Monday Morning Impact – September 27

Security Experts See Huge Spike in Ransomware Activity

Nuspire, a Michigan-based managed security services provider (MSSP), has released its 2021 Q2 Quarterly Threat Landscape Report showing a 55,239% increase in ransomware activity just a few weeks prior to the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack. The reason for the increase is not known and may, or may not, be related to the Colonial Pipeline incident.

“This quarter, and even this year, we experienced some of the most significant and disruptive ransomware attacks our industry has ever seen,” said Nuspire Chief Security Officer J.R. Cunningham. “The sophistication of these attacks, and the scope of what’s being attacked just shows that ransomware isn’t going anywhere. Ransomware groups continue to become more sophisticated in their attack methods, which is why organizations need to ensure they have the proper controls in place.”

Other notable findings include a 42% increase in malware activity, a 50% reduction in botnet activity and exploit activity since Q1.

Nuspire’s Threat Report provides data and insight into malware, exploit and botnet activity throughout Q2 of 2021.The data was sourced from 90 billion traffic logs measuring cybercriminal activity and tactics, techniques, and procedures.

Channel Impact^®
Ransomware attacks are becoming more common and more damaging, and frequently target critical services like hospitals or energy providers, which tend to pay the ransoms more quickly.

Deloitte: Ransomware Concerns Are High, But Few Are Prepared

The vast majority (86.7%) of C-suite and other executives say they expect the number of cyberattacks targeting their organizations to increase over the next 12 months, according to a recent Deloitte poll. And while 64.8% of polled executives say that ransomware is a cyber threat posing major concern to their organizations over the next 12 months, only 33.3% say that their organizations have simulated ransomware attacks to prepare for such an incident.

“Over the past 12-18 months, executives across industries and sectors have witnessed — and increasingly experienced first-hand — the jaw-dropping frequency, sophistication, cost, and both economic and operational impacts of ransomware attacks,” said practice leader, Curt Aubley. “As some ransomware can evade antivirus tools and attackers find more ways to pressure victims to pay ransoms, these attacks often have national and global repercussions. There’s no time to waste when it comes to honing and testing incident response programs for ransomware and other cyber events.”

Deloitte urges companies to develop an incident response plan, and to consider implementing a Zero Trust approach to cybersecurity. Removing automatic or inherited trust given to users, workloads, networks, and devices can help organizations shore-up security gaps created by digital transformation, M&A activity, rapid cloud adoption and continued remote work that ransomware actors frequently exploit. Frequent penetration testing, and identification of new attack patterns, is also recommended.

The data comes from an online poll of more than 50 C-suite and other executives during a webcast held in June. Participating executives held leadership roles in areas including corporate boards (36.7%), IT (34.4%), risk management (12.2%) and security and privacy (6.7%).

Channel Impact^®
Strong executive and board level oversight of and support for IT security has become increasingly critical as the threat vectors and frequency of attacks expand.

Nebulon Launches smartPartner Program for Resellers

Nebulon, Inc., a Fremont, California-based infrastructure software company, has announced its new smartPartner program and two new incentives.

Reseller partners will have access to two incentive programs. Nebulon smartRewards is a tiered ‘frequent-seller’ program that offers members rebates based upon their SaaS subscription sales. With Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers, each level offers incremental rebates.

smartStart provides a rebate on Service Processing Units (SPUs) on a partner’s first smartInfrastructure deal. As an added bonus, members qualify for additional incentives when promoted from Silver to Gold, and Gold to Platinum.

“It’s no secret that the channel industry has experienced limited margins and growth as a direct result of overly-distributed hyper-converged platforms,” said Nebulon Sales VP Tim Pitcher. “With smartInfrastructure we are excited to offer our reseller partners a unique and differentiated cloud-managed, on-premises solution which enables them to overcome come these challenges while significantly accelerating their business growth.”

Nebulon smartInfrastructure provides self-service infrastructure provisioning, infrastructure management-as-a-service and enterprise-class shared and local data services.

Channel Impact^®
The program is designed to help reseller partners significantly accelerate and grow both their revenue and margins.