Ransomware set to remain a major security channel focus

Ransomware is expected to remain one of the main security concerns that the channel will be helping customers deal with in 2020. 

It's that time of year when the predictions around what the next year will hold have started to come out from vendors and Check Point is one of the first to provide some guidance on what technology areas partners can expect to be busy. 

In a nine point list (see box) the first is ransomware, but not just the standard type of attack, with it becoming more targeted as criminals narrow their sights on specific businesses. 

In a blog post Check Point is forecasting more sophisticated ransomware attacks coming next year across business and the public sector: “Attackers are spending time intelligence-gathering on their victims, to ensure they can inflict maximum disruption, and ransoms are scaled up accordingly". 

Recent research from SonicWall indicated that after an improved 2018 on the ransomware front this year had seen the UK hit by a resurgence in attacks. 

Last year ransomware activity declined by 59% in the UK and security resellers gave themselves a pat on the back for having helped get the message across to customers about the need to defend against that type of attack. But a few months is a long time in the cyber security world and the problem has come storming back with a vengeance. 

According to the SonicWall Cyber Threat Report released this summer there was a 195% surge in the first half of the year. This was largely driven by criminals using Ransomware as a Service and open-source malware kits. 

Along with that threat some of the others will already be exercising channel minds, with mobile and IoT two of the areas that are likely to see plenty more activity. 

For those resellers that have seen customers embrace the public cloud the next few months could see some of that reversed as users start to find more secure homes for their data. 

"Increasing reliance on public cloud infrastructure increases enterprises’ exposure to the risk of outages, such as the Google Cloud outage in March 2019. This will drive organizations to look at their existing data center and cloud deployments, and consider hybrid environments comprising both private and public clouds," stated Check Point. 

“Today’s hyper-connected world creates more opportunities for cyber criminals, and every IT environment is a potential target: on-premise networks, cloud, mobile, and IoT devices. But forewarned is forearmed:  using advanced threat intelligence to power unified security architectures, businesses of all sizes can automatically protect themselves against upcoming attacks," added the blog post. 

Charlie Tomeo, VP, worldwide channel sales at Webroot, said that the security market continued to evolve and there was not likely to be any slow down in users reacting to threats as the industry moved into 2020. 

But he added that the challenge for the channel was to understand the technology and help deliver solutions. 

“They are looking for help developing, selling and marketing tools and solutions so that the customer understands why they need it,” he said.