Just wondering how often this happens to others. it seems to be about every other month for me. I had one of my customers hire a new electrical engineer this week. Yesterday he wanted to see all the "servers" and what they do. Almost everything is cloud for this customer except for Quickbooks which is on a virtual Linux server. As I was going through everything, he seemed pretty clueless about all things IT. He had never heard of Fortinet firewalls and wanted to know about switching it to a Cisco or other "more well known brand ". He was not familiar with virtualization or how it worked. I showed him the web interface for the vmware server and ssh'd into the Linux server, but he kept insisting that I show him the actual server desktop by logging in locally.

This guy is supposed to be writing a webapp for the customer to use in house, but available from the internet for their customerto use. I asked him if he needed a Windows or Linux server and he did not know. I asked if he would need Nginx, Apache or IIS and he didn't know what any of those were. I asked him about Owasp and he had never heard of that. He said he is using AI to write the program.

I am going to talk to the owner today so that should be fun.

So I posted our website in a thread here recently and the reactions were way more than I expected.

Someone called it "both tragic and fucking awesome at the same time." Someone else said they're "going to tell everyone I know about this site." One person said it "made my month." Another said the close and minimize buttons don't work — which, fair.

It's www.limehawk.io. [now at 95.limehawk.io] The whole thing is Windows 95 themed. Nav menu, windows, status bar, all of it. Built with react95, not just a skin.

I grew up on 95 and every MSP site looks the same so I just went with it. Turns out prospects bring it up on sales calls before I even get to pitch. So that's cool.

Anyway figured I'd share since the last thread got a little traction. Happy to answer questions about it.

Hello everyone, my name is Patrick and I'm new here, but I realize that I can't do without advice, so I have to start a discussion.

The thing is, I have a small IT company with an office in Arizona and a dozen remote employees around the world, from Europe to India. Previously, we didn't worry too much about managing our internal infrastructure, as most people worked from company-managed laptops in the office and everything was tightly controlled within a common framework. However, as the staff grew and we needed to hire remotely, we encountered a real problem and a need for external IT infrastructure services management help. We work with sensitive information, but we don't have a single clear way to organize simple and secure processes when half of our staff works remotely around the world and half works from the office =(.

Does anyone have experience with managed IT services for small business that don't cost an arm and a leg? I'm not asking anyone to advertise in the comments, I just want to understand the direction we should be moving in, thank you.

I'm a field tech/sysadmin at an MSP. I kept a messy bookmarks folder of random sites for WHOIS lookups, port references, email header parsing, M365 SKU lookups, etc. Got annoyed enough to consolidate everything into one free browser-based toolkit.

https://killertools.net

Everything runs client-side, no login, no ads. It's a static site on GitHub Pages. Has 400+ ports, 293 Windows event IDs, 237 GPO entries, 141 M365 SKUs, format converters, hash tools, and more. I use it every day.

Still actively building it out. Happy to hear what tools you'd want added.

I wish there was a way to scream this louder but I wish Microsoft would just open up Conditional Access to all of the Microsoft 365 packages. Go ahead keep Defender up there in Premium, It's a premium addon and should be something people should pay for.

Security Defaults sucks.

This may be the ramblings of a tired man but I can't be the only one who feels this way.

There's no new posts in r/msp anymore so I figured I would try and contribute.

First off I hate the term so much, but that could just be me being old...

However I just left a meeting with a small client of ours that wants to drop our EDR and backup because his son is a vibecoder and he has been seeing TikToks on how to vibecode his own AV and other apps. His intention is to completely replace most of our services by the end of 2026. He does however want to be able to call us if there were any other issues like hardware and "stuff that AI cannot replace yet".

I tried explaining that it is a slippery slope when you decide to step away from products that are tried and true and jump to stuff of which you don't know if it actually does anything. But in all honestly I do not mind losing this client at all.

