Amazon nearly killed brick-and-mortar bookstores and now remote work? Amazon CEO Andy Jassy ordered workers back to the office five days a week as of January. However, it remains to be seen if remote work will go the way of the Borders bookstore chain (or how Amazon employees will respond). What is certain, though, is that cyberthreats will continue to increase, and this week vendors like Lenovo, SentinelOne, CrowdStrike, and ExtraHop rolled out new solutions to combat those threats. Also, KnowBe4 shared a warning and revealed how even that company fell for a scam. Plus, week’s channel news roundup includes some new research on AI and email security breaches, some notable channel leadership departures, and another MSP scooped up by private equity. And if you missed NinjaOne’s news, check it out here.
Scam Alert!
KnowBe4 Warns About New Hiring Scam—That It Fell For!
When even a security awareness training company falls for a scam, you know the bad guys are getting more clever. KnowBe4 shared a lesson learned this week. The company issued a warning about a North Korean fake employee hiring scam, which KnowBe4 recently experienced and successfully mitigated.
KnowBe4 disclosed how a North Korean “fake employee” was accidentally hired and detected. The company detected the fake employee quickly after they started to access the company-issued laptop in unusual ways. Their limited onboarding access was shut down within 25 minutes of the first security alert. No illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems, according to the company.
“There are common signs of this fake employee hiring scheme both during and after the hiring process,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4, in a press statement. “Every organization should educate all employees involved in the hiring process about the risks and consider various mitigation tactics such as updating the organization’s hiring process to include asking the candidate to submit fingerprints for identity verification purposes, threat model the organization’s hiring process, and more. We were inspired to share our experience with this unfortunate situation to bring awareness to how pervasive this situation is and to use it as a warning to help protect other organizations from falling victim.”
KnowBe4 is making a white paper available detailing what the North Korean fake employee industry is like. The paper includes signs to look for and ways organizations can update their hiring policies to prevent hiring fake employees.
Products
Lenovo Beefs Up PC Security With SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform and Purple AI
SentinelOne and Lenovo announced a multi-year collaboration to bring AI-powered endpoint security to Lenovo devices. Lenovo will include SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform and generative AI capabilities (Purple AI) in new PC shipments. It will also offer upgrades to existing customers to expand its ThinkShield security portfolio and autonomously protect devices from modern attacks.
As part of the expanded collaboration, Lenovo will also build a new managed detection and response (MDR) service using AI and EDR capabilities from SentinelOne’s Singularity Platform as its foundation.
CrowdStrike Introduces AI Security Posture Management
CrowdStrike unveiled AI Security Posture Management (AI-SPM) and announced the general availability of Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) as fully integrated components of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security.
The company also announced enhancements to CrowdStrike Falcon Identity Protection, including Falcon Privileged Access and real-time threat protection for Microsoft Entra ID. These new innovations are designed to stop cross-domain attacks that leverage stolen credentials to breach cloud environments and move laterally across endpoints, all within a single workflow, according to the company.
New features to Falcon Cloud Security and Falcon Identity Protection include:
- AI-SPM monitors AI services and LLMs deployed in the cloud, detects misconfigurations, and identifies and addresses vulnerabilities to enable secure AI innovation.
- With data security posture management now fully integrated with Falcon Cloud Security, security teams can discover, classify, and protect data in all states – at rest or in motion – as it flows through the cloud estate and across endpoints.
- Falcon Privileged Access enforces least privilege through risk-based just-in-time access across hybrid cloud environments to reduce the identity attack surface and combat cross-domain attacks spanning clouds, identities, and endpoints.
- Real-time threat protection for Microsoft Entra ID delivers Falcon’s AI-powered identity protection against password spraying, phishing and other identity threats targeting Entra ID (cloud-based active directory) environments.
CrowdStrike also announced CrowdStrike Financial Services this week at its Fal.Con 2024 user conference.
ExtraHop Automates Detection And Response Workflows For CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM
Network detection and response (NDR) vendor ExtraHop can now automate detection, investigation, and mitigation workflows leveraging network telemetry from the ExtraHop RevealX platform in the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity platform.
Joint customers ingesting network telemetry from the ExtraHop RevealX platform in CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM can now orchestrate that data in Falcon Foundry, CrowdStrike’s low-code application development platform, to build custom detection and response workflows. When ExtraHop RevealX detects abnormal network behaviors, Falcon Next-Gen SIEM ingests the alert, correlates it with EDR and other data, and can use that intelligence within Foundry apps and Fusion workflows.
