MSSP articles

The wrong time to look for flood insurance is during a flood. Similarly, the wrong time to look for an Incident Response (IR) team is when you’re already under a cyberattack. We get it. Inflation is skyrocketing, and businesses are tightening their purse strings. The rise in energy and gas prices also isn’t helping. Companies need cash flow, and hiring another vendor on retainer might seem counterintuitive while the world is still recovering following the pandemic. But inflation and gas […]

3 key questions to ask yourself to evaluate your cybersecurity preparedness. The cybersecurity landscape changes fast, and in 2023 we’re seeing shifts at a faster clip than ever before. We’re likely to see continuing increased attacks on the supply chain, threats to critical infrastructure, a rise in ransomware, and pros and cons arising from the proliferation of artificial intelligence. Economic uncertainty, continued remote work trends, and skill shortages will be some of the major contributing factors to this landscape. Threats […]

When you’re tasked with choosing the right cybersecurity partner, it can be a challenge to sort out which services make sense for your organization. While managed services are necessary for many smaller and newer companies, it’s easy to get caught up in “acronym soup” – MSSP, MDR, XDR, MXDR – how do you sift through it all? Are you unsure what your company might need? Are you struggling to distinguish between services from various partners? We’re here to help you […]

As a small business, you probably think you’re small potatoes to hackers. Unfortunately, the opposite can often be true. Smaller businesses that are part of supply chains are frequently chosen by hackers because they are an easy target as a valuable foot in the door to a substantially larger company. In fact, in 2022, businesses reported that about 1 in 5 data breaches came from a supplier. You want to be seen as an asset to the companies you serve, […]

In our previous two articles in this series, we talked about what an Incident Response (IR) plan is and how to get your team familiar with its steps and the process using tabletop exercises. In this article, we’re going to go into detail on what happens during IR and the nitty-gritty of what makes an IR plan work. An IR plan and robust IR strategy are both vital to ensure that a company recovers properly from an incident. Even companies […]

The year 2021 saw ransomware attacks rising by a jaw-dropping 92%. And 22 billion records were exposed across 4,145 publicly disclosed attacks. Considering that a breach will cost companies an average of $4.5 million, the need for cyber insurance has never been so high. But what is cyber insurance exactly, and is it right for your business and industry? In this article, we will try and answer the questions most frequently asked about cyber insurance. 1. What exactly is cyber […]

In September 2022, an 18-year-old hacker leveraged sophisticated social engineering techniques to smash into Uber’s network. Once inside, the hacker rummaged through a file share and found privileged credentials that gave access to enormous swathes of Uber’s source code and corporate cloud platforms. Luckily, no trip data was taken, according to Uber. But trusting luck is a terrible strategy for cybersecurity. How did the Uber hack happen? According to an official statement by Uber, the breach was carried out when […]

“A lock only keeps honest people out.” With the current cybersecurity threat landscape, SMEs need to secure their organization to lower their exposure to risk. While there are a lot of tools available that are designed to mitigate or prevent threats, employing the proper framework and approach that aligns with your cybersecurity goals will make the most difference in your planning efforts. Modern threats require modern approaches, and we can only prevent what we can anticipate. Because of this, it’s […]

Why oh why is cybersecurity so complex? I was at an event recently and the keynote speaker talked about how security is unique in its incredibly minimal consolidation. In the cloud, you have arguably three major players (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google). In mobile phones a few. In almost any area of life, consolidation happens (auto’s maybe 10, TV’s 3-4, etc). Yet, in information security, no one company has greater than 5% of the market. The equivalent of cyber security is […]

The small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) market is wildly underserved in the cybersecurity sector, opening up massive opportunities for Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), as well as Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who could benefit from offering stronger security services as part of their overall IT offering.  Many MSPs are tempted to build out a security practice but this requires extensive investment and more importantly, will take time before the offering ever hits the market. Partnering with a MSSP can be […]

Software vulnerabilities are a fact of life with more identified every day. In 2021, 28,695 new vulnerabilities were discovered in production software. These vulnerabilities can potentially create a backdoor to companies, letting attackers come in and out as they please. However, some vulnerabilities are significantly more dangerous than others with widespread impact. Many of these high-impact vulnerabilities — such as Log4j and Follina — are zero-days, where vulnerabilities are exploited by cyber threat actors in the wild before they become […]

Risk management is a core part of any organization’s business processes. Without the ability to manage risk, an unforeseen event could put the company out of business. Effective and comprehensive risk management requires an understanding of what can go wrong, how to minimize the probability of a risk event occurring, and how to recover if something does go wrong. In many ways, managing risk for the business is similar to owning a car. Car ownership comes with significant risks and […]

SMEs have little wiggle room regarding cybersecurity. Smaller budgets and fewer dedicated security resources mean that cyberattack attempts are more likely to penetrate an SME’s defenses than those of a larger company.  Forty-three percent of all cyberattacks are aimed directly at small to medium businesses, and only 14% of SMEs are ready to defend against those attacks, according to a study by Accenture. Aside from being extremely inconvenient, these data breaches also get expensive. The cost of data breaches to […]

Cybersecurity has become a top-of-mind concern for many organizations. The cyber threat landscape is evolving rapidly, and companies face near-constant attacks. These attacks are growing more sophisticated and subtle as well, making them more difficult to detect and remediate. At the same time, companies face significant barriers to their ability to protect themselves against these attacks. The cybersecurity industry is facing a significant talent shortage, making it difficult for organizations to attract and retain the cybersecurity professionals that they need […]