- Cynomi: MSSPs Should Take Note of Growing Demand for vCISO Services
- $160 Million Cylance Deal a Win for Both Arctic Wolf, BlackBerry
- Keepit Raises $50 Million to Grow Cloud SaaS Backup Portfolio, Reach
- MITRE ATT&CK Evals Pit Vendors Against Ransomware, North Korea
Each week, ChannelE2E takes a trip to our affiliate site, MSSP Alert, to bring you the cybersecurity news headlines that matter to your MSP or other channel business.
Cybersecurity has become a key component of managed services businesses and, one could argue, all channel businesses, regardless of the business model. More MSPs are leading their sales conversations with cybersecurity discussions. And cybersecurity services sales continue to be a bright spot in Canalys' analysis of channel business over the last year, even as hardware sales and other sales have slowed.
Here's your roundup of key cybersecurity news this week, including Arctic Wolf's Cylance deal, which is a win-win for Arctic Wolf and a struggling BlackBerry. We'll also look at Cynomi's recent push into vCISO services and Keepit Security's $50 million funding raise and new MITRE ATT&CK evaluations.
Cynomi: MSSPs Should Take Note of Growing Demand for vCISO Services
Cynomi has spent the better part of 2024 detailing the needs of smaller enterprises for high-level cybersecurity expertise and evangelizing the advantages of embracing the idea of virtual CISOs (vCISOs), security professionals who serve as consultants to companies rather than sit as full-time executives on a company's management team.
It’s not surprising the four-year-old startup is making this push: It provides an AI-powered vCISO service that MSSPs and MSPs can offer to their small and midsize enterprise (SMEs) customers as a service. That said, what Cynomi executives are seeing is a surge now and anticipated demand for vCISO services that is likely to continue into 2025.
In a survey of 200 MSSPs and MSP executives released in early September, Cynomi found that 21% offer vCISO programs now and that almost 98% expect to provide them, including 39% that said their vCISO service were coming by the end of this year.
In addition, 94% said they were seeing demand from customers for vCISO services, and 59% of service providers that added such programs increased revenues and margins.
$160 Million Cylance Deal a Win for Both Arctic Wolf, BlackBerry
Arctic Wolf is buying BlackBerry’s Cylance endpoint security business for $160 million, a move that will boost the security operations company’s Aurora platform for both end users and MSSPs and take a struggling business unit off of BlackBerry’s books.
The acquisition, which was announced this week and is expected to close by the end of February 2025, marks another deal in a rapidly consolidating cybersecurity market that is putting a high value on endpoint security, both as a product and as a managed service.
Arctic Wolf will fold Cylance into its AI-powered Aurora extended detection and response (XDR) platform, which includes such services as managed detection and response (MDR), managed risk, and managed security awareness and provides a range of capabilities, from broad visibility of the threat landscape – it processes more than seven trillion events a week – to threat intelligence to cloud analytics.
The vendor has integrated Cylance with the Aurora platform for seven years.
Keepit Raises $50 Million to Grow Cloud SaaS Backup Portfolio, Reach
Keepit has another $50 million to grow its portfolio capabilities and its geographic reach in a fast-growing cloud-based SaaS data backup and protection market that is populated by such giants as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Dell Technologies.
The 17-year-old company based in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week announced its third round of capital that more than doubled the previous two combined, bringing the total investment in Keepit to $90 million.
CEO Morten Felsvang told MSSP Alert that the money will mean more product features for both the organizations Keepit sells to and the MSSPs and MSPs that it relies on to extend its reach among enterprises.
“Partners play a vital role in scaling deployment, integrating solutions with existing IT environments, and ensuring customers receive tailored support for their unique data protection needs,” Felsvang said. “Strengthening this network is a strategic priority for Keepit as it grows its presence globally.”
MITRE ATT&CK Evals Pit Vendors Against Ransomware, North Korea
At a time when cyberattacks are getting more frequent and complex, when the cost of an attack is skyrocketing, and when hackers are well-funded and armed such advanced technologies as generative AI, running tests that gauge the ability of cybersecurity vendors to detect, respond to, and defend against them makes sense.
That’s what MITRE does through its ATT&CK Evaluation, with the results from the latest tests – round six – being released this week. In it, 19 vendors were pitted against two well-known ransomware strains in LockBit and Clop as well as malware that North Korean-linked threat groups run against macOS devices.
In all, there were three distinct attacks that included 16 steps and 80 sub-steps.
In the latest multi-step evaluations, the nonprofit – which also operates MITRE ATT&CK, a framework and knowledge base for modeling, detecting, and fighting cyberthreats – tested the vendors on their products’ abilities to detect and respond to real-world attacks in a simulated environment.
