Interview
Here’s what Mukesh had to say. Can you tell me a bit more about e92plus? e92plus was founded over 30 years ago, and for over 25 years now we’ve specialised in cybersecurity. It’s always been one of the most dynamic, exciting sectors of IT to be involved with, and we’ve been proud to help launch some of the biggest brands in the market. Te one thing you can guarantee, though,
is change – the threat landscape is continually evolving, and as a community we can never rest on our laurels. In addition, as the technology landscape has changed, so the channel has adapted in terms of end-user procurement and services. We’ve invested significantly in our MSP and cloud divisions, while retaining our cybersecurity expertise and focus, as our partners have broadened their focus to cater for customer demands. Tis covers the rise in managed services and the acceleration of cloud migration and digital transformation, but also the rise of hyper- cloud marketplaces where we’ve found we can add significant value to facilitate and grow business. Te convergence there has been the growth of agile and on-demand usage, with consumption-based billing – however, the fundamentals of business development, technical expertise and marketing services are still essential alongside transactional marketplaces.
Why is the channel important in helping keep businesses safe? With a partner community of over 1,000 VARs, MSPs, MSSPs and beyond, it’s certainly incredibly diverse. Te most important connection that all of our partners have is becoming a trusted advisor to their customers – whether that’s as an experienced supplier, delivering solutions or providing a fully managed service that encompasses every aspect of cybersecurity. Te skills gap is well known, but it’s also about the resource as well as the expertise – and it’s essential that as a channel, we work together to help protect organisations. As a distributor, we also play a key role for our
partners – not just in providing all the wrap-around services and knowledge to complement their business, but leveraging our role at the heart of the channel. We see the trends from vendors, resellers and customers in a unique way, so it’s essential we can share that. Importantly, that starts with all of us. Tere’s
been a huge rise in the number of attacks on MSPs themselves, as bad actors target supply chains and smaller businesses as well as the bigger, high profile targets. A report by our partner ConnectWise found that in 2020 nearly 73% of MSPs had at least one client involved in a cybersecurity incident, again many of those being smaller businesses who rely on managed services from their partner.
www.pcr-online.biz
What are the biggest threat vectors right now that partners need to be looking at? Te biggest potential risk in organisations remains us – human beings! We can be both the biggest weakness as well as the first line of defence, and cybercriminals have certainly increased their focus on exploiting potential gaps in our knowledge and behaviour as well as the technical defences. Oſten, the simplest route is therefore email, and phishing – it’s not new, but the tactics are continually evolving and the success that criminals enjoy highlights that it is a growing problem that IT teams are struggling to stop. Typically, breaches from technical vulnerabilities
can be as low as 3%. So we take up a big proportion of the rest! Our new partner, Cofense, has seen attacks in Q1
2021 rise as high as 78% of emails hitting inboxes being part of phishing to steal credentials. Email remains a trusted tool, but that also makes it a major attack vector for criminals. And just like cybersecurity is about having layers
of defence, so the bad guys out there have layers of attack. Tat’s why traditional tools aren’t working, they’re just checking the initial email for triggers or URLs against a list, but the sophistication of today’s phishing attacks is incredible.
How can MSPs address this challenge? Practically, there are a range of steps they can take, whether it’s a first step for a MSP if they are new to cybersecurity, or a good way for established cybersecurity resellers to run a healthcheck or review with their customers on their current approach. We’ve been working with Cofense to build a checklist of key actions that every MSP can take, to review their current technology stack and put the right processes and solutions in place to help secure themselves as well as providing the best service to their customers.
December/January 2022 | 59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