HubSpot Launches New AI And Hundreds of Product Updates at INBOUND 2024
HubSpot launched Breeze, its embedded AI with new Copilot and Agents (including Content Agent, Social Media Agent, Prospecting Agent and Customer Agent); Breeze Intelligence for data enrichment (pulls from a database of over 200 million buyer and company profiles); and updates to Marketing Hub and Content Hub.
The updates include Content Remix for video, which uses AI to turn a single video into a full campaign of clips, audio, and written content; lead scoring; Google Enhanced Conversions to leverage first-party conversion data from HubSpot to improve campaign performance; and a new Marketing Analytics Suite, which brings all marketing metrics and reporting in one place.
Also at INBOUND, HubSpot Co-Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah announced agent.ai, the first professional network for AI agents. With agent.ai, anyone can sign up to use Agent Builder, a feature that makes it easy to build agents from scratch. These agents become part of the agent.ai network and can be hired to perform complex tasks across marketing, sales, and service. Already, agent.ai has over 47,000 users and more than 1,700 builders signed up to create agents of their own.
“We want to make it exceptionally easy to not only use agents but build and distribute them on our network,” said Shah, in a press statement. “Just as Apple said, ‘there’s an app for that,’ we say: ‘there’s an agent for that.’ We’re excited to develop HubSpot’s agent ecosystem, and we invite developers to come build the next-generation customer platform with us.”
Salesforce, Google Cloud Deliver Autonomous AI Agents That Collaborate Across Their Apps
Salesforce and Google Cloud announced an expanded partnership to create Salesforce Agentforce Agents that help people collaborate securely across Salesforce Customer 360 and Google Workspace apps. Salesforce’s launch of Agentforce extends the existing bidirectional integrations between Salesforce and Google Workspace, allowing mutual customers to easily deploy autonomous agents that can take action and work seamlessly in the apps they use every day, all backed by privacy and user data protections already in place across Salesforce and Google Workspace.
Agentforce Agent Actions for Google Workspace will be generally available later this year on Salesforce AppExchange.
By the Numbers
AI Is Fueling The Economy
New research from market intelligence firm IDC predicts that artificial intelligence will contribute $19.9 trillion to the global economy through 2030 and drive 3.5% of global GDP in 2030.
Business spending to adopt AI, to use AI in existing business operations, and to deliver better products/services to business and consumer customers is driving this growth.
According to the research, in 2030, every new dollar spent on business-related AI solutions and services will generate $4.60 into the global economy.
Urgent Need For Improved Email Security Practices In Critical Infrastructure Sectors
New research from OPSWAT that surveyed IT and security leaders working within critical infrastructure industries found that 80% of organizations experienced an email-related security breach over the past year. In addition, 63.3% of respondents acknowledge that their email security approach needs to be improved.
The research also found that despite advancements in cybersecurity, 48% of organizations lack confidence in their existing email security defenses. Further, 65% of organizations are not compliant with regulatory standards, exposing themselves to significant operational and business risks.
Distribution
Global distributor TD SYNNEX expanded its exclusive distribution agreement with Broadcom for its cybersecurity and software offerings throughout the Americas. Under the agreement, TD SYNNEX will own the complete go-to-market strategy and customer relationships for Broadcom’s Symantec and Carbon Black portfolios in Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America, (excluding US State and Local Government and Education Accounts).
MSP Acquisitions
New private equity company Agellus Capital acquired BlackPoint IT Services, an MSP based in Seattle serving clients across the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West regions. BlackPoint CEO James Watson and COO Lesleigh Watson will remain significant owners in the business, according to the company.
James Watson, CEO of BlackPoint, shared his enthusiasm for the partnership: “We are excited to enter this next phase of growth alongside Agellus Capital,” said James Watson, in a press statement. “Their vision for the future aligns perfectly with our goals, and their transparent and efficient approach made them the ideal partner. We are confident that, together, we can leverage our expertise and resources to drive continued success for BlackPoint’s vendors, clients, and employees.”
Jeff Aiello founded Agellus Capital in 2024. Revenue Rocket served as financial advisor and Helsell Fetterman as legal counsel to BlackPoint.
People
ScalePad VP of channel Eric Torres has departed the company, two weeks after founder Chris Day took over the CEO duties from Dan Wensley, who remains with the company as strategic advisor … Veeam Software appointed Niraj Tolia as chief technology officer. Tolia joins Veeam following the acquisition of Alcion, a security-first, AI-driven data management startup he co-founded with Vaibhav Kamra.