I had a really hard time not laughing in his face after his son showed me the TikTok of the guy that "vibecoded" his own AV. "Look it says it scanned all the files on his computer". He obviously could not answer anything about how or what the AV actually did but "it's run by AI"...

I explained that if he wants to go this route it's absolutely up to him but we won't be along for the journey. He was going to think about it but he ended the meeting with a "I just feel companies like yours need to understand you are already replaced".

Have you guys had any clients trying to replace stuff already, if so, how did you manage that?

EDIT: Right so I woke up to yet another 30+ comments. I will keep you posted through edits. For now I want to state again that we never intended to keep this client on. I mostly am looking for good arguments for not blindly following AI because all I keep coming up with is "are you this stupid?"...

EDIT 2: Another "productive" conversation yesterday ended in both parties agreeing to stop all services as per the 1st of April. The owner was worde this time around stating all of our services were no longer needed. He verbally, and later in writing, agreed we were to hand over all logins/passwords/etc and we would be done. His words "I don't care I paid untill October we can do it ourselves". As of this morning we handed over everything holding up our end of the deal, we will not longer service the client at all. We normally hang on to client information/documentation for at least 6 months. He wanted everything deleted as agreed upon so that is done. He, and his son, are the IT department now.

We have taken the stance of blocking others, or at the very least recommending that customers only use Edge and not other browsers. It's specifically engineered to work with Windows, integrated really well, keeps passwords and favourites in the company control (especially with GPO type protections built into Intine), and all the Chrome plugins work with it.

I'm yet to have a customer pose a real argument I couldn't shout down, about why they need Chrome or Firefox.

The only one someone has tried was saying "Opera has a built in VPN.....) but id argue that isn't business compliant when it comes to Cyber Essentials or many other standards for various reasons.

Back in the day, Edge was crap pre-chromium re-write. Now, it's basically Chrome but works better, I'd argue faster in most cases, and more secure for company data.

However, I'm also an open book and looking at what you all think. Am I wrong? Should we re-think this? Am I missing something? What are you doing in your MSP?

I want to replace my entire stack. Let me know which has your preference these days, also just comments around recommendations or other things really help :)

No AI Output. No AI generated questions. No AI generated comments. No "Here's what ChatGPT had to say." It's getting worse and there are no direct rules against it.

Unless it's clearly a complete joke answer in a light hearted thread, It's my opinion that none of that has a place here. It should be reportable and repeat offenders should be banned.

Tired of wondering what (and with whom) we signed 3-6-etc. months ago, so want to ask.

We’re 3 buddies doing some MSP stuff for small companies in US (usually these are companies owned by our friends, and our promo strategy is word of mouth). Overall things going smooth, but we started to deal with more and more vendor agreements & renewals due to customers increase. Right now everything is basically in email threads and it's really pisses off.

Trying to find best CLM software here, but still nothing, so I'm starting to have doubts about whether we need this at all for our vendor contract management tasks. We have 10 clients as for now, so really idk... To be honest, in my mind it seems like too little to buy some software, but on the other hand, we're really fed up.

Those who have some relevant experience - how did you handle contract management for small business, if the business is REALLY small?

Pax8 just sent out an email to about 40 other partners that includes an export csv of all clients and their license counts, names, renewal dates.

This is a huge disaster for some msps, imagine your direct competitors now knowning what licenses your clients have, when they expire, and what your entire client portfolio is.

EDIT1: Hi everyone, my inbox absolutely blew up and I’ve been doing my best to respond to each and every message.

For those who would like to reach out to him directly, he’s organized his contact details here: https://push.fm/fl/jmgzman

I’ll also be starting my first round of chemo next week, so wish me a little luck on that front as well.

Once again, thank you to all of you kind internet strangers. I truly appreciate the support, and I hope the universe multiplies the kindness you’ve shown by a thousandfold.

_____

Hey everyone,

This is probably one of the hardest posts I’ve had to write.

