N-Able’s ESG Strategy: Who is it targeting?

I spotted a press release from N-Able, releasing their inaugural Environmental, Social, and Governance Report (ESG).     Highlights include:

Renovating their global Collaboration Hubs using locally sourced materials where practical and adopting daylight-harvesting best practices, and adding a travel system to track carbon emissions from employees’ business travel, including air travel and hotel stays

Setting up three communities of interest: PRISM, supporting the LGBTQIA+ community; WONDER, supporting employees who identify as women; and Shades, supporting employees of color.

Grew N-able’s multifaceted privacy-by-design program designed to help comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other worldwide privacy laws, as well as re-evaluating threats, threat actors, vulnerabilities, and risks associated with processing personal data

And launching a bug bounty program, administered through Bugcrowd, to reinforce its emphasis on security and protecting our partners from vulnerabilities. Through this program, N-able provides cash bounties to security researchers for surfacing and reporting otherwise unknown network and software security vulnerabilities. During 2022, N-able paid approximately $24,000 through this program.

ESG strategies are becoming increasingly popular – while I wouldn’t describe this as widespread, they’re increasing.   I’ll posit that the “why” here is about employee hiring.  A quick MSP platform comparison – Kaseya’s bulk of open positions is in Miami, ConnectWise in Tampa, and N-Able in Boston.   You can do the math on cross-referencing ESG with the alignments of those cities.    Syncro MSP leans into some of these trends without a published report – they’re based in Seattle.

There’s also the investment strategy.  N-Able is the publicly traded company among the MSP platform companies.   Investors are looking for different criteria.    Bias alert, I’m a shareholder.

So we care to understand the why – and I’d offer that providers themselves aren’t necessarily the target for the data; the why of the data is essential, especially considering the job market I just reviewed in the previous story.