News
MSPs positioned to fight ransomware – DattoCon EMEA
November 2016 by Marc Jacob
Over 200 European IT Solution Providers gathered at DattoCon EMEA, in late October, and were urged to recognise their critical role in the fight against ransomware among SMEs.
Datto unveiled several product updates designed to help its IT Solution Provider partners continue expanding their market opportunities by protecting business data, no matter where it lives.
Datto’s cybersecurity-centric event resonated with the audience, who provide IT services and support to small to medium-sized businesses. Recent research reinforces that ransomware is quickly becoming a ubiquitous security threat, with 54 percent of surveyed British businesses had been targeted with such an attack.
How did this ransomware epidemic arise? Like most plagues, the spread was facilitated by one particular medium. That medium was the Dark Web. Datto invited Jamie Bartlett, author, journalist, and expert on the subject to take delegates through the Tor Browser, which enables anonymous browsing and web hosting. He explained that up to 30,000 websites are accessible only via the browser - these are difficult to censor and visited by people who are virtually impossible to identify. Consequently, they are perfect for ransomware activity.
According to Barlett, ransomware was one of the biggest selling items on the darknet over the past three months. Small businesses are easy prey for hackers who buy thousands of emails and ransomware software to automate infection on a massive scale.
An infection can cause irreparable damage, especially as one in four companies that pay a ransom do not receive their data back, according to a recent Datto ransomware survey.
Hackers on the Dark Web promise that “no antivirus will protect against” ransomware, which may attract novice cybercriminals to buy commercially-available services that offer hackers for hire.
Datto recommended MSPs continue to mitigate ransomware through education and antivirus software. However, no solution is totally successful, and so MSPs should recommend SIRIS 3 Datto’s total data protection platform. SIRIS 3 now includes the industry’s first ransomware detection capability. When ransomware is detected, SIRIS 3 notifies system admins and allows them to roll back to a point in time before the ransomware hit, saving businesses from downtime and avoiding extortion.
Other news at the event included the launch of the Datto NAS 3, the cloud protected network storage solution. The NAS 3 now offers Infinite Cloud Retention (ICR), allowing customers to save all of their data to the Datto Cloud indefinitely, regardless of capacity used. NAS 3 has a number of new features, including NAS Guard and Datto Drive local, which make Datto NAS 3 the network storage appliance of choice for small and medium-sized businesses. NAS Guard allows Datto NAS to connect with, back up and protect any data stored anywhere on local network storage. Datto Drive local brings all the benefits of Datto Drive file sync and share to the local network device.
The day ended with Dame Stella Rimington, former director general of MI5, the UK’s domestic counterintelligence and security agency, who highlighted her work leading all three departments of MI5, including counter surveillance, counter subversion and counter terrorism.
During the fascinating talk, she revealed how the organisation evolved to protect the people of the UK. She then handed over to the Datto team who concluded with a summary of its efforts to help MSPs to protect their SME clients from ransomware threats.