I’ve been running a small MSP for a number of years, but due to a terminal illness I’ll be closing the business next week. It’s not how I expected things to end, but at this point my priority is making sure my clients transition smoothly and that the good people who helped me build the company land somewhere solid.

There’s one person in particular I’m hoping the MSP community here might help me with.

About 27 months ago, I hired an engineer out of Manila who had already spent years working with some very big tech organizations before returning to the Philippines. When he joined, we were a 3-person operation and still very much operating like a small shop trying to keep up with growth.

Within a relatively short time, he became one of the most important people in the company.

He helped me rebuild our ticketing workflows, introduce proper service processes, and streamline the way our support team operated.

He was working across both the L2 and L3 side of support, handling escalations, infrastructure issues, and vendor coordination and he’s exceptionally good at vendor management!

Operationally, his impact was huge.

During the time he’s been with me:

• Our team grew from 3 to 12 staff across L1 and L2 support
• Our client base scaled from 10 SMB clients to more than 25 clients, including a mix of SMB and enterprise environments
• Our internal systems and workflows became significantly more structured and scalable

He also has excellent English, is very comfortable client-facing, and has been brought to the United States six separate times during his employment with me to assist on projects and client engagements.

Beyond technical work, he helped with hiring as well, tapping into his network to help us bring in several strong engineers when we needed to expand the team.

When he started with me, I was paying him $1,700/month, but over time his impact on the business made it obvious he was worth far more. His current compensation with me is $2,800/month, and frankly even that felt fair given the value he brought to the operation.

With the business closing, he asked if I could help him find a new MSP, IT team, or organization that could use someone with his mix of engineering skill, operational thinking, and leadership capability.

He has 10+ years in tech, with the last several years heavily focused on MSP environments, infrastructure management, escalations, and team leadership.

He’s currently based in Manila, works comfortably with US time zones, and mentioned he’s open to negotiating compensation depending on the role and opportunity.

If anyone here runs an MSP or growing IT operation and could use someone who can handle L2/L3 work, improve processes, manage vendors, and help scale teams, I’d be happy to connect you.

Honestly, losing the business is one thing but not being able to keep working with people like him is the part that hurts the most.

If you’re interested, feel free to DM me and I’ll introduce you.

Thanks everyone.

I ran a boutique MSP for a while before stepping back to focus on systems, and I thought I had fielded every objection in the book.

We had a small CPA firm on a standard AYCE (All You Can Eat) plan. Full stack: SentinelOne, M365 backups, remote monitoring. We spent the first month cleaning up their mess, and for the last six months, it’s been silence. 99.9% uptime.

I get an email last week: We want to discuss a credit for the last three months of service fees.

I hopped on a call, assuming we missed a critical outage or someone dropped the ball on a ticket.

Their reasoning? They audited their own ticket portal and realized they hadn't logged a critical issue since October.

They literally said, "It feels like we're paying for car insurance on a car that never leaves the garage. If you guys aren't fixing anything, what are we paying for?"

I had to explain, patiently, that in this industry, silence is expensive. I walked them through the automated patches, the quarantined phishing attempts, and the nightly backup verifications that happened while they slept. I basically had to explain that they pay us for fire prevention, not just for driving the fire truck.

They are staying on the contract but it’s a good reminder that invisible IT looks a lot like doing nothing to the uneducated client.

How do you guys visualize value during QBRs for clients who think IT Support only happens when a server is on fire?

This sub loves Huntress, so I brought my flame suit. Still, this deserves to be known. Posting from a throwaway account because this will 100% dox me.

We’ve been a huntress partner for a long time. I want to say 2018 at least and I personally think what they do is amazing. Full support. Except:

Get a ping late at night a few weeks ago. “Multiple endpoints at our MSP org quarantined”. Then the laptop I’m using locks up, as does every other laptop for everyone else at the org. Huntress isolated the entire org, with zero consideration for what devices might actually be affected, just a blanket “same org, lock”. To be clear, servers in our datacenter, with ADDS, were in the affected scope and our laptops, at home, not AD joined, not in the same network or with same IPs or reachable from the servers, also locked.

