As 2021 ends, the Blackpoint Product team reflects on a year of developments, progress, and learnings. Read on to see a breakdown of trends we saw in the cybersecurity community, a summary of milestones Blackpoint achieved, and our predictions for 2022.

COVID-19 and Its Effects on the Cyber Community
When the pandemic hit early last year, cybersecurity attacks surged exponentially. This allowed ransomware attacks to boom in nearly all industry verticals. Ransomware attacks are now considered a risk to national security following the sweeping uptick in cybercrime. In May 2021, President Biden signed an executive order with the goal of bolstering US cybersecurity defenses.

As seen in a string of high-profile breaches including Colonial Pipeline, JBS S.A., CNA Financial Corp., and more, ransom demands have skyrocketed, and adversaries are especially focused on exfiltrating large amounts of sensitive data. Once targeting small companies or individuals, threat actors are growing their attack radius to include major infrastructure companies and even industry-leading security firms.

• Since COVID-19, the FBI have reported a 300% increase in reported cybercrimes.
• In a report by Ponemon and IBM, they found that 2021 saw the highest average cost of a data breach in 17 years, with a total of $4.24 million. This figure is the highest in the report’s history, increasing by 10% between 2020-2021.

The Rise of Response & Action-Based Cybersecurity Solutions
To better navigate the changing threat landscape, more MSPs and SMBs have made the move to fully managed, robust cybersecurity solutions to ensure protection from advancing threats. 2021 has been the year of the zero-day exploit with more vulnerabilities caught in the last 11 months than ever recorded before. Amidst these attacks, security providers that focused on rapid response and real action led the charge of fighting back zero-day vulnerabilities. True security doesn’t mean detection and alerts – it’s about eliminating the threats quickly so that organizations can focus on their business. As such, solutions such as managed detection and response (MDR) are proving their worth against the fight against threats.

• By 2025, the MDR market is projected to reach $2.15 billion, up from $1.03 billion in 2021. This shows a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.2%. (Gartner)
• MDR interest based on Gartner inquiry grew by 95% from 2019 through 2020.
• According to Aon, cyber insurance rates are to increase by 20-50% by the end of 2021.

With continuous innovation at the core of our company values, we recount the iterative improvements made to our services and suite of products over this year.

Reporting & Tools for MSPs

Blackpoint delivered premium, value-add reporting materials including our Monthly MDR Report, Ransomware Readiness Tool & Report, Cyber Attack Risk Report, and External Vulnerability Scans Report directly in our Blackpoint Portal.

SOC Response Capability Enhancements

• Infrastructure Improvements – Improved speed, eliminating redundancies, and bug fixes.
• Contact Profiles – We removed the need to manually supply playbooks including emergency contacts. This functionality in the Blackpoint Portal allows partners to apply team emergency contact details centrally to either all or selected customers. Streamline the onboarding process to ensure partners are contacted by the Blackpoint SOC Team in the fastest time possible during response procedures.

Blackpoint LogIC Launch & Enhancements

• Launch of Logging with Integrated Compliance(LogIC) – Combines streamlined compliance and robust cybersecurity in one, powerful solution. With simple push-button setup, LogIC’s hyper-efficient logging architecture and self-service web application allows you to generate compliance reports and manage all aspects of event and log collection. Simplify how you prepare for audits and know exactly where you are already covered without compromising your security posture.
• LogIC Usage in Portal – Added granular usage statistics in the Blackpoint LogIC platform allowing users to easily view usage data directly in the platform. Added CSV download capability for usage logs in LogIC.
• LogIC Report Status – Added ability for partners to view detailed progress on their compliance reports. Added new Progress column in the Compliance Reports list showing the following statuses: pending, not compliant, partially compliant, and compliant. Added new summary and quick links showing these statuses within each compliance report so partