helping their business. It’s nice to get recognition from the clients when they thank us for the help.
Can you tell us a bit about your work history and background?
I graduated with a degree in information technology in the Philippines, where I’m originally from.
After graduating, I worked in the Philippines in technical support for a US based company, Verizon. We handled a lot of network issues and computer issues, and hardware and software issues. It was really complex because we were getting a lot of tickets per day, but I was able to manage handling those tickets. From there I really started to enjoy technical support.
I transferred to another company a few years later. There were times that I was offered to apply for Senior or Lead management positions. But I realized that I prefer working directly with customers and clients who use the product, which is why I decided to stay on the frontlines of technical support.
Do you have any tips for clients who are using Comet Backup?
The best advice for someone new using Comet would be to read the documentation and articles in our knowledge base. There are helpful answers to common questions.
It's really the environment that I enjoy here. We have a flexible set up for our schedules, and I can work at my own pace, we aren’t micromanaged here. I pick up my own tickets and work on them.
The work culture is good, everyone is easy to talk to, like Mike, our support lead, and everyone else in the team are also very approachable.
My favorite thing about Comet is the product itself, because I’m always learning new things that allow me to help our clients more. Plus, I really like working with the people at Comet and the environment. I feel comfortable working at Comet, the culture is very welcoming.
How do you feel about CometCon, our internal company conference?
CometCon is great, especially for team bonding and spending time together. It’s nice because CometCon is a combination of work-related activities and learning from each other, but there’s also time for socializing with each other outside of our day-to-day work.
It’s quiet here, especially compared to back in the Philippines where it’s busy and noisy, and there’s less traffic here. If I want to relax, I’m finding time to relax in Christchurch. I can still enjoy my week aside from work, I can play basketball every week and hang out with my friends.
I’ve played basketball ball since I was seven years old, and I still play now. I also like gaming, including playing NBA and Tekken on the PS5 with my partner. Besides that, I love traveling, and back in the Philippines I liked riding motorcycles.
We know everyone at Comet loves food. What’s your favorite food?
Yeah, I love Italian food, like spaghetti, pasta, and pizza. That's the food that I always want.