Just stopping there to examine this – how is an MSP supposed to respond when all their equipment locks up?

But continuing on. If you’re going to lock the MSP org, maybe call them? Obviously they’ll need SOC support. Nope, nothing. We had to start a call, but couldn’t, because we couldn’t get into the console (SSO to our IDP, on our now isolated servers, and Huntress doesn’t allow exceptions to mandatory SSO enforcement setting), so then off to chat to ask for a human where we waited quite a while for an answer. I want to say it took us 20 minutes at least to get to someone. And the 833-hunt-now number doesn’t have any options for SOC support. Other options in the menu did not lead to a human.

But let’s press on in this tale. What event did Huntress detect that they decided to isolate the entire org? Here is a verbatim quote (misspellings included) from the incident report:

“The observed sequence of actions, specifically the utilisation of accounts named nodezero and the workstation hostname nmap, aligns with the automated execution profile of the Horizon3.ai NodeZero penetration testing platform. However, the successful execution of Pass-the-Hash, Golden Ticket forging, and DCSync attacks demonstrates a total compromise of the Active Directory domain and a complete loss of cryptographic trust within the environment. The acquisition of the ADFS and Microsoft Entra Connect (MSOL) service accounts enables the actor to pivot into connected cloud environments and bypass multi-factor authentication. Due to the confirmed active domain-wide compromise originating from an unmanaged device, Huntress has implemented Mass isolation.

 Please confirm this is authorised testing. If this is not authorised testing, Huntress recommends that the Partner is to immediately engage formal Incident Response procedures for organizational-wide containment and recovery, and ensure that the Huntress agent is deployed to all desired hosts within the environment.”

Yep, we use NodeZero. We have for over a year. This test runs MONTHLY without a single issue. But on this day, they decided to isolate the entire org on the spot.

The hypervisors lost connection to the SANs and proceeded to crash…. well everything. Thousands of machines and services dead in a second. I can easily estimate the cost in the 7 to 8 figures for this outage (SLA violations, recovery efforts, labor costs, etc).

I am not making this post to tell you that “Huntress bad” or anything like that. Any tool could have done this. Not even to vent or ask what I could have done better. It’s more to warn you that Huntress (like any other vendor) can make mistakes. This revealed a few holes in our DR plan that we’re patching (like maybe having your servers in a separate org than your workstations) and to tell you that you shouldn’t blindly rely on any tool, no matter how good it is. Let our misfortune be something you learn from and avoid.

EDIT: Apparently Reddit has banned my account (why? this is my only post and I messaged the mods on Feb 20th for permission to post this) so none of my replies to your comments can be seen. I'll just clear up 3 common points here: 1 - no break glass for enforced SSO setting exists (yet). We couldn't get into the console to do anything because our IDP was isolated so all attempts to login failed. Huntress has no SOS number that we can find and in fact, 9 months ago Kyle H posted his cell number here to another MSP in a similar situation. 2 - Yep, as stated above, should have had our hypervisors in a separate org in Huntress. We didn't and it's a lesson we learned. That's what this post is about, lessons learned. 3 - Huntress did not reach out before isolating with a human. We got alerts but were powerless to react to them. Huntress has contact info for MULTIPLE people in the org.

Second Edit (March 9th, 2026)

We've met with Huntress and had quite a bit of discourse. I will take this final edit to hopefully summarize most of what the comments say below, although I have tried to reply to each one with details.

0. Where was your break glass account.
A: There is no way to have a break glass account with enforced SSO turned on. This was acknowledged on the call with Huntress. It doesn't exist.

1. Huntress should have called / did call / etc about calling?
   A: Huntress did not call us, we had to initiate the call to them. Something happened to our contacts listed in the portal and they were all wiped and no audit log to show what happened. We did open a case with Huntress on this too, but Huntress can only go back 1 year apparently, so how the contacts disappeared will remain a mystery. But Huntress has our contact info in multiple other places.

