Managed Services News

Jul 19

Your Security Blueprint: How to Get Your Marketing & Goal Setting Right

A security blueprint is crucial to cybersecurity success, but requires a solid marketing strategy and goal setting to target new and existing customers.

A solid security blueprint helps you to provide the cybersecurity and threat protection solutions that your customers increasingly demand. But the success of any cybersecurity blueprint relies on a solid marketing strategy and setting the right goals for your business.

What does that mean?

To shed some light, let’s look a little deeper at each of these key areas.

How to Get Your Marketing Right

Your marketing strategy needs to achieve a few critical objectives:

Align with your business plan
Define your target plans and the marketing mediums you intend to use
Help drive your business goals

Crucially, your security blueprint marketing strategy also needs to focus on your services and the benefits you’ll offer to partners–rather than the solutions and technology you provide.

Defining a cybersecurity blueprint marketing strategy begins with examining your value proposition. This outlines the products and services you offer, what makes you stand out from your competitors, and why customers should buy from you.

You can then detail how you’ll sell and deliver your products and services, including identifying the channels you want to use to target customers. This strategy needs to follow the ‘Five Ps’ marketing rules of price, promotion, place, people and process.

From there, you can commission market research that helps you to establish your target audience and create customer profiles. This includes understanding the types of organizations you want to target, who their decision-makers are, and their purchasing and behavioral habits.

How to Communicate with Customers

With your target customers defined, it’s vital to understand how to communicate with them effectively.

While there are some general best practices to follow regardless of your audience, the specifics may differ depending on whether you’re communicating with new business targets or existing customers.

Existing customers: Marketing to existing customers requires consistent, ongoing communication. It requires regular touchpoints, such as phone calls and emails, about best practices along with active discussions around customers’ next steps.
New customers: When communicating with net new customers, the focus needs to be on what you can help them achieve if they partner with you. Having a good brand image in the organization’s peer group can be crucial to your success here. It encourages customers to elevate your reputation through word of mouth and strengthens your position heading into new sales processes.

How to Set Achievable Goals

In addition to a solid marketing strategy, you also need to set attainable and realistic goals, which is only possible by assessing the current state of your business.

Factors you need to consider include:

Who you’re selling to and how
How many deals you have and the size of those deals
The amount of revenue you’re bringing in
Your sales cycle process
Lead conversion figures
What’s driving your customers’ purchases
Your current resources

Getting a good grasp of this information lays the foundations for setting future goals and helps you assess whether your growth targets are realistic. This includes establishing a firm understanding of why you want to expand your offering, the solutions you want to add, the types of businesses you’re targeting and your go-to-market strategy.

Goal setting tends to be a curved progression that starts slowly and accelerates as you progress. It’s essential to set goals low, aim to build momentum, and increase expectations as your expertise develops.

Like your marketing strategy, this often depends on whether you’re targeting new or existing customers. Growth will likely be sharper when targeting existing customers and tends to be a slower process for net new customers.

Furthermore, the SMART framework, which was developed by Peter Drucker, can help you to set goals that are clear and easy to achieve.

This framework offers the following guidelines:

Specific: Goals that are sensible, simple, and significant
Measurable: Goals that are meaningful and motivational
Achievable: Goals that are agreed upon and attainable
Relevant: Goals that are realistic, reasonable, and results-based
Timely: Goals that are time-limited and time-sensitive

Learn more about cybersecurity marketing and security blueprint goal setting by downloading our From Blueprint to Foundation, Addressing the Gaps in Your Security Design whitepaper.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.

Jul 19

U.S., Allies Blame China for Massive Microsoft Exchange Cyberattack

By | Managed Services News

The nations will share intelligence on cyberthreats, and collaborate on network defenses and security.

The Biden administration and Western allies are blaming China for the massive cyberattack earlier this year on Microsoft Exchange servers.

A new joint effort by NATO members, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand and Japan called out and confronted the threat posed by Chinese state-sponsored cyberattacks. The nations will share intelligence on cyberthreats, and collaborate on network defenses and security.

“The United States is deeply concerned that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has fostered an intelligence enterprise that includes contract hackers who also conduct unsanctioned cyber operations worldwide, including for their own personal profit,” the White House said. “As detailed in public charging documents unsealed in October 2018, and July and September 2020, hackers with a history of working for the PRC Ministry of State Security (MSS) have engaged in ransomware attacks, cyber-enabled extortion, cryptojacking and rank theft from victims around the world, all for financial gain.”

Massive Worldwide Impact

The China hackers targeted on-premises Microsoft Exchange business email software globally. Before Microsoft released its security updates, MSS-affiliated cyber operators exploited Exchange vulnerabilities, the White House said. The hackers compromised tens of thousands of computers and networks worldwide. It resulted in significant remediation costs for its mostly private-sector victims.

Microsoft attributed the attack to HAFNIUM, a group considered to be state-sponsored and operating out of China.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced criminal charges against four MSS hackers addressing activities concerning a multiyear campaign targeting foreign governments and entities in key sectors. Those include maritime, aviation, defense, education and health care in a least a dozen countries.

DoJ documents outline how MSS hackers pursued the theft of Ebola virus vaccine research. It demonstrates China’s theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information extends to critical public health information.

The FBI, National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued a new advisory. It lists 50 tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that Chinese state-sponsored hackers employ.

Real-Time Data ‘Extremely Useful’ to Prevent Attacks

Mark Ostrowski Is Check Point Software Technologies‘ head of engineering.

