Monday Morning Impact – December 14

Report: Increasing Adoption of AI in Cybersecurity

Wipro Ltd., an India-based IT consulting and business process services company, has released its annual State of Cybersecurity Report that presents changing perspectives within the industry.

The report predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) will be more heavily leveraged as more organizations endure sophisticated cyberattacks and face the need to become more resilient. The report says there has been an increase in R&D with 49% of the worldwide cybersecurity related patents filed in the last four years being focused on AI and Machine Learning (ML) applications. Nearly half the organizations are expanding cognitive detection capabilities to tackle unknown attacks in their Security Operations Center (SOC).

The report also illustrates a paradigm shift towards cyber resilience amid the rise in global remote work. It considers the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on cybersecurity landscape around the globe and provides a path for organizations to adapt with this new normal. More than 85% of the surveyed organizations are keen on implementing zero trust architecture and 87% are planning to scale up secure cloud migration.

“There is a significant shift in global trends like rapid innovation to mitigate evolving threats, strict data privacy regulations and rising concern about breaches,” said Wipro president and chief operating officer B.M. Bhanumurthy.  “Our research not only focuses on what happened during the pandemic but also provides foresight toward future cyber strategies in a post-COVID world”.

Nearly 60% of the organizations understand their cyber risks but only 23% of them are highly confident about their ability to prevent cyberattacks. Approximately 15% of the responding organizations have a security budget of more than 12% of their overall IT budgets.

86% of consumer businesses said email phishing is a top risk and 75% enterprises said a bad cyber event will lead to damaged band reputation in the marketplace.

The fourth edition of the SOCR saw a global participation of 194 organizations and 21 partner academic, institutional and technology organizations over four months of research.

Channel Impact^®
Multiple sources, including this one, demonstrate a growing emphasis on cognitive and AI capabilities in the security space.

Netsurion and Ascend Technologies Expand MSP Protection

Netsurion, a Ft. Lauderdale-based managed security service provider (MSSP), has announced an expanded strategic partnership with master MSSP, Ascend Technologies to expand delivery of Managed threat protection to managed service providers (MSPs) and their small-to-mid-size business (SMB) customers.

“We have been steadfast in making it possible for IT service providers and managed service providers (MSPs) to offer reliable cybersecurity services,” said Justin Kallhoff, Chief Cybersecurity Officer at Ascend Technologies. “With the expansion of our relationship with Netsurion, we can deliver true managed threat protection with threat prediction and prevention, as well as incident detection and response. This level of protection is more important now than ever before with hybrid and remote working being increasingly common.”

“The relationship between Netsurion and Ascend Technologies, two top 50 MSSPs according to MSSP Alert, is significant news for MSPs and corporations alike,” said Stuart Dross, CRO at Netsurion. “To achieve effective cybersecurity, it means putting together defense-in-depth technology and the around-the-clock experts necessary to get results. Our partnership delivers this protection to those without resources, in a cost-effective way.”

Through this partnership with Netsurion, Ascend Technologies is expected to deliver enhanced managed security services to predict, prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats at a monthly cost. Netsurion’s EventTracker cyber threat protection platform provides SIEM, endpoint protection, vulnerability scanning, intrusion detection and other features. Netsurion’s BranchSDO delivers purpose-built technology with optional levels of managed services to multi-location businesses that are intended to optimize network security, agility, resilience, and compliance for branch locations.

Channel Impact^®
The partnership is intended to eliminate customer overspending on cybersecurity point products.

Synnex Corporation Completes Spin-off of Concentrix

Synnex, a Fremont, California-based distributor, has announced the successful completion of the spin-off of Concentrix Corporation to the company’s shareholders. Under the terms of the separation, stockholders who held Synnex common stock at the close of business on November 17, 2020 received a distribution of one Concentrix common share for every share of Synnex common stock held on the same date.

Since November 16, 2020, there have been two markets in Synnex common stock.  Shares that were traded in a conventional manner were entitled to shares of Concentrix common stock pursuant to the distribution.  Shares traded in the “ex-distribution” market traded without an entitlement to shares of Concentrix common stock pursuant to the distribution.  These shares of Synnex common stock in the “ex-distribution” market have been traded under the symbol “SNX WI”.

Concentrix shares have traded on a “when issued” basis on the Nasdaq under the symbol “CNXCV”, permitting investors to trade the right to receive Concentrix shares in the distribution. “When issued” trading of Concentrix common shares ended at the close of the market on November 30, 2020. Concentrix common stock will now be traded on the Nasdaq under the symbol “CNXC.”

Channel Impact^®
In announcing the completion of the spinoff, the companies issued no statement on how channel strategy may be impacted.