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- Risk within third-party partnerships
- Ransomware becomes problematic
- Decision-makers turn to MSPs more often.
This monthly newsletter is designed to arm SMBs, C-Suite, and MSPs with top insights and trends shaping the cybersecurity landscape in order to protect your business. Please reach out to info@blokworx.com with questions or feedback so we can continue to make this as useful as possible.
#1: Guard against third-party cybersecurity vulnerabilities
- Third-party partnerships and platforms are important for business. They also pose critical cybersecurity risks to protect against. US Cellular recently learned this after experiencing a breach in which hackers leveraged its CRM to view customer accounts.
- The breach capitalized on employee ignorance to successfully scam workers into downloading malicious software that allowed cybercriminals to access customer data.
Insight:
It’s estimated that accidental and malicious employee negligence accounts for 40% of data breaches. In this environment, companies need real-time oversight and endpoint data loss protection to prevent accidents and indifference from causing a serious cybersecurity incident.
#2: Ransomware attacks are increasingly complicated
- Ransomware is a $7.5 billion a year business. It’s a low-risk, high-reward attack vector with a greater success rate in 2020 than before, as organizations become progressively more willing to pay to recover their data.
- For those unwilling to pay, cybercriminals are turning to DDoS attacks to disable victims’ websites until they contact the attackers and commit to paying the ransom demand.
Insight:
This escalation makes it more difficult for companies to avoid the high cost of a ransomware attack. Unfortunately, the upfront recovery costs are just the beginning. Reputational damage makes it less likely that customers will return to your platform, and a recent study found that a ransomware attack severely damages company culture in often-irreparable ways.
#3: Decision-makers are turning to MSPs
- Cybersecurity personnel are understandably overwhelmed and exhausted. The cost of failure has never been higher, and bad actors remain persistent and prolific. According to one survey, 65% of cybersecurity and IT workers are burned out and considering quitting their jobs.
- At the same time, a severe talent shortage is making it difficult for companies to adequately secure their data and IT infrastructure. That’s why 83% of decision-makers are augmenting their in-house cybersecurity capacity with a managed service provider (MSP) in the next six months.
Insight:
Cybersecurity is a serious responsibility, and it’s a priority that can’t be left up to chance. MSPs help keep your organization ahead of today’s continually-evolving and ever-expansive threat landscape.
In Other News…
1/29: 30% of SolarWinds’ victims have no connection to the company’s software
1/28: Companies and privacy advocates celebrated International Data Privacy Day
1/28: Citrix employees agree to $2.3 million settlement after a data breach
1/28: Cybercriminals made billions on identity crimes using stolen data
1/27: Data breaches and cybersecurity concerns prompted 75% of Americans to updated passwords
1/21: The amount of data breaches declined in 2020, but the number of exposed records soared
