Webroot: Hackers Are 'Making A Ton Of Money' Off MSP's SMB Customers

While small-to-midsized businesses are often considered "small potatoes," hackers have realized that these businesses are easier to infiltrate and these bad actors aren't showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon, according to Sarah Morgan, MSP channel account manager for Broomfield, Colo.-based cybersecurity firm Webroot. 

"Your customers are absolutely a target of these hackers. They are making a ton of money off of your customers," Morgan told solution providers at XChange 2019, hosted by CRN parent The Channel Company.

The biggest opportunity for MSPs right now is security, and particularly, the power of prediction and threat intelligence will be a solution provider's best friend, Morgan said.

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"There's so many new threats coming out every day and there's so much to wrap your arms around. You have to be armed with the best cybersecurity solutions out there right now to be able to predict where the next big thing is coming from," Morgan said.

Malware, ransomware and phishing attacks are all becoming increasingly more aggressive, relentless, and sophisticated. Multi-level attacks, especially in the case of phishing attacks that target people using similar phone numbers, or email requests that appear to come from a supervisor, require a multi-level defense, Morgan said.

The Webroot platform is based on BrightCloud, the largest threat database in the world that is growing every day that is also used by the likes of Aruba, Cisco, and Palo Alto.

A few years ago, a platform using a database like BrightCloud would have been too cost prohibitive and not available to SMB customers, Morgan said. The Webroot platform will give MSPs with the most sophisticated threat detection technology available today.

"We can now predict where the next threat is coming from and you as an MSP now have it at your fingertips," she said.

MSPs should always be prepared to ask security vendors where their product's threat intelligence information is coming from. That's because some products on the market today rely on social media tools such as Facebook and LinkedIn to feed their intelligence platforms. 

"To me, that's a terrifying concept," Morgan said.  

Froogal, Minneapolis-based IT services provider that targets micro to small businesses, is offering a full suite of security solutions today to its base, including security awareness training, DNS, and email protection.

Froogal, a Webroot partner, said that companies are being hacked at an alarming rate and size has nothing to do with it.  

"America's small businesses might think; '[Hackers] won't mess with me because I'm the little guy,' but it's not a person attacking you -- it's a bot and you're getting attacked because it's all about volume," said Caleb Driscoll, founder and president of Froogal.

MSPs must flip the conversation from leading with products to telling their customers that they won't float their business risk anymore, Driscoll said. "As an MSP, my customers could sue me if they get breached," he said.