Monday Morning Impact – March 21

New Report Measures Continued Rise in SMB Cyberattacks Originating from Russia & China

A new report from SaaSAlerts suggests that a growing number of attempted and successful cyberattacks are originating from Russia and China.

With prominent SaaS platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack and Dropbox frequently targeted, the data further indicates these countries may even be coordinating attack efforts. Attack trend lines that compare Russia and China show almost the exact same pattern. Juxtaposed to a chart from Germany, for example, indicates that it is not even close to the same pattern, leading to educated speculation that Russia and China could be coordinating efforts. Other prominently mentioned nation-states include Vietnam, Korea and Brazil.

On average, SaaS Alerts is seeing approximately 10,000 Brute Force attacks per day against the user accounts monitored by SaaS Alerts. The report finds that the three most common types of alerts include access by a user outside of the approved location or an approved IP address range; instances where account credentials have been used to connect to a third-party application which may lead to data and other account information sharing between SaaS Apps; and alerts warning of multiple account lock-outs due to faulty username/password combinations.

“In the uncertain cyber-climate we all reside in today, detailed SaaS security oversight and robust defenses are a requirement for ensuring high resiliency and business continuity,” said Jim Lippie, CEO of SaaS Alerts. “The loss, theft or corruption of mission critical or sensitive customer data can be operationally and financially troublesome for SMBs that depend on continuous and unrestricted business operations to bolster revenues which have been the target of threat actors for years.”

During the time period ranging from January 1st to December 31st, 2021, SaaS Alerts monitored more over 136 million SaaS security events, collecting and analyzing the anonymous SaaS application security data to identify a breakdown of cyberattacks on the most popular SaaS applications in use by SMBs today.

Channel Impact^®
The data set is statistically significant and enables solution providers managing a portfolio of SaaS applications with pertinent data and trends to support defensive IT security re-alignments as required.

Kaseya Survey Shows Opportunities in Remote Work and Cloud Migration

Kaseya, a Miami-based provider of unified management and security software for MSPs and SMBs, has released new research examining the evolving circumstances of remote work amid the global pandemic.

The company’s 2022 MSP Benchmark Survey, which is in its eleventh year, includes data about the priorities, challenges and predictions of more than 1,200 MSPs across the globe.

“With COVID-19 continuing to affect everything from global logistics to the work environment, it’s no surprise that 76% of MSPs said the pandemic affected their ability to expand services within their customer base,” said Mike Puglia, Chief Strategy Officer at Kaseya. “There’s an increased need for the security, business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) and remote work support services that are driving revenue growth for MSPs, and we expect the demand for these services to continue in 2022 and beyond.

According to the survey, the ever-evolving compliance landscape has been a significant challenge for SMBs, with 74% of MSPs stating their customers struggle to meet regulatory compliance requirements. MSPs have been stepping up to help their customers navigate this complex landscape, with 75% of respondents either offering or interested in offering compliance services. 59% of MSPs had clients that were required to comply with HIPAA guidelines, followed by PCI DSS (41%) and GDPR (27%).

MSPs are also feeling increasingly concerned about the cybersecurity landscape with 50% saying that their business is more at risk to cybercrime compared to one year ago, which is an 11% increase from 2021’s data. Almost half of MSPs reported that a significant portion of their clients fell victim to a cyberattack within the last 12 months.

The pandemic has permanently reshaped the work environment, with 22% of respondents stating that remote workforce setup was the top service requested by their clients—followed by cloud migration (21%) and business continuity (13%). Remote work is also seen as a significant pain point for MSPs’ customers, with 36% of respondents selecting it as one of the top three IT problems for clients in 2022.

Supply chain issues and hiring are two major challenges MSPs expect to face in 2022. 92% of MSPs have had supply chain issues impact their ability to sell solutions while 19% said hiring would be their primary challenge in 2022— a 15% jump from 2021’s data.

Channel Impact^®
MSPs see security as both a challenge and an opportunity in 2022, especially as half say that their business is more at risk to cybercrime compared to one year ago.

Ermetic Launches Synergia Global Channel Partner Program

Ermetic, a Boston- and Tel Aviv-based cloud infrastructure security company, today has rolled out a new partner program for IT service providers, systems integrators, consultants, MSPs/MSSPs and ISVs leveraging AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform environments.

The Ermetic Cloud Security platform is designed to detect and remediate excessive, risky privileges and resource misconfigurations (e.g. databases exposed to the internet) on a continuous basis by analyzing identities and permissions along with the configuration of network, storage and secrets assets.

“We are experiencing high demand for our comprehensive identity-first cloud infrastructure security solution and have created a value-driven program to enlist security-oriented partners so we can all capitalize on this market opportunity,” said Shawn Larsen, Head of Channel and Alliances for Ermetic. “We are investing in partners by providing predictable sales incentives, technical resources for joint sales engagements, enablement training to expand partner capabilities and transparent opportunity collaboration to ensure their success.”

Program elements include access to a knowledge base of sales assets, use cases and technical collateral; deal registration; a sandbox license with which to demonstrate use cases and capabilities; marketing support and market development funds for joint programs, events; sales and system engineering support; partner enablement/training resources; and gamified incentives.

Channel Impact^®
The program is intended to help address customer challenges associated with managing cloud identities, entitlements and infrastructure misconfigurations.