Managed Security Services Provider (MSSP) News: 12 November 2019 -

Each business day, MSSP Alert broadcasts a quick lineup of news, analysis and chatter from across that managed security services provider ecosystem.

The Content: Written for MSSPs, SOC as a Service (SOCaaS), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and MSP security providers — and those who need to partner up with such companies.
Frequency and Format: Every business morning. Typically one or two sentences for each item below.
Reaching Our Inbox: Send news, tips and rumors to [email protected].

A. Today’s MSSP Alerts

1. MSSP Market Research: Nuspire, a Top 200 MSSP for 2019, has released a Quarterly Threat Landscape report that includes top Botnet, Malware and Exploit activity throughout the third quarter. The most prevalent activity identified in the report was Emotet, which had a 730% increase in activity in September after being in a near dormant state.

2. Cybersecurity Research - State of Firewalls: Firemon has released its latest state of the firewall 2019 research report.

3. MSPs and Endpoint Security: Bitdefender has added new endpoint defense capabilities for its GravityZone MSP platform. The improvements address email security, privacy protection, threat blocking and faster incident response.

4. M&A - Cybersecurity Consulting: Ernst & Young has acquired Aleron, a cybersecurity strategy, architecture design and implementation specialist in Australia.

5. SIEM Upgrade - Part One: SIEMonster has launched version 4.0 of its SIEM (security information and event management) platform. The software offers real-time alerts, no hidden costs and a 15 minute install, SIEMonster says. Core Product pricing ranges from Free (Community Edition) to $15,000/year (MSSP Edition), and support packages range from $2,000 to $25,000, the company says.

6. SIEM Upgrade - Part Two: Stellar Cyber, which develops an Open-XDR security application platform, has added a new “Data Streaming” Application to its Starlight platform. The App "slashes the cost of using an existing SIEM by reducing and optimizing the data fed to it, and ensuring that only high-fidelity, actionable events reach the SIEM instead of oceans of data," Stellar Cyber asserts.

7. Ransomware Attack Hits Hosting Provider: SmarterASP.NET, a hosting provider with more than 440,000 customers, has suffered a ransomware attack.

8. Ransomware Recovery Fraud?: Any company that claims they can decrypt Dharma ransomware is probably just paying the ransom to the ransomware developers -- and then hoping those hackers send a key for decryption, this analysis from Emsisoft alleges.

9. Talent: Marsh has named Reid Sawyer to the newly created position of U.S. cyber risk consulting leader. Sawyer previously led JLT’s Emerging Risks Group.