“Ten years ago, you didn’t see
state actors attacking [small businesses]. But it’s happening now,” warns
George Anderson, product marketing director at Carbonite + Webroot, OpenText
companies.
Sadly, many of today’s managed
service providers who serve small and medium-sized businesses now have to
concern themselves with these very threats. Independent and state-sponsored
hacking groups use sophisticated hacking tools (advanced persistent threats or
APTs), to gain unauthorized access to networks and computers, often going undetected
for months or even years at a time. In fact, according to the 2020 Verizon Data
Breach Investigations Report, cyber-espionage is among the top patterns
associated with breaches targeting businesses worldwide.
These attacks can be difficult
even for highly sophisticated enterprise security teams to detect, stop or
recover from. But all businesses, no matter their size, must be ready for them.
As such, MSPs, themselves ranging in size from a few techs to a few hundred
professionals, may find they need help protecting their SMB customers from APTs;
that’s on top of the consistent onslaught of threats from ordinary, profit-motivated
cyberattackers. That’s where the concept of cyber resilience comes in.
What does cyber resilience look like?
“Being [cyber] resilient – knowing
that even if you’re knocked offline you can recover quickly – is essential for
today’s businesses,” George says.
The reality is that today’s
organizations have to accept a breach is pretty much inevitable. Their level of
cyber resilience is the measure of the organization’s ability to keep the
business running and get back to normal quickly. “It’s being able to absorb
punches and get back on your feet, no matter what threatens,” as George put it
in a recent podcast
with Joe Panettieri, co-founder MSSP Alert & ChannelE2E.
Read
more about how businesses can build a cyber resilient company culture.
How can businesses and MSPs achieve cyber resilience?
Because cyber resilience is about
both defending against attacks and preparing for their inescapability, a major component in a strong resilience
strategy is the breadth of coverage a business has. In particular, having
tested and proven backup and disaster recovery solutions in place is the first
step in surviving a breach. If a business has reliable, real-time (or near
real-time) recovery capabilities, then in the event of an attack, they could
make it through barely skipping a beat.
Now, George has clarified that “no
single solution can offer complete immunity against cyberattacks on its own.”
To reduce the risk of events like data loss from accidental deletion, device
theft or hardware failure, your clients need multiple layers of protection that
secure their devices and data from multiple angles. Here are George’s top data
protection tips:
Ultimately, George says ensuring
business continuity for MSPs and the businesses they serve through
comprehensive cyber resilience solutions is the primary goal of the Carbonite +
Webroot division of OpenText.
“We want to up the advocacy and
stop attacks from happening as much as we possibly can. At
the same time, when they
inevitably do happen, we want to be able to help MSPs recover and limit lost
time, reputation damage, and financial impact so businesses can keep
functioning.”
To learn more about cyber
resilience, click here.
