In this Channel Partners TV interview, I spoke with BlackPoint Cyber CEO Gagan Singh about identity threat dangers to SMBs and how MSPs can help protect their small business clients.
Singh cited data from Verizon pointing out SMBs account for about 96% of documented ransomware events and an FBI report estimating business email compromise and corporate account takeovers cost $3 billion in losses.
“That's a lot of money for small businesses to be coughing up, and all of this is amplified heavily by AI-assisted social engineering, AI-assisted exploit detections and identifications,” Singh said. “But broadly speaking, identity-based attacks are really the new perimeter, making identity threat detection and response to it extremely critical for these underserved organizations.”
He said the best cybersecurity advice he can give MSPs is to focus on identities.
“I urge all MSPs to look at their identity layer and make sure that they have something in place to stop the threat actors as quickly and shut them down,” he said. “SMBs don't have the resources to pay ransomware, and even a hit on your business where you're not able to operate for some time, that can be crushing for a lot of small businesses. So protect the identity layer.”
BlackPoint Cyber in July launched an identity threat AI SOC agent to help protect Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace accounts from AI-fueled attacks.
“AI is going to continue to play an increasing role in building these new novel attacks and also, with agentification, the threat actors are going to be able to deploy these at scale,” Singh said. “And so you're going to need two things. One is real-time detection of these new novel threats, and B, you're going to need AI to be able to scale up to stop an incoming mass ransomware event.
“When a threat actor makes it into your network, stopping them in their tracks as quickly as possible is of prime importance. So we made a tremendous leap just in the short few weeks ago in stopping these bad guys within seconds, not minutes.”
There’s a lot more in the full video at the top of the page.