Monday Morning Impact – March 23

CrowdStrike Global Threat Report Reveals Increase in Ransomware

Financially motivated cybercrime activity occurred on a nearly continuous basis in 2019. That’s according to CrowdStrike, a Sunnyvale, California-based endpoint protection vendor, which has released its 2020 CrowdStrike Global Threat Report.

CrowdStrike observed an increase in incidents of ransomware, maturation of the tactics used, and increasing ransom demands from cybercriminals. Increasingly these actors have begun conducting data exfiltration, enabling the weaponization of sensitive data through threats of leaking embarrassing or proprietary information.

Meanwhile, nation-state adversaries continued unabated throughout 2019, targeting a wide range of industries. Another key trend in this year’s report is the telecommunications industry being targeted with increased frequency by threat actors, such as China and North Korea.

“2019 brought an onslaught of new techniques from nation-state actors and an increasingly complex eCrime underground filled with brazen tactics and massive increases in targeted ransomware demands,” said Adam Meyers, vice president of Intelligence at CrowdStrike.

Other notable highlights from the 2020 Global Threat Report include:

• The trend toward malware-free tactics accelerated, with malware-free attacks surpassing the volume of malware attacks. In 2019, 51% of attacks used malware-free techniques compared to 40% using malware-free techniques in 2018.
• China continues to focus many operations on supply chain compromises. Other targeted U.S. industries include clean energy, healthcare, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals.
• The industries at the top of the target list for enterprise ransomware were local governments and municipalities, academic institutions, the technology sector, healthcare, manufacturing, financial services and media companies.

The Global Threat Report analyzes threats based, in part, from the company’s database technology processing over 3 trillion events per week across 176 countries.

Channel Impact^®
CrowdStrike recommends that organizations develop the capability to detect intrusions in under one minute, investigate in 10 minutes, and contain/eliminate the adversary in 60 minutes.

HubSpot Launches Solutions Partner Program

HubSpot has announced that it is relaunching its Agency Partner Program as the Solutions Partner Program, making it easier for customers to find the right service providers for their business — and will enable marketing agencies, web developers, CRM and IT implementers to partner with the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, which develops software to support inbound marketing and sales.

“As we’ve diversified our business over the past decade, our partners have shared in that growth by broadening their expertise to meet the changing needs of our customers,” said Katie Ng-Mak, VP of the Solutions Partner Program at HubSpot. “Since joining HubSpot in 2009, I’ve seen firsthand how our partners have played such an important role in supporting our mission of helping millions of businesses grow better.”

According to research from HubSpot, the majority of companies use at least three service providers to manage their business day to day, and that number is growing. This proliferation of providers has given companies more options, but has also added complexity as it becomes harder to find the right partners and apps for their specific needs. By managing their entire collection of apps, data, and solutions partners from one software suite they can create better experiences for their customers.

In addition to offering new ways to partner based on the level of commitment, the program also enables partners to differentiate themselves based on their expertise with specialized credentials, which will be searchable by customers.

The program now features nearly 400 integrations that customers can easily find and connect in the newly redesigned HubSpot App Marketplace.

Channel Impact^®
The HubSpot’s ecosystem enables partners to create an integrated and contextual experience to support sales and marketing.

Malwarebytes Launches Enhanced Cloud Platform, MSP Premier Partner Program

Malwarebytes, a Silicon Valley-based endpoint detection and remediation solution provider, has announced a new set of enhanced enterprise features for its cloud platform, Malwarebytes Nebula.

The company has also announced general availability of its MSP Premier Partner Program (MP3) and OneView, its MP3’s cloud-based operations console. This combined offering is expected to enable MSPs to grow their revenue through streamlined delivery of high-value security solutions to their small-to-medium enterprise (SME) customers.

“We see more businesses shifting their security needs to MSPs in order to better address the rapidly evolving threat landscape,” said Akshay Bhargava, Chief Product Officer at Malwarebytes. “Enhanced operational controls and reporting ensure these businesses have a strong posture against threats and can recover with minimal downtime in the event of a breach.”

Previously in limited release, the MP3 offers a tiered approach to suit specific customer and licensing needs, scaling to fit the needs of MSPs. The OneView console enables onboarding of new customers, management of license and billing, global policy setting to respond to emerging endpoint security threats, and role-based access control. MP3 also includes a ransomware rollback feature that enables MSPs to turn back the clock on ransomware attacks.

Channel Impact^®
The combined offering is expected to reduce the burden on security teams by providing simplified administrative controls over endpoint management and enhanced executive reporting with deeper insights into threat activity and remediation.