Guest blog courtesy of TD SYNNEX and written by Tracy Holtz, vice president, cloud solutions, Americas, TD SYNNEX
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me “We’re a small business, no one’s going to attack our network,” I’d probably be a billionaire by now.
But here’s the hard truth: no one is immune to cyberattacks (regardless of if you’re a mom-and-pop shop or have thousands of employees).
If anything, SMBs have been getting attacked more in the last few years, according to IBM, who reported that the average impact of a data breach increased by 13.4% for organizations with fewer than 500 employees in 2023.
But if you think adding a simple security suite will solve all your problems, get ready for hard truth number two: While it’s good to have a security solution in place, it simply isn’t enough to stop all attacks anymore.
Even with the best security frameworks on the market, there will always be that 0.01% chance of a misconfiguration. Or, even worse, a zero-day threat, which is a vulnerability or security gap in a solution that isn’t noticed by its owner, developers, or anyone who can mitigate it.
That’s why building cybersecurity resilience – or the ability to deliver intended outcomes despite having been attacked – has become even more important over the last few years, especially as cyber-attacks increase in number, spread, and severity.
Despite these hard security truths though, there’s good news – building cyber resilience is easy if you have the right expertise. That’s why I always recommend that partners test their potential security builds in a variety of ways, including:
- Attending hands-on demonstrations of the solution to ensure understanding.
- Workshopping the solution with relevant business and technical teams.
- Running your solution through cyber-attack simulations to test for any gaps in the network’s armor and ensure the best results.
MSP partners can usually find these types of demonstrations, workshops and events offered by cyber ranges – which are virtual (and sometimes physical) environments designed to immerse participants in real networks that can be used for educational training and testing response procedures to known or simulated threats.
And I can speak from personal experience when I say testing a build for resilience is paramount to its ongoing success. Even my own cloud security team at TD SYNNEX hosts a variety of in-person and virtual experiences in our Cyber Range located in Gilbert, Arizona.
What Does A Typical Cyber Range Lesson Look Like?
In January 2024, I had the pleasure of seeing the TD SYNNEX Cyber Range team and MSP partner MicroAge host their own day of cybersecurity simulation experiences using Microsoft cloud solutions – all for end-customers ranging across financial, logistics, medical and hospitality.
Led by David Branscome, global partner solutions security architect at Microsoft and the TD SYNNEX Cyber Range team, this event provided a thorough overview of Microsoft’s array of security solutions, including Microsoft Defender XDR, Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Cloud. This was followed by a hands-on activity where users set up licenses and enabled the solutions themselves.
The Cyber Range team then launched a series of cyberattacks against the Microsoft Defender XDR solution and used Microsoft Sentinel to discover it and remediate the attack. A few of these simulated cyber-attacks included:
- Malware Attacks – A common cyber-attack where a software or program capable of making unauthorized actions is downloaded to the victim’s system.
- Brute-Force Attacks – A cyber-attack where hackers utilize trial-and-error tactics to break into a victim’s profile, system or network.
- Multi-Stage Attacks – A more advanced cyber-attack that follows a multi-stage strategy to gain access to an entire network.
After this tour through Microsoft’s Azure security offerings and a variety of security simulations from the TD SYNNEX Cyber Range team, the results of this event were almost instantaneous for MicroAge:
“Following the event, we've seen an increase in client engagements with many opting for higher tier security licenses, expanded Azure services and comprehensive implementation services,” Said Jason Lane, Cloud Manager at MicroAge.
Are you interested in learning more about hosting a security simulation experience and how it can improve cyber resiliency for MSPs and SMBs alike? Reach out to your dedicated Microsoft Azure representative at TD SYNNEX to learn more! Not yet a Microsoft CSP partner with TD SYNNEX? Connect with us at [email protected]
You can also check out the MicroAge testimonial for yourself or download the TD SYNNEX SMB Fraud Defense Briefcase to learn more.