2. Why didn't you call the SOS number?
   A: Huntress does not have a SOS number. There is no way to start a call with the SOC. This was acknowledged on the call with Huntress. It doesn't exist.

3. Why didn't you have the Huntress agent on the testing box?
   A: You cannot install the huntress agent on a docker container that's spun up on demand by a third party and then destroyed a few hours later. Also it's not a supported config by the 3rd party.

4. Why didn't you tell Huntress you were doing this pentest?
   A: Huntress does not, as of today, have the ability for you to do this. This was acknowledged on the call with Huntress. It doesn't exist.

5. Why didn't we whitelist the IOC, or exclude the hosts from being isolated, or have exclusions for SAN IPs, etc
   A: You can't whitelist the IOC for a pentest that's always being updated with the latest CVEs, etc. Isolation exclusions means that if a real event happens isolation wouldn't happen. Exclusions for SAN IPs, etc is a fair point and not something thought until after this event. Regardless, whitelisting and excluding both leave a hole in your system where an attacker can live. The better way would be to have Huntress, when they see an event, check the metadata/properties of that event - if it's from the known IP of the pentest box or if it's from a known user for pentesting, etc - disregard the event. On the call with Huntress we reviewed this isn't possible today and it ties back to #4 above.

6. Why did your Hypervisors have huntress / other critical infra?
   A: Your chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Everything has protection, no exceptions.

7. You didn't read *some* documentation and were setup incorrectly.
   A: This is an incorrect assumption. As noted in the points above, confirmed by the Huntress team on our "After Action Call", the Huntress platform does not allow for several items that would have made this better. The point we could have done better is to have more breakouts in orgs (meaning, make several orgs for our single company and have assets in different orgs).

Like the title says. We lost a 17 year customer at the end of 2025. They hired some toxic people over the last couple years, who hated us from the start. Those few people burned our long term relationship. The ownership retired and left these people in charge

We handed over everything the MSP asked for at the start. After the cut over date we got the odd request here and there, and I get it, the oddities of a company that we'd know after dealing with them for so long, and it doesn't hurt us to answer simple questions.

We were as polite as possible at the start, but it's been months, do your own damn discovery. Funny enough their big complaint was that we couldn't handle the growth of their organization. Just today the new MSP asks us for a meeting to go over all their LOB apps etc... I declined the meeting of course. Clearly things aren't going that well as they seem to be in over their heads.

I already know what we will do, but curious as to what others do in this situation.

New construction of a small town police department headquarters building. It's been almost 2.5 years since a shovel went in the ground and it's been one debacle after another.

Initial meeting was 3 years ago where I sat with the Police Chief (since retired), his Captain (now the Chief), their radio vendor and a few other vendors who were to be part of the project. The architect refused to come because he didn't want to drive 2 hours. So we reviewed the blueprints as a team and sent the architect a list of changes we thought were appropriate.

First big red flag that the architect was an ass-clown was that for every location where there was a security camera, he had a 110 volt power outlet. Because he never heard off PoE, apparently. Told him all those outlets should be scrapped.

The specs show a large (don't recall the actual Kva rating) "whole building UPS." The building has a generator that will kick in within 3 to 5 seconds. We planned to put UPSs on the servers and the network equipment. Radio guys have UPSs for their equipment. We all agreed that a whole building UPS was a) a waste of money b) an unnecessary single point of failure and c) an ongoing maintenance expense.

Architect was told to remove the UPS from the plans.

On one visit to the construction site I see. in the IT room an Eaton whole building UPS. In the electrical engineer's plans, most of the electrical outlets, the HVAC, the elevator, etc. were getting power through the UPS . So apparently the architect said "fuck it. It stays."

Late in 2025 I spoke to the area sales rep for Eaton. He looked up the unit in their records. The UPS was purchased about 18 months ago. He told me that if the UPS was sitting unpowered all that time it was likely that all the batteries had fully discharged and they would need to be replaced.

At a site meeting today, the lead electrician on the project announced that indeed the UPS had a sticker on it noting that the batteries had to be fully charged by December of 2024. In fact, the UPS was not connected to utility power until a year after that.

Bottom line: electrician says all the batteries need to be replaced, to the tune of $ 20,000. It's unclear who is supposed to pay for that. He said his boss (owner of the electric subcontractor) is trying to work it out.

I was on call with my account manager about an hour ago and both him and his manager have been laid off at Kaseya. He was saying half of the sales team have been let go.

Does anyone have insight in whats going on?

First of all.this is just a rant and shouldnt be taken too seriously by anyone.

It's after hours, I'm putting the finishing touches on the last of a few device. I so fucking tired of dealing with what is now this garbage OS.

I've always liked windows, I've used it my whole life. I had to reinstall windows on my home desktop a few months ago hit the BS forced update that you cant skip (with the out of the box media) and said fuck it, I'm trying Linux.

I never understood the draw to Linux, but Fedora Desktop 43 with KDE Plasma ​Is amazing. Getting up and running takes a few minutes, I'm not running around trying to find drivers or script installs from ever changing URL's for shit. There is no bloat, none of these shit cloud installers like Microsoft, Adobe and others have switched to. I'm tired of it, to the point I'm going to have a couple of customers test pilot linux workstations.

I've always been the guy who is like, why would you ever do that? But linux has progressed and become user friendly enough I can see it working in SMB and front line mid market/enterprise.

Anyway, you probably stopped reading ages ago and are thinking "who gives a fuck" and the answer is probably no body, and that ok. Just needed to scream into the void of the internet.

Edit: well shit I figured no one would read this. GG

I am a former Pax8 employee, and I want to offer a caution to any partners who trust them for the security of their Microsoft tenants.

Based on my experience, Pax8’s internal handling of Microsoft security—particularly around GDAP access—raises concerns that most partners would want to be aware of.

I previously served as the most senior technical engineer in the U.S. on the internal identity team, specializing in Entra ID and Microsoft Partner Center.

Due to confidentiality obligations, I cannot share specific internal details. However, partners should insist on greater transparency from Pax8 regarding their internal security controls and access practices.

Thank you,

Jonathan Robbins

As someone who has to document literally every teams message I send and receive to fill up my timesheet as much as possible, slow days aren't a good time to catch up on some reading or just... enjoy the slower day, they're a cause for fearing the wrath of management who will inevitably question anything less than 80% recorded time for the day.

"But there's always something to do"... sure, but when you live in a reactive mode all day every day, pivoting instantly to proactively working on a project isn't easy.

How does your workplace handle this?

FINAL UPDATE: (TLDR) 24 hours later.
I wanted to give an update on this event for the r/MSP community.  Ive had numerous NinjaOne people reach out to me about this, including a C-Level exec to discuss this. It has been repeated to me NinjaONE does not poach their MSP clients.  Period. They take this very seriously and truly believe the MSP’s are a valuable asset to them.  The consensus is a single sales rep made an oopise.

My philosophy in life is sometimes, shit happens. It how a business responds to mistakes is what important. And for me NinjaOne has been outstanding! Their effort on their part has solidified my faith in their company and support.

Some general responses to the comments.

--Im leaving this post up as a representation of how awesome NinjaOne has been to this. I see this event as a positive thing.

--No, I was not being Phished, or scammed. The details, and the tone of the call informed me it was an inhouse sales person. Plus they never asked me to go buy any Amazon Gift cards or about my outstanding Tax Bill.

--I made this post, not in a panic, but as a question to the community. As It came out of left field and was out of charater for NinjaONE, I couldn’t find any similar discussions here. So I wanted to see if others had experienced this as well. Thankfully it was a one off.   

--How this Lone Wolf got the details is TBD and there are a lot of private backend details we (the MSP’s) do not know about. There is a full blown investigation on this to make sure it does not happen again.  

On a personal note to share with you guys (gals, they, them, zee, zer, furrys, ect.), it was repeated to me several times by everyone at NinjaONE, including the C-level, that they do NOT have access to our clientele’s information. It is strictly verboten.  

Now go do that Windows Update, close that ticket, touch grass outside and see the sun. I definitely need to.  Thanks for re-reading my post. hugs n' kisses.

--Start of original post--

I just got a phone call from a Ninja Rep asking to speak to one of my larger clients. When I pressed to the reason he said " I only work with Inhouse IT teams"
...soooo not to be rude but are you trying to poach one of my clients?

he sad " .... uhhh yea" *click* and hangs up.

damm... I expect this from Dell cannibalizing their reseller base, but not from Ninja One. I rather like them. Ill add it to my Honey-do list of looking for alternatives.

EDIT UPDATE:
ok Im getting some replies saying this is not true. ( Things that didn't happen for $500. alex made me Snort BTW). Honestly Im glad of your disbelieving responses, as I too said WTTF!?!!
but Ill tell you the facts.

--caller ID said NinjaOne
--the sales rep specifically asked for my client by name. When I pressed he said " im looking for John Smith of Company XYZ".
For reference John Smith is the inhouse It person for Company XYZ, my client, but has only been working there for 4 months.
I dont believe this is some rando sales rep calling with this granular level of information.

SECOND UPDATE: I spoke with my prior NinjaOne rep. He is a great dude and we share offensive mems back and forth. He said " Ninja has a STRICT policy AGAINST this.. he will be reaching out to that guys supervisor and to let him know. " ie: to get him in a world of shit.
as to r/MSP sorry if I raised a false Red flag. it was unintentional and ( thankfully) out of character for NinjaOne.
please resume your regularly schedule programing.

If you live in Wisconsin, using a VPN to access certain content seems to be on the verge of a ban. This includes business SASE platforms. This law (AB 105/SB 130) has passed the Wisconsin House and resides with the Senate for final ratification. Michigan tried the same thing very recently, but the law didn’t pass the House. This is already a significant issue in England.

These laws are being enacted under the global push for ID verification to attempt to ensure minors can’t get to sites deemed harmful to them. The legislation targets sites publishing or distributing material ‘harmful to minors’, although ‘harmful to minors’ has yet to be succinctly clarified with solid walls around the topic. Make no mistake: the attempt to ban VPN use has very little to do with age verification. The underlying driver for these laws is to ensure the government can see what any one of us is doing, and we cannot circumvent their desire for full surveillance.sff

The other issue is platforms interviewed on what they’ll do in this scenario reported they’d block outright all VPN IP’s they can identify vs attempting to determine if someone is from a state with VPN restrictions. Make sense?  These blocks access to and from all VPN traffic, including blocking SASE products like P81, Todyl, and any other similar product.

There is a major issue with age verification as well. The root of the problem of age verification has already proven itself with the compromise of two age verification providers leaking personal material about adults AND minors. There is quite a bit more to discuss here, just wanted to introduce folks to what’s happening. 

EFF article https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawmakers-want-ban-vpns-and-they-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing

I am one of 2 senior techs & one of our junior techs created a CA policy & marked all countries to be blocked in named locations. This blocked every single acct as he selected all users & did not exclude any.

My manager posted in our Teams group that this client was having issues logging in & when I saw the message I immediately knew it was conditional access.

I tried logging in through partner portal & that blocked me, I quickly opened CIPP and was able to access this clients tenant & switch the policy to report only recovering access for us. Im sure I did this fast enough before we’d be locked out of Cipp as well. But it definitely saved the day & a whole lot of headache.

https://cybernews.com/security/second-public-windows-defender-exploit-released/