Check Point Software’s Mark Ostrowski

“CISA and FBI have done an admirable job informing public and private sectors of TTPs of known indicators of compromise (IOCs) of this incident and others,” he said. “Further alerts of real-time data are extremely useful and can be consumed in real time by U.S. organizations for prevention.”

More communication and collaboration between the public and private sectors will increase information sharing and prevention, Ostrowski said. This will make a difference as long as the recipients of the data can take action immediately.

“Organizations need to build and maintain a security framework that allows for real-time digestion of threat intel data for prevention purposes, and also maintain a platform for threat hunting to look into their infrastructures for these malicious campaigns,” he said. “Ongoing ‘care and feeding’ of security infrastructure is also of highest importance. Any depreciated or vulnerable services will be exploited as a means of malicious entry.”

No End in Sight to Malicious Activity

Hackers will likely continue their activity moving forward, Ostrowski said.

“Also, organizations need to consider that these activities originate globally due to the nature of cloud computing and existing malicious networks controlled by threat actors,” he said.

Sophos’ Mark Loman

Mark Loman is director of engineering at Sophos.

“It has been a few months since attackers exploited the HAFNIUM-related bugs in Exchange to deploy ransomware, like DearCry and Black Kingdom,” he said. “In general, to protect themselves, ransomware operators typically operate from the dark web, or via one or more compromised servers hosted in countries other than the physical location of the attackers. This makes attack attribution hard, but not impossible.”

Jul 19

Latest M&A Chatter Involves Avast-NortonLifeLock, Intel

By | Managed Services News

The pairing of Avast and NortonLifelock would create a leader in consumer security software, the companies said.

The latest big-tech M&A talk involves a potential merger of rivals Avast and NortonLifelock, and Intel potentially acquiring semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries.

London-listed cybersecurity firm Avast is in advanced talks with U.S. rival NortonLifeLock about a merger. The pairing would create a leader in consumer security software.

Avast released a statement confirming that its board of directors is in advanced discussions regarding the possible merger.

“There can be no certainty as to whether any transaction will take place or the terms on which any possible merger may be agreed,” it said. “A further announcement will be made if and when appropriate. The possible merger may be implemented as a cash and share offer for Avast by Norton.”

Keep up with the latest channel-impacting mergers and acquisitions in our M&A roundup.

Avast said NortonLifelock has until Aug. 11 to either announce a firm intention to make an offer for Avast or say it doesn’t intend to make an offer. This deadline can be extended.

Avast confirmed advanced talks of a merger without NortonLifelock’s consent. NortonLifelock didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A Closer Look at Potential Merger

Tony Massimini is senior industry analyst for information and network security at Frost & Sullivan. He said NortonLifelock is heavily consumer with some business in SMB. On the other hand, Avast has more emphasis on SMB and also in consumer.

Frost & Sullivan’s Tony Massimini

“NortonLifelock is about two-and-half times the size of Avast,” he said. “This would add revenue for NortonLifelock and expand its customer base.”

In terms of endpoint security on the consumer side, there are just a handful of companies, Massimini said. NortonLifelock is the dominant player in consumer, and both NortonLifelock and Avast are top players in SMB.

“This will make NortonLifelock a stronger player in consumer-SMB,” he said. “That market’s not as crowded as the overall endpoint market.”

Potential changes in the consumer market could make for a “very competitive 2022,” Massimini said. In addition to the potential NorthLifelock-Avast pairing, McAfee is selling off its enterprise business. The McAfee that remains will focus more on consumer.

Intel Exploring GlobalFoundries Acquisition

In the meantime, Intel is reportedly exploring a deal to buy GlobalFoundries for about $30 billion. The Wall Street Journal broke the news, citing people familiar with the matter.

Any acquisition talks don’t appear to include GlobalFoundries directly, as a spokesperson for the company said it was not in discussions with Intel.

The potential acquisition comes amid a global semiconductor shortage, according to Reuters. The potential acquisition could help Intel shore up production of chips. Carmakers are struggling to keep operations running due to the shortage.

Neither Intel nor GlobalFoundries responded to requests for comment.

These potential deals follow Microsoft’s announcement that it’s acquiring RiskIQ, and Apollo Global Management reportedly wanting to buy consumer assets from Lumen Technologies in a deal worth more than $5 billion.

In addition, Broadcom reportedly was pursuing an acquisition of SAS Institute. However, Jim Goodnight, SAS’ CEO, sent a companywide email telling employees that the company is not for sale.

Jul 19

M&A Roundup: Deloitte, Granite, HPE, Spectrotel, Telarus, Multiple MSPs

By | Managed Services News

Partners and vendor are filling gaps in their portfolios buying cloud and security capabilities.

Partner M&A continues to hit the news wire.

We’re seeing MSPs and agents participate in consolidation like never before. Yes, there’s no shortage of IT and security vendors that are buying and selling and getting involved with private equity, but the partners are doing M&A in a big way. Core BTS continued its evolution from VAR to cloud-focused MSP with the acquisition of Aptera Software. Upstack continues to lure telecom consultancies with its deep pockets and the promise of agent equity.

Not all M&A news made the gallery. For example, Xerox enhanced its SMB practice by purchasing a document solutions provider, and Cisco finished purchasing a vulnerability management platform.

Check out the 16 acquisitions that we covered in the slideshow above.

Did you see our previous monthly M&A recap? Check it out.