7 Channel People Making Waves This Week at TD Synnex, Veeam, Kaseya, Zendesk, More
Microsoft has discovered malicious activity by a state-sponsored threat actor based in China.
June 2, 2023
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TD Synnex CISO Dan Lasher knows what it’s like to go from leading cybersecurity for a $35 billion company to doing so for a $60 billion company overnight.
Lasher was Tech Data’s corporate vice president of enterprise architecture, governance and cybersecurity until its $7.2 billion merger with Synnex to become TD Synnex. He then became TD Synnex’s CISO.
“I’ve been with the company for 33 years, and it hasn’t been security the whole time,” he said. “But I’ve been in various innovation roles, architecture roles, and then my career journey led me down the path of becoming the leader of security. My role didn’t change other than size.”
In this interview with Channel Futures’ Edward Gately, Lasher discusses his responsibilities as CISO as well as TD Synnex’s investment in cybersecurity, among other topics.
Organizations with the proper data protection architecture are poised to mitigate, if not prevent, business disruption from ransomware attacks, Veeam officials emphasized during this week’s VeeamON 2023 conference in Miami.
However, only some organizations have successfully recovered data without paying ransoms, and even the many that have paid did not recover all their data. According to Veeam’s 2023 Ransomware Trends Report, most respondents, 85%, were victims of at least one ransomware attack in the past year.
Jason Buffington, Veeam’s vice president of market strategy, made waves when he said, “Ransomware is a when, not an if.”
According to the survey of 1,200 cybersecurity, IT operations and backup administrators, over 93% of attackers include backups in their attacks, and they are successful in 75% of their efforts.
How does an organization survive a ransomware attack? Find out more from our VeeamON 2023 coverage.
Microsoft has discovered malicious activity by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored threat actor based in China, aimed at U.S. critical infrastructure organizations.
The campaign is focused on post-compromise credential access and network system discovery. Volt Typhoon typically focuses on espionage and information gathering.
Volt Typhoon is pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises, according to Microsoft.
Casey Ellis, Bugcrowd‘s founder and CTO, said the types of direct action Volt Typhoon could take depends on their level of access, and the vulnerabilities and design weakness that exist within the organizations they’ve compromised.
“There are plenty of examples of threat actors manipulating the power grid, for example,” he said. “But this would require that to be possible for that particular grid in the first place. It’s also worth noting that tampering or destroying critical infrastructure by a known state-sponsored threat actor could very easily be construed as an act of war, opening the possibility for escalation, which will hopefully act as a deterrent to these kinds of actions.”
What are Volt Typhoon’s intentions and motives? Find out more here.
Cloud trends took up much of the discussion during the latest cloud roundtable at the 2023 Channel Partners Conference & Expo. For the third year in a row, Channel Partners held this invite-only, closed-door event to uncover not only cloud trends, but challenges and evolution and more — all as it applies to partners.
When it comes to inquiries around education and certification, they are coming from two different angles. The first is partners “really looking deeply into what they’ve been offering their customers,” VMWare’s John Turner, head of SASE customer marketing, said. “The past six months are [re]defining the new normal. There’s less emphasis on providing remote work … and more conversations around branch technology.”
Secondarily, legacy partners want to know how to level up.
“They’re being asked to grow,” Turner said. “We’re focusing on the core partners we have and on making them better. … We dragged them into that.”
What did the other roundtable participants have to say? Learn more here.
Plenty of opportunity exists for carriers and partners delivering network connectivity and transport services to customers, despite questions the telco channel faces around commoditization and digital marketplaces.
The technology advisor channel – traditionally known as the agent or broker channel – claims roots in telecom. Agents emerged decades ago as a way to save businesses money and time navigating carriers in the deregulated American telecom landscape. Although many channel partners have expanded their portfolios to include cloud-based unified communications, contact center and even cybersecurity, the wireline connectivity business remains a mainstay for many. The latest Channel Futures quarterly survey found that 39% of tech advisors increased their WAN/connectivity sales year-over-year. At the same time, another 27% saw a decrease in sales.
