Channel experts share in their own words some insights on why MSPs need to be offering cybersecurity services, what to anticipate in the year ahead, and more.
Jeremy Rafuse
Combatting New Threat Patterns
“IT leaders need to take action to scale up employee security, utilize zero-trust products, continue to enforce a strong acceptable use policy (AUP), and move toward passwordless authentication.”
—Jeremy Rafuse, vice president of IT and head of digital workplace for GoTo
Forefront of the Ecosystem
“I don’t know how an MSP could really be an MSP without offering cybersecurity. It’s on all fronts — endpoint, e-mail, firewalls, and network security. Without these things in place, your clients are susceptible to all of the attacks that are out there in an ever-growing threat landscape.”
— Christopher Marquez, director of MSP channel for IRONSCALES
Patrick Beggs
The Rise of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS)
“Cybercriminals no longer need to possess advanced coding skills. Instead, they can simply rent ransomware tools and infrastructure from underground marketplaces, democratizing the capability to launch devastating attacks. This development has led to a surge in the frequency and scale of ransomware incidents, as individuals with varying levels of technical expertise can now participate, significantly expanding the pool of potential threat actors.”
— Patrick Beggs, CISO of ConnectWise
Naren Sathiya
The Weakest Link
“Humans are the entry point. Once they’re in, then hackers can laterally move into other systems, and look at all the abilities to exploit or the type of data repositories to exfiltrate. That’s definitely something that we should be very concerned about.”
— Naren Sathiya, CEO and co-founder of Telivy
Jason Beal
A Lower Barrier to Entry
“With security becoming a top priority for businesses, Microsoft’s strong focus on security is expected to motivate its partners to prioritize security as well. This likely will result in resellers looking for security vendors to add to their product portfolio. Partners who have not yet ventured into security will be seeking SMB-friendly offerings, which offer a lower barrier to entry when compared to enterprise-level security platforms.”
— Jason Beal, vice president, Worldwide Partner Ecosystems, Barracuda
Trevor Serebro
No Silver Bullet for Security
“It’s layers — the obvious thing is that you’ve got to add layers. It is critical that MSPs push that out to SMBs. It’s the basics; a good anti-malware solution, multifactor authentication, patching, encryption of laptops that are out there, backup and recovery.”
— Trevor Serebro, North American MSP channel manager with Kaspersky
Jessica McDowell
AI’s Influence on Security
“The rise in AI will drive increased security spend, especially in incident response category, as AI-driven attacks become more sophisticated, making them tougher to defend against. This, coupled with the increasing gap in cybersecurity skills across the market, will drive enhanced focus and spend to ensure solid remediation plans and products are in place.”
— Jessica McDowell, senior vice president, Business Development & Security Strategy, TD SYNNEX
Image: iStock
