Monday Morning Impact – September 6

Published On: September 5, 2021Categories: Buzz, Uncategorized

FortiGuard Labs Reports Tenfold Increase in Ransomware

Fortinet, a Sunnyvale, California-based cybersecurity company, has released its semiannual FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report. The report demonstrates a significant increase in the volume and sophistication of attacks targeting individuals, organizations, and increasingly critical infrastructure.

The data shows average weekly ransomware activity in June 2021 was more than tenfold higher than levels from one year ago. This demonstrates a consistent and overall steady increase over a year period. Organizations in the telecommunications sector were the most heavily targeted followed by government, managed security service providers, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. In addition, some ransomware operators shifted their strategy away from email-initiated payloads to gaining and selling initial access into corporate networks via Ransomware-as-a-Service.

“We are seeing an increase in effective and destructive cyberattacks affecting thousands of organizations in a single incident creating an important inflection point for the war on cybercrime,” said Derek Manky, chief of Security Insights & Global Threat Alliances at FortiGuard Labs. “Shared data and partnership can enable more effective responses and better predict future techniques to deter adversary efforts. Continued cybersecurity awareness training as well as AI-powered prevention, detection, and response technologies integrated across endpoints, networks, and the cloud remain vital to counter cyber adversaries.”

Among the other key data points, more than one in four organizations detected malvertising or scareware attempts. The document also reports a surge in botnet detections. At the beginning of the year, 35% of organizations detected botnet activity of one sort or another, and six months later it measured 51%.

Channel Impact®
A key takeaway is that ransomware remains a clear and present danger for all organizations regardless of industry or size. Organizations need to take a proactive approach with real-time endpoint protection, detection, and automated response solutions to secure environments along with a zero-trust access approach, network segmentation, and encryption.

Comcast Business to Acquire Masergy

Comcast Business has signed an agreement to acquire Masergy, a Plano, Texas-based company that offers Managed SD WAN, Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), Call Center as a Service (CCaaS) and Managed Security solutions.

“Masergy provides a perfect complement to our portfolio of enterprise services and solutions and will allow us to instantly and dramatically amplify our growth in the global enterprise market,” said Comcast Business president Bill Stemper. “We’re excited to welcome Masergy’s employees and leadership to Comcast Business as we bring continued innovation and superior experience to our customers.”

“On behalf of everyone at Masergy, we are thrilled to join the Comcast Business family and are extremely excited for the next chapter of Masergy,” said Masergy chairman and CEO Chris MacFarland. “We are confident that together we can significantly enhance our service offerings to businesses of all sizes in their journey to the cloud,”

Masergy claims more than 1,400 customers in nearly 100 countries.

The agreement remains subject to regulatory approval and other customary conditions. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Channel Impact®
The acquisition is intended to accelerate Comcast Business’s growth among large and mid-size companies, particularly U.S.-based organizations with multi-site global operations.

Avaya and Microsoft Announce Technology Integration

Avaya has announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft for the integration of Avaya’s OneCloud CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) with the voice, video, chat, and SMS capabilities of Microsoft Azure Communication Services.

The two companies are globally expanding the availability of Avaya OneCloud CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) hosted in Azure. Avaya OneCloud CCaaS will be natively integrated with Microsoft Teams via the Microsoft Teams Connected Contact Center Certification Program, and Avaya OneCloud CCaaS integrates with Microsoft Dynamics 365. Additionally, Avaya SBCs is now certified for Microsoft Teams Direct Routing and Media Bypass.

“Together we are providing true integration, spanning not just the contact center application itself but also the underlying communication platforms,” said Anthony Bartolo, Avaya’s Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer. “Additionally, we will be implementing Microsoft’s powerful AI capabilities via Azure Cognitive Services.”

“This relationship benefits from the combined strengths of the two companies to connect businesses to their customers via powerful communication experiences across platforms – all with the resiliency, enterprise-grade security and cloud scale of Microsoft Azure,” added Scott Van Vliet, Corporate Vice President, Intelligent Conversation and Communications Cloud at Microsoft.

Channel Impact®
As to the go-to-market strategy, the companies have designed and plan to execute a joint global go-to-market and co-selling strategy intended to extend reach, scale, and global collaboration for both partners.

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