The Summer Olympics opening ceremonies are today, and we know you’re no stranger to Olympic-level events after the work many of you put in addressing the widespread outage caused by the CrowdStrike update. But hopefully you can put your feet up and catch some medal-winning performances this weekend, plus take some time to catch up on some other news you may have missed this week in the channel that we’ve gathered for you here.
Events
ASCII Group’s Edge Conference Hosts MSPs In Boston
MSPs from the Northeast gathered in Boston this week at the ASCII Edge conference for two days of business building education and networking. The ASCII Group, the oldest and largest independent IT community in the world, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
Hot topics at the conference included AI and automation, cybersecurity, and sales and marketing strategies. Here’s just a few highlights:
On the Wednesday pre-day ASCII member and MSP business owner Dawn Sizer (pictured above), of 3rd Element Consulting, shared a step-by-step process for automating some of your operations, and ASCII member Joshua Liberman, owner of Net Sciences, facilitated a peer group forum, with attendees discussing their top challenges and solutions.
Keynote speakers and business coaches Shawn Walsh and Dave Cava of Encore Strategic kicked off the main day on Thursday with tips for scaling an MSP business. Former MSPs themselves, they recently published The Pumpkin Plan for Managed Service Providers, a licensed derivative of Mike Michalowicz’s The Pumpkin Plan. (See the chapter excerpt they share with MSP Success here.) In their Boston presentation, they shared some steps from their MSP-specific blueprint for executing your own Pumpkin Plan.
The featured guest speaker was Damon West, a former prison inmate and now best-selling co-author of The Coffee Bean: A Simple Lesson To Create Positive Change. In his powerhouse presentation, he recounted how he went from college quarterback and Wall Street professional to drug addict and thief—and how he turned his life around. He left MSPs with these words of advice: “Your past does not define you. The present is your gift. And the future is your motivation.”
The next ASCII Edge conference takes place in Toronto on August 21-22. It will feature keynote speaker Sounil Yu, author, speaker, advisor, and board member in the cybersecurity field who developed The Cyber Defense Matrix.
[Photo courtesy of Joshua Liberman, The Eventual Photographer]
By The Numbers
SonicWall Report Finds Exponential Increase In Cyberattacks
Cyberthreats are persistent, relentless, and escalating, according to SonicWall’s recently released Mid-Year Cyber Threat Report. SonicWall sensors detected 50 hours worth of critical attacks in a 40-hour work week, meaning the the average firewall was under attack 125% during a 40-hour work week. The data also finds that ransomware, malware, and IoT attacks are on the rise, as are encrypted threats.
Here are some other notable findings:
Increase In Supply Chain Attacks. Supply chain attacks target vulnerabilities in third-party services and software in order to compromise broader networks. One of the most publicized of the attacks, the JetBrains TeamCIty incident, is a great example of a supply chain attack—attackers bypassed the authentication mechanisms of the CI/CD tool, allowing them to potentially gain complete control over affected systems. This method of attack is particularly effective for threat actors because it bypasses traditional security systems, which largely focus on direct attacks, and instead exploits the interconnected nature of modern systems.
Watch Out For RATs. RATs, or Remote Access Trojans, disguise themselves as real apps to gain permissions and then connect to command-and-control servers, allowing them to bypass MFA and steal login credentials. Several notable RATs to keep an eye out for are Anubis, which is a banking Trojan that captures SMS messages with one-time passwords, AhMyth, which targets Androids via infected apps, and Cerberus, which operates as malware as a service.
BEC On The Rise. Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks are continuing to increase in frequency, with an average of 10 BEC incidents occurring for every ransomware incident. Seventy percent of these incidents contain some kind of social engineering tactic, relying primarily on manipulating people into transferring money or sensitive information. Even with sophisticated email filtering tools, these malicious emails still slip through because of the authenticity of the compromised communication channels.
Organizations Are Increasing Their Cybersecurity Budgets
The new 2024 Threat and Risk Management Report from Optiv, based on an independent Ponemon Institute survey, finds that 59% of respondents increased their cyber budgets year-over-year and the top three areas of investment are internal security assessments (60%), identity and access management (IAM) programs (58%) and the acquisition of additional cybersecurity tools (51%).
No surprise, because data breaches and cybersecurity incidents significantly rose, with 61% of respondents experiencing a data breach or cybersecurity incident in the past two years, and 55% of respondents experiencing four or more incidents in that timeframe.
In the fight to protect their organizations, though, respondents report a security tool overload, with 40% of respondents saying they have too many tools. Just 29% feel that they have the right number of tools.
What are they using? 73% of respondents are using security orchestration automation and response (SOAR) technology and 44% of respondents use AI/ML to prevent cyberattacks.
Surprisingly, the report finds that just 36% of respondents have a formal approach to determining cybersecurity budgets. Sounds like an opportunity for MSPs to provide some guidance!
Integrations
Heimdal Integrates with Autotask PSA
Cybersecurity vendor Heimdal is now integrated with Kaseya’s Autotask PSA. “We’re very excited to add Heimdal to the growing list of integration partners on the Autotask Integration Hub, continuing to ensure Autotask is the most integrated PSA solution in the world,” said Nadir Merchant, general manager, IT Operations Suite, Kaseya, in a press statement.
Wit the integration, MSP partners using Autotask PSA can now automate support ticket creation and management for various operational and cybersecurity alerts, including CPU, memory, disk, Microsoft updates, Next-Gen AV, DNS poisoning, firewall issues, REP, PEDM, VectorN Detection, and zero-trust execution protection. In addition, partners now have a centralized view of all corporate customers, enabling them to monitor operational notifications and cyber alerts.
People
Cybersecurity vendor Sophos announced that Teresa Anania has joined the company as chief customer officer (CCO). As CCO, Anania will be responsible for developing a stronger customer-centric culture, working together with channel partners and MSPs to deliver a seamless experience for Sophos’ growing customer base. Anania joins Sophos from Zendesk, where she was responsible for the management and development of its global client base of more than 110,000 customers from small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB) to enterprises.
Blumira, a security and operations platform, appointed Marc Davis as its channel development leader and launched a new reseller program. In this role, Davis will spearhead the development and execution of partner strategies, working with MSPs, resellers, and referral partners. Before Blumira, Davis held channel leadership positions at SparkCognition, JASK, Spirion and Cylance.
Nextiva, a unified customer experience management platform, appointed Stephanie Robotham as chief growth officer. Robotham previously worked as a growth advisor with Goldman Sachs, Eight Roads, and F-Prime Capital. She also served as chief marketing officer of Gainsight, a provider of customer success and product experience software, and prior to that held senior marketing positions at Salesforce, Iterable, and Optimizely.
Staff writer Sarah Jordan contributed to this roundup.
