7:00 AM
Networking Breakfast [Sponsored by Lineation AI]
Start your morning with breakfast and networking alongside fellow industry professionals, followed by a presentation from Cameron Manavian, CEO of Lineation AI, titled “Understanding Clients' AI Lifecycle: Can Your Security Tools Keep Up?”
8:15 AM
Adopting a Security Framework: Guarding Against the Most Dangerous Cyberattacks
Security frameworks aren’t paperwork. They’re the blueprint that helps you safeguard clients, detect and respond to threats, and recover when the #@$% hits the fan. In this session, we’ll break down how to choose the right framework, map it to real threats MSPs face every day, and translate it into actionable steps you can take as soon as you get home.
8:45 AM
From AI Hype to Autonomous IT: How MSPs Turn Expectations into Margins
SMBs expect AI to drive productivity, improve decision-making, and accelerate growth. Meanwhile, MSPs should established a scalable strategy to deliver AI outcomes for improving their own efficiency, profitability, and operational maturity: Finding and retaining qualified technicians, managing staff burnout, and meeting rising client expectations for faster service. Service teams are stretched thin, making it difficult to scale without continuously adding headcount. AI can help MSPs automate routine tasks, accelerate ticket resolution, reduce alert fatigue, and improve technician productivity. The result is faster response times, greater customer satisfaction, and improved margins without a proportional increase in staffing costs.
9:05 AM
AI Governance Is No Longer Optional
As AI becomes more integrated into business operations, organizations need visibility and control over its actions. This session examines AI governance, key security considerations, and practical approaches to managing AI safely.
9:15 AM
Gold Sponsor Presentation: Thread
9:25 AM
Client-Owned, MSP-Scaled: A Better Model for Compliance
Small and midsized businesses are increasingly facing enterprise-grade security and compliance expectations, but most lack the expertise, visibility, and resources to manage them alone—so they turn to their MSPs. That creates a new challenge for service providers: how do you help clients own their security and compliance programs without burying your team in spreadsheets, manual evidence collection, and one-off consulting work? In this session, Jared Casner shares lessons learned from both sides of the problem and explores a practical, co-managed model for making compliance simple for clients, comprehensive enough to address real risk, and scalable across an MSP’s client base.
9:35 AM
Power Your Business: Increase Revenue with Power Protection from CyberPower
In this short 10-minute presentation, you’ll learn how increased IT infrastructure, more frequent severe weather, an aging power grid, and advanced computing applications have propelled the need for reliable power. This need creates an opportunity for your business to supply customers with power protection that keeps them connected, protected, and productive.
Discover how partnering with CyberPower makes it easy to sell professional-grade power protection through its award-winning partner program, the CyberPower Channel Partner Alliance. Packed with benefits including automatic partner discounts, unmatched support, and a lucrative rewards program, the Channel Partner Alliance puts a power partner in your corner and allows you to make excellent margins selling industry-leading power protection solutions.
9:55 AM
How to Automate Your MSP and Scale with AI
Many MSPs want to hop on the automation hype train, but the biggest gains come from fixing workflows and adopting AI internally first. This session will show how to target the right processes and get quick wins without sacrificing security.
10:25 AM
More Than a Firewall: How MSPs and Resellers Build Recurring Revenue on One Security Platform
Customers expect partners to protect the network, the inbox, the endpoint, and the remote worker, and most partners cannot staff every layer. This session shows how SonicWall extends well beyond the firewall to give MSPs and resellers a complete, manageable offering. Attendees will see how SonicWall Unified Management provides a single, multi-tenant console, including Security Health Check and Credential Auditor. We will cover the 24x7 US-based SOC that monitors SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, and SonicWall Endpoint, along with email protection and a zero trust solution that replaces legacy VPN for remote users. The session closes with the Service Provider Program: flexible consumption, no minimums, and a path to growing recurring revenue.
10:40 AM
Email Authentication Still Matters
10:50 AM
AI Won’t Save Your MSP. It Will Expose It.
In this 10-minute session, we’ll unpack three brutal truths of adding AI to your MSP: it will expose your effectiveness, highlight your efficiency, and test your attitude. If your processes are messy, your data is unreliable, or your team is buried in manual work, AI will not hide those cracks. It will make them impossible to ignore.
This session will challenge MSP leaders to stop treating AI like a shiny new tool and start treating it like an operational mirror. The MSPs that win will not be the ones with the most AI features. They will be the ones brave enough to fix what AI reveals.
11:00 AM
Expanding Opportunity Together
Explore practical ways to grow your MSP business through cybersecurity, AI, and operational efficiency. Learn how TD SYNNEX can help you unlock new revenue opportunities and scale with confidence.
11:10 AM
Beyond the Device: Why Identity is the New Perimeter for MSPs
Traditional device management is hitting a wall. With 75% of employee-owned devices currently "dark" to MSP visibility, the old playbook of locking down hardware is failing. In this 10-minute overview Eric Meibers, Solutions Consultant at Aura Business, reveals why the most successful MSPs in 2026 are shifting their focus from the device to the identity. Learn how Aura Business allows you to secure the "unmanaged" BYOD gap, protect client data from credential-based attacks, and offer a privacy-first security solution that employees actually want to use—all while adding a high-margin revenue stream to your stack.
11:20 AM
Putting AI to work for Managed Service Providers Today
Manual documentation, repetitive fixes, and time-consuming reporting are wearing down MSP teams. John Connolly explores where AI can realistically help today, from automating session notes and knowledge articles to streamlining routine remediation and client reporting. The session offers practical strategies for resolving issues faster and scaling support without adding headcount.
11:30 AM
Grow Cloud MRR (and Margin) with a Managed Cloud Desktop
Customers are seeking ways to improve reduce costs and increase employee productivity while providing secure operations. This is especially true now as ransomware has become more prevalent. A Managed Cloud Desktop provides a secure, cost-effective option to adapt to and facilitate the remote work operations that are becoming increasingly common. By leading with a Cloud approach, MSPs provide customers with a solution that is more secure, easy to use, scalable and flexible with predictable pricing to help your customers reduce management burden on organizations’ IT staff.
In this session, you will learn:
• Packaging – You’ll learn what a Managed Cloud Desktop Package is that will make it easy for your clients to buy, generates 300% + margins and gives back more time for YOU.
• Pricing – You’ll learn how to use a FREE IaaS Calculator tool that will generate an estimate for you in minutes including all your managed services.
• Presenting – You’ll learn how to present a full TCO comparison of an on-premise hardware refresh to a full move to the cloud.
• Differentiators – You’ll learn the differences between Private Cloud, Public Cloud and why delivering on-premises hardware to your customers is a disservice to them.
11:40 AM
The Attack Surface Your Clients Own — and the Secure Remote Access Opportunity It Creates
Your clients run more than offices — they run plants, utilities, warehouses, and building systems. That operational technology (OT) is now a primary target for attackers, yet it sits outside most MSP contracts, unmonitored and unprotected. The good news: you don't need to become an OT expert to secure it.
In this session, we'll break down what OT actually is, why insecure remote access is its single biggest attack vector, and how recent incidents — including the 2026 Minnesota municipal water attack — are pushing industrial clients to demand help from the providers they already trust. You'll leave with a practical framework for identifying OT opportunities inside your existing client base, a clear entry point through secure remote access, and a pricing model that turns an unfamiliar acronym into a high-margin, recurring revenue line.
11:50 AM
ROI Lightning Round Session
1:05 PM
Product & Services Expo Luncheon
2:35 PM
Making Tech Human Again: Real Talk for A Hacked Up World
2:55 PM
Channel’s Got Talent: Cybersecurity Pitch Edition
Want to avoid the after-lunch food coma? In this fast and fun showdown, four brave attendees will pitch their cybersecurity services. After getting honest (and perhaps slightly silly) feedback from our judges, they'll try again with a stronger, sharper pitch. The crowd will vote, one champion will emerge, and the winner earns bragging rights and eternal glory.
3:25 PM
Who Is Liable When AI Fails?
AI and automation tools promise efficiency, but when they misfire, MSPs are left holding the legal bag. In this session, Brad Gross, one of the nation’s leading MSP attorneys, reveals the hidden liabilities of AI adoption, and how to draft protective language into your MSAs and SOWs before disaster strikes.
3:55 PM
Your First Call in an Emergency: Dissecting Your Incident Response Plan
When something goes sideways in IT, every second counts. This dynamic breakout session highlights the elements that go into a stellar incident response plan. You'll learn exactly what should happen in the first hour, who owns which decisions, and how to keep a small emergency from turning into a full-blown disaster.
4:25 PM
Sponsor Awards Voting
4:35 PM
The 4th Quarter Speech: Adjustments You Need to Make to Win the Game
This is the locker-room talk every MSP needs before heading back onto the field. In this inspirational featured session, we'll tie the lessons you've learned at ChannelPro DEFEND to practical next steps. We'll deliver a concrete plan to confront the challenges in your business, implement the right strategies, and coach your employees to success.
5:05 PM
Partner in Excellence Award
Help us celebrate greatness at our Partner in Excellence Award Ceremony. We'll recognize a local IT channel legend for their leadership, innovation, camaraderie, and commitment to building the industry.
5:20 PM
Sponsor Awards & Attendee Giveaways