Monday Morning Impact – November 30

Study: Sharp Growth in Ransomware

SonicWall Capture Labs has released its third-quarter threat intelligence, highlighting cyber criminals’ growing use of ransomware, encrypted threats and attacks leveraging non-standard ports. On the positive side, overall malware volume declined for the third consecutive quarter.

The report leverages data from more than one million global security sensors.

“For most of us, 2020 has been the year where we’ve seen economies almost stop, morning commutes end and traditional offices disappear,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “However, the overnight emergence of remote workforces and virtual offices has given cybercriminals new and attractive vectors to exploit. These findings show their relentless pursuit to obtain what is not rightfully theirs for monetary gain, economic dominance and global recognition.”

The report shows a 39% decline in malware, a 40% surge in global ransomware a 19% increase in intrusion attempts, and a 30% rise in IoT malware.

SonicWall researchers observed a significant increase in Ryuk ransomware detections in 2020. Through Q3 2019, SonicWall detected just 5,123 Ryuk attacks. Through Q3 2020, SonicWall detected 67.3 million Ryuk attacks — a third (33.7%) of all ransomware attacks this year.

“What’s interesting is that Ryuk is a relatively young ransomware family that was discovered in August 2018 and has made significant gains in popularity in 2020,” said SonicWall Vice President, Platform Architecture, Dmitriy Ayrapetov. “The increase of remote and mobile workforces appears to have increased its prevalence, resulting not only in financial losses, but also impacting healthcare services with attacks on hospitals.

“Ryuk is especially dangerous because it is targeted, manual and often leveraged via a multi-stage attack preceded by Emotet and TrickBot malware,” he continued. “Therefore, if an organization has Ryuk, it’s a pretty good indication that its infested with several types of malware.”

Channel Impact^®
The data reflect the continued importance of IT security, as well as its proper role in the strategies of channel partners.

BT and RingCentral Extend Partnership to Accelerate Cloud-Based Communications

RingCentral, a Belmont, California-based UCaaS company, has extended its alliance with London-based BT to accelerate the adoption of cloud-based communications and digital transformation across the UK.

Under the agreement, “Cloud Work provided by RingCentral” will be a lead Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) offering for BT with small, medium and large sized UK enterprises, as well as public sector customers. The offering will be available through BT’s Account managers (Corporate and Major Corporate), BT Local Businesses, and through dedicated telesales and call centers.

“As businesses continue to navigate through the complexities of Covid-19, our extended partnership with RingCentral reinforces a commitment and shared vision of bringing innovative communications solutions to our customers so they can thrive now and put the right building blocks in place for a successful post-pandemic workplace,” said Ashish Gupta, Chief Operating Officer of BT’s Enterprise Unit. “Every organization is adopting new remote and digital ways of working, with varying degrees of complexity. By collaborating with partners like RingCentral, we’re focused on removing this complexity for our customers to enable a successful digital transformation journey.”

“Today people need to work and collaborate productively from everywhere, and that’s what we focus on enabling at RingCentral,” said Anand Eswaran, President and Chief Operating Officer of RingCentral. “We’re delighted to extend our partnership with BT to make our solution available to a broader set of BT’s customers and deliver additional productivity, quality, and cloud economies of scale through tighter integration with BT’s leading fixed and wireless network.”

Channel Impact^®
UCaaS continues to be an important cloud-based communications platform that is rapidly displacing traditional PBXs. This alliance can be beneficial to both companies.

Malwarebytes Announces New RMM Integration

Malwarebytes, a Santa Clara, California-based provider of endpoint protection and remediation solutions, has announced its integration with the ConnectWise Automate remote monitoring and management (RMM) software solution.

The new integration is intended to help MSPs more effectively detect, isolate, and recover from cyberthreats from within their existing ConnectWise workstreams. The integration makes key capabilities of the OneView console, Malwarebytes’ centralized endpoint security and customer management console for MSPs, directly available within the ConnectWise Automate interface.

Leveraging this combination MSPs are expected to more easily onboard new endpoints, initiate scans and remediations, and automate ticket tracking from within their existing workstreams.

“Managing endpoint cybersecurity has been a challenge for MSPs who need to manage a wide array of solutions for their customer base,” said Mike LaPeters, vice president of worldwide MSP Sales at Malwarebytes. “This integration is particularly powerful because it streamlines endpoint security for MSP providers that small-to-medium-sized businesses are increasingly reliant on to dramatically increase efficiency.”

Through the OneView Plugin for Automate, MSPs can also leverage Malwarebytes for Business security products for customer servers and workstations within the Automate platform. Advanced endpoint threat prevention uses multiple detection techniques for full attack chain protection while automated detection, isolation, and remediation targets new threats.

Channel Impact^®
The integration is expected to streamline MSP cyberthreat management, thereby protecting more customers.