Evan Gillman leads New York City-based partner Transit Broker. His firm engages in both transactional engagements with customers regarding network underlay services and the larger WAN transformations. However, he said those efforts begin with the transactional side. As a lean organization with a small base of subagents, Transit Broker couldn’t just chase complex orders, which take a long time to develop and require deep engineering resources from the carriers.
“For us, transactional deals keep the lights on while we’re mindful of larger, more complex deals that are more sticky,” Gillman told Channel Futures. “At the end of the day, any of these more complex SASE/SD-WAN/security deals all require a network underlay. There absolutely has to be a need for those transactional deals, coupled with the more extensive, stickier, more involved products that are over the top.”
In respect to these deals, discover why some companies are forging agreements in different regions.
Kaseya has officially launched its Cyber Insurance Fast Track Program. The IT and security management provider is partnering with Cysurance, which will provide up to $1.5 million in cybersecurity insurance coverage to MSPs and other partners that implement Kaseya’s IT Complete Security Suite.
Besides using Cysurance’s coverage to protect their own companies, Kaseya partners can also offer it to their customers.
“So we put our heads together and said, ‘Can we use our weight in the market to provide a benefit to our customers?’” said Mike Puglia, general manager of Kaseya’s Security Suite.
“If our customers are using these products, [Cysurance] already knows that they have these controls in place,” Puglia said, referring to the streamlined qualification process. “They know you’re training employees on cybersecurity, that you have phishing protection, endpoint detection, a managed SOC, and somebody with eyes on glass 24/7. That limits the number of questions [Cysurance] has to ask.”
Discover how this cyber insurance is more complete.
Zendesk layoffs are impacting 8% of the company’s workforce, or about 320 of more than 4,000 employees across the globe. Zendesk provides customer experience (CX) software.
Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier sent a note to Zendesk employees about the layoffs on Wednesday.
Eggemeier made waves, saying that “when I joined at the end of November, I’d hoped a combination of improving macroeconomic conditions and streamlining costs would help us avoid this moment. Unfortunately, macroeconomic conditions have not improved, and we find ourselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace.”
Where do the Zendesk layoffs sit in comparison to other tech industry layoffs? Learn more here.
Zendesk layoffs are impacting 8% of the company’s workforce, or about 320 of more than 4,000 employees across the globe. Zendesk provides customer experience (CX) software.
Zendesk CEO Tom Eggemeier sent a note to Zendesk employees about the layoffs on Wednesday.
Eggemeier made waves, saying that “when I joined at the end of November, I’d hoped a combination of improving macroeconomic conditions and streamlining costs would help us avoid this moment. Unfortunately, macroeconomic conditions have not improved, and we find ourselves in an increasingly competitive marketplace.”
Where do the Zendesk layoffs sit in comparison to other tech industry layoffs? Learn more here.
There are seven individuals we’re featuring for making waves this week at companies such as TD Synnex, Veeam, Kaseya, Zendesk and more. Our weekly roundup (see slideshow above) highlights the people behind Channel Futures most-read stories.
First up is Veeam. The company is coming off its VeeamOn 2023 conference with some critical information about cybersecurity. According to its recent ransomware trends report, 85% of respondents said they were a victim of at least one ransomware attack in the past year. Company officials are resigned. Ransomware is an inevitability, they said.
Maybe this is the ideal time to mention Kaseya’s Mike Puglia, who made the list. In our reporting, he espouses the benefits of Kaseya’s Cyber Insurance Fast Track Program. Kaseya is partnering with Cysurance to provide up to $1.5 million in cybersecurity insurance coverage to MSPs and other partners.
Changing directions, our most-read story involved – and no big surprise here – another layoff. Customer experience software company Zendesk laid off 8% of its global workforce, or approximately 320 people. The reason? A combination of macroeconomic conditions and streamlining costs. In this climate, there’s talk of CEOs preparing companies for a recession. Will layoffs be the norm for the near future?
Speaking of the future, join us next time for Channel People Making Waves. If you didn’t catch our last edition, you can find it here.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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