Barracuda MSP Industry and Tech Blog

At the heart of most cybersecurity breaches is a faulty patch management process. A recent study conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of ServiceNow found that 57 percent of organizations that reported a breach suffered because a patch that was available to safe-guard against that vulnerability had not been applied. That means that 57 percent of those breaches could have been prevented easily!

Cybercriminals are master manipulators—and they are working harder than ever before. They are crafting believable emails, tricking users into entering their credentials, and even squatting on compromised accounts to get additional intel—to create even more believable attacks. And if that’s not bad enough, there is no sign of it slowing down.

Are you ready to protect and support your customers in a public cloud environment? As more SMBs move toward public clouds like AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, they’ll soon be looking to IT service providers to help them secure their business-critical data in these environments.

According to a report from 451 Research, 90 percent of organizations are using some sort of cloud service, and 60 percent of workloads will be running in some form of hosted cloud services by 2019. This creates a tremendous opportunity for IT service providers to help customers not only move those workloads to the cloud—but also to protect them. With attacks on Microsoft Azure increasing 300 percent in Q1 2017, it might be better to take action sooner rather than later.

Web applications have become a key part of how businesses of all sizes operate, particularly as more data and apps move to the cloud. But they’re also vulnerable targets.

According to WhiteHat Security’s 2017 Application Security Statistics Report, 75 percent of attacks target applications, and 25 percent attack the network perimeter. But for most companies, security spending doesn’t match up to that reality. The report shows that 90 percent of security investment is in perimeter security, and just 10 percent of security investment is in application security.

Stop putting your prospects and your coworkers to sleep! Presentations may be a critical component for business success, but studies show that 46 percent of individuals are doing something else during your presentation.

Do you think of artificial intelligence (AI) as just another buzzword, or is it the next big thing to protect your customers’ inboxes? With email threats becoming more evasive and sophisticated, security vendors are turning to AI to help MSPs defend their customers against the latest attacks.

Today, only 15 percent of businesses are using artificial intelligence, but 31 percent say it’s on the agenda for the next 12 months. However, this new trend might be the edge your customers need to defend their business-critical data from looming cyber criminals. This week’s tip comes from Jim Furstenberg, an assistant professor of information security, in a recent post on Smarter MSP.

How confident are you that your SMB customers and their employees know how to recognize a phishing attack? Most likely the answer is not very. According to Barracuda’s 2018 Email Security Trends Report, 84 percent of IT security professionals said poor employee behavior is a greater email security concern than inadequate tools.

The solution? Better security awareness training. In the email security trends report, 98 percent of respondents said there are better ways to train employees than traditional classroom-style education.

That’s why we’re excited to introduce Managed PhishLine, a new service for MSPs. To give you an inside look at the new addition to our professional services offering and how it can help your business, we talked to Jayne Haggard from the Managed PhishLine team.

Behind the scenes of every successful MSP business is a well-crafted marketing strategy. The right strategy can help drive more prospects to your website, build your brand’s reputation, and grow your customer base.

To truly be effective in your marketing efforts, you need to make marketing your IT service business a priority. All too often, smaller companies put their marketing strategy on the backburner and only make an effort when they have time.

Phishing attacks are increasing at a rapid rate, which is why it is so important to educate your customers about email security best practices. In fact, a recent report showed that 1.5 million phishing emails—representing more than 10,000 unique phishing attempts—were blocked by Barracuda in the month of May alone.  

Schools are out, and summer has officially begun! With family vacations and holidays around the corner, you might be thinking about different ways to drum up some additional managed services business during what can be a slow season.