In the wake of the recent and widespread SolarWinds attack that compromised U.S. government agencies, as well as the increase in cyber activity across all industries and organizations, CompTIA has established an Cybersecurity Advisory Council that aims to provide cybersecurity best practices and education to tech companies, including MSPs and solution providers.
The council consists of sixteen security experts and leaders, including Alvaka Networks COO & CISO, Kevin McDonald. The objective of this council is to address today’s current cybersecurity threats and concerns in the hopes of generating more discussion and education available to the broader business community.
As a kickoff to the new year, the council put together what they thought were the top 3 cybersecurity trends to look out for in 2021, as well as their goals for the year.
Top 3 Cybersecurity Trends
1. Continued Effects of the 2020 Cyber Attacks – Long lasting effects of the FireEye compromise will continue to surface due to the lack of awareness or action from some companies and organizations.
2. Business Email Compromises Show No Signs of Slowing – The amount and frequency of email compromise continue to rise in 2021, and themes surrounding Covid and politics will still be prevalent. Controls and employee education will be needed.
3. Ransomware Will Be More Common, More Severe, and More Costly – At the rate ransomware is moving, everyone in the industry will likely need to address it in some way. Businesses of all sizes are experiencing attacks and the average price of a ransom is increasing.
“We are seeing the splintering of the biggest threat actors only to see them come back like a hydra as multiple new groups. We can only guess how many new ransomware attacks will leverage the SolarWinds Orion and FireEye vulnerabilities.” – Kevin McDonald
Top 3 Cybersecurity Goals
1. Industry-Wide Education and Application – The advisory council will work as a group to influence, educate, and empower the channel community and its customers.
2. Stimulate Cybersecurity Dialogue and Drive Collaboration – The council will focus on creating discussion and promoting collaboration around the issues and activities that are applicable and make a meaningful difference.
3. To Inspire and Empower the Industry Community – One of the main initiatives will be to inspire leadership and enable them with the tools and information needed to effective cyber strategies.
“Through easy-to-consume information and questions, we want to remove the x-factor of needing technical experience…We will help them to find their own appropriate conclusions. We want them to be able to trust in the defenses of their organizations, employees, stockholders, and customers.” – Kevin McDonald
Click HERE to read the original and full post on the CompTia website!
Smoke testing is a term used to describe the testing process for servers after patches are applied. 
Estimating an average time for patching servers and PCs can be a bit tricky. It can vary from one month to the next, depending upon the number and complexity of the patches released by your software vendors. You must consider all versions of operating systems and have a complete inventory of all your application software to do this job correctly. Our experience has shown that manual patching of systems takes on average of about 1.5 hours each.
This is a basic cost calculator for you to compute your typical monthly cost for patching your servers, PCs, laptops, tablets and associated application software. It also forms the basis for you to begin calculating your Return on Investment for software patching, or for comparison with alternatives to the manual process of patching operating systems and application software—such as Patch Management as a Service, also known as Vulnerability Management as a Service.