Monday Morning Impact – April 26

Report: Ransomware Attacks on the Rise

Bitdefender, a Romanian cybersecurity company, has released its latest Consumer Threat Landscape Report, revealing top cybersecurity threats, frequency of threats and cybercrime trends of 2020.

“Our 2020 findings depict consumers under constant assault from cybercriminals looking to capitalize on fear and societal uncertainty accompanying the global pandemic,” said Bogdan Botezatu, director of threat research and reporting at Bitdefender. “Cybercriminals will stop at nothing to use outlier events and human empathy to line their pockets. As the pandemic continues, we are constantly seeing attacks evolve through malware delivery mechanisms, inventive social engineering and new exploits.”

The report is based on the analysis of quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year data derived from Bitdefender’s Global Protective Network (GPN) that performs billions of queries per day on millions of endpoints and uses advanced algorithms to identify various threats and attack patterns.

Among the key findings, ransomware attacks continue to soar worldwide. Overall, ransomware attacks grew an astounding 485% in 2020 when compared to 2019. Attacks in the first and second quarter of 2020 accounted for 64% of all attacks or 19% higher than the first two quarters of 2019.

Devices with proprietary operating systems (often in IoT) make up 34% of what consumers own and responsible for 96% of all detected vulnerabilities. Bitdefender saw an incredible 338% increase in Smart TV vulnerabilities when compared to 2019.

As consumers flocked to video conferencing and sought information about COVID-19, criminals took advantage by hosting fake Zoom download sites and distributing malware-laden apps to spy on users and steal personal data. Thirty-five percent of all Android malware detected came from the Android.Trojan.Agent family followed by Android.Trojan.Downloader at 10% and Android.Trojan.Banker at 7%.

In addition, the number of vulnerabilities found in network attached storage devices increased by 198% year-over-year from 2019 to 2020. While NAS devices may not be amongst the most prevalent devices in homes, they potentially pack the highest number of unpatched vulnerabilities, according to BitDefender.

Channel Impact^®
The new report outlines how ransomware, spam, mobile malware and other threats continued to evolve in the midst of the Covid-19 outbreak.

AWS Rolls Out New Partner Competency for Mainframe Migration

Amazon Web Services has rolled out its new WS Mainframe Migration category within the AWS Migration Competency. These validations are intended to give customers confidence in choosing AWS Partner solutions by validating the partners’ methodologies, tools, and best practices to execute successful migrations.

The company claims that more than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies still run business-critical applications on mainframes, and many companies and institutions still possess legacy mainframes in their data centers, and that many of these companies are migrating workloads to AWS. The AWS Mainframe Migration Technology / ISV Partners category recognizes AWS Partners with proven success in migrating both mainframe applications and data to AWS.

Participating partners announced by AWS include Accenture, Advanced (Formerly Modern Systems), Atos, Blu Age, Cognizant, Deloitte, DXC Technology, HCL Technologies, Infosys, Micro Focus, NTT Data, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), TSRI, and Wipro.

Channel Impact^®
The competency designation helps AWS Partners differentiate their business to customers by showcasing their products and services in specialized areas across industries, use cases, and workloads. AWS Partners are vetted, validated, and verified to achieve the AWS competency designation.

FireMon Adds New Incentives to Partner Program

FireMon, a Dallas-based network security policy management company, has updated its Ignite Partner Program as a means of promoting the enhancement of partner value through various incentives.

Dubbed “The Path to Platinum,” the updated three-tiered program provides country-specific support for all routes to market, including resellers, distributors, and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) across a global network of partners. The new incentives and requirements are designed to guide partners towards expanding business and revenue opportunities with on-premise systems, cloud, SD-WAN, and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offerings.

One of the more notable updates to the program is deal registration discounts and protection for subscription-based opportunities. Partners will also gain access to increased marketing activities, expanded support, and collaboration with FireMon staff (including one-to-one account-based sales and marketing for Platinum partner customers), SPIFF optimization, enhanced reporting, and numerous other improvements. FireMon will also provide lead-sharing opportunities and give partners access to journey maps specific to their migration between the different tiers.

“We operate in a demanding market where enterprise security teams must manage growing complexity and dynamic policies, all while keeping up with increasing demands for speed and innovation,” says FireMon’s VP of Global Channel Sales, Andrew Warren. “Our partners are integral in helping our customers to incorporate FireMon as an essential element of their agile security strategy, including supporting migrations to the cloud, zero trust, and SASE architectures.”

Channel Impact^®
The upgrade is expected to enable the channel to find new business and deliver lasting customer value around security agility, visibility, and compliance, all while supporting their most important IT and digital transformation initiatives.