Increasingly sophisticated cyber crime is putting small and medium businesses at risk, presenting an opportunity for managed service providers and managed security service providers to offer SMBs advanced, all-in-one cyber security packages.
This is according to Markus Bauer, senior technology evangelist at Acronis, who was speaking during a webinar on securing SMBs, hosted by Acronis last week.
Growing risk
Bauer noted that SMBs were particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks because they often had limited resources and skills to mitigate risk.
He said: “Small companies are often under the misconception that they are not of interest to cyber criminals, but everyone is under attack.”
E-mail threats are evolving and no longer incorporate poor quality logos or spelling. Phishing attacks increased by 68% in 2022, and 94% of malware is delivered by e-mail. Phishing eemails look convincing, he noted, appearing to come from credible sources like Microsoft 365, or cloning real Web pages such as Zoom. Microsoft 365 mailboxes are increasingly being used as an attack vector for zero-day attacks, he added.
We changed the way cyber protection is managed – instead of having five tools, we bring it all together into one ‘protection shield’.
Markus Bauer, Acronis.
“We also see misuse of trusted cloud, SaaS and even organisations’ own tools to work against them. Even two-factor authentication is not safe, as we saw with the Uber attack. They [cyber criminals] use the same tools we do, such as artificial intelligence, to impersonate friends and colleagues," Bauer said.
“E-mail protection techniques have changed, now requiring a massive amount of technology to protect mails. There is more and more to do, including content checking, attachment analysis, understanding context, analysing URLs, and managing authentication, encryption, and log monitoring.”
Bauer said many organisations did not attend to the information security basics, or were uninformed about the risks. He also noted that MacOS and Linux were no longer exempt from attack, and that backups were not a guarantee that organisations could recover from attacks. “Even if you have a backup, can you afford to be out of business for hours, days or weeks? Some malware is so clever it searches the environment first and deletes them first,” he warned.
The Acronis solution
Bauer explained that Acronis had evolved beyond a data backup and recovery specialist, adding next generation cyber security and enterprise protection management for full blown, automated protection. Acronis Cyber Protect is one agent, with one protection plan with all the necessary features – backup, disaster recovery, data loss prevention, anti-virus, URL filtering, vulnerability assessments, automatic patch management, data discovery, Microsoft Defender Antivirus and Microsoft Security Essentials Management.
He said: “We changed the way cyber protection is managed – instead of having five tools, we bring it all together into one ‘protection shield’ to protect every workload, strengthen AV and accelerate security and manageability, with best of breed backup.”
Acronis Advanced Packs are also available with additional advanced features, he said.
"The Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud with Advanced Email Security powered by Perception Point scans 100% of traffic in real time, prevents APTs and zero-day attacks, minimises risks across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Open-Xchange, and delivers unmatched detection speed. Checking mail in-line is far faster than sandboxing, which reduces the time to check a mail from up to 20 minutes to an average of three seconds. Acronis also offers effortless, rapid deployment and incident response services,” Bauer said.
The all-in-one Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud solution is made specially for managed service providers and includes Advanced Backup, Advanced Security, Advanced Management, Advanced Disaster Recovery, Advanced Email Security, Advanced Data Loss Prevention Q3 2022, Advanced Security plus EDR Q4 2022, Acronis Cyber Files Cloud, Advanced File Sync and Share, Acronis Cyber Notary Cloud, Acronis Cyber Cloud Physical Data Shipping Service and Omnivoice (VoIP).
Bauer added: “It is a real pay-as-you-go model with per-GB or per-eorkload models and no hidden costs. MSSPs can customise the offering per customer, and can take advantage of a 30-day free trial.”
He advised MSPs and MSSPs to package Acronis as part of a broader solution, including training, support and other value adds. To try out the solution, register for a free 30-day trial here.
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