Monday Morning Impact – October 14

Published On: October 13, 2024Categories: Buzz

CompTIA: Cybersecurity Success Hinges on Full Organizational Support

Cybersecurity is the top technology priority for the vast majority of organizations, but moving from aspiration to reality requires a top-to-bottom commitment that many companies have yet to make, according to new research released by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based industry association.

CompTIA’s “State of Cybersecurity 2025” report reveals that cybersecurity is a primary or secondary priority for 98% of organizations. Yet only 25% of survey respondents feel that the overall direction of cybersecurity is improving dramatically, and only 22% characterize their organization’s cybersecurity efforts as completely satisfactory.

“Something is missing, either in the approach organizations are taking or in their expectations around what ideal cybersecurity would look like,” said Seth Robinson, vice president of industry research at CompTIA.

Cybersecurity’s unique status as a business imperative at all organizational levels – staff, management, executives and governing bodies – may be the reason of the disconnect.

“Gone are the days when achieving cybersecurity improvement was a simple matter of purchasing updated technology,” Robinson explained. “Businesses must have ongoing discussions around their cybersecurity technology stack, processes that ensure protection of assets and an organizational structure that provides cutting-edge expertise.”

The report identifies a growing need to build multiple layers of cybersecurity expertise. Among North American companies, 53% are considering new hiring as an option. An even greater percentage (56%) plan to pursue training for their current cybersecurity workforce, and 42% plan to offer cybersecurity certifications as a way of establishing core concepts within the team and extending skillsets into emerging focus areas.

Hiring and training require a financial commitment, and that remains a challenge for some companies. While a significant majority of respondents state that cybersecurity is a high priority at their firm, only 49% feel that it is relatively easy to procure funds for cybersecurity activities or that budgets are increasing.

North American companies are evenly split between an emphasis on using AI internally to improve their defense and on learning about new forms of AI-enabled attacks. Current AI-enabled use cases include monitoring network traffic, generating defense tests and predicting future breaches.

Nearly 1,200 business and IT professionals across seven global regions were surveyed for the report.

Channel Impact^®
Partners have a major opportunity in helping customers to navigate the transitions and further protect their data.

IDC: Shared Cloud Infrastructure Continues to Lead Infrastructure Spending in Q2

Spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 61.5% year over year in the second quarter of 2024 (2Q24) to $42.9 billion, according to a recent report by IDC. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outgrow the non-cloud segment with the latter growing by 41.4% in 2Q24 to $19.4 billion. The cloud infrastructure segment experienced lower growth in unit demand at 17.7%, due to a continued increase in average selling prices (ASPs), mostly related to the exponential increase of GPU server shipments.

“Cloud infrastructure spending growth continues to be driven by accelerated AI-related investments, which especially impacted servers but also triggered enterprise storage spending,” said Juan Pablo Seminara, research director, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers. “Different surveys conducted by IDC in 2024 show how AI investment plans have been scaling up and driving investment priorities for almost every region. Hyperscalers, Digital Service Providers, and major Cloud Service Providers are the ones that keep pushing the growth and that will continue to have a positive impact on the market during 2024 and 2025.”

Spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $35.3 billion in the quarter, increasing 74.9% compared to a year ago. The shared cloud infrastructure category captures the largest share of spending compared to dedicated deployments and non-cloud spending, with shared cloud accounting for 56.6% of the total infrastructure spending in 2Q24. The dedicated cloud infrastructure segment presented lower growth of 19.2% year over year in 2Q24 to $7.6 billion.

For 2024, IDC is forecasting cloud infrastructure spending to grow 48.8% compared to 2023 to $164.0 billion. Non-cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 11.7% to $67.5 billion. Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 57.9% year over year to $131.9 billion for the full year. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is also expected to have double-digit growth in 2024 at 20.4% reaching $32.1 billion for the full year. The subdued growth forecast for non-cloud infrastructure at 11.7% in 2024 reflects that even though most of the growth will come from cloud spending, general non-cloud dedicated systems are consolidating their recovery this year.

IDC customers can find more details in the report entitled, “Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment.”

Channel Impact^®
The numbers reflect the continued impact of artificial intelligence on business opportunities in the tech industry.

Kaseya Launches FedRAMP Authorization Process

Kaseya, a Miami-based cybersecurity and IT management software company, has announced its commitment to achieve FedRAMP authorizations across its tech stack to support MSPs with their CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) and other compliance certification requirements. The company kickstarted this process with the engagement of a third-party assessor organization and the appointment of a VP of FedRAMP and Compliance Solutions.

“This investment ensures that partners Powered by Kaseya will leverage this authorization not only to power their SMB customers without disruption, but also to grow their business – making them more profitable,” said Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola. “It will open massive opportunities for them as it’s estimated more than 80,000 organizations will need a CMMC Level 2 certification.”

While many FedRAMP-authorized vendors support enterprise companies, Kaseya’s authorization is intended to also address the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

To champion this initiative, Kaseya has brought in Jon DePerro as VP of FedRAMP and Compliance Solutions. With over 20 years of experience in compliance serving as a counterintelligence officer for the U.S. Army for 15 years and spending the last five years building compliance solutions for MSPs, DePerro is expected to play an integral role in Kaseya’s quest to achieve FedRAMP authorization.

Channel Impact^®
Achieving FedRAMP authorization will enable Kaseya to address compliance among its allied MSPs working with the Department of Defense (DoD) and other agencies that will soon be using similar frameworks.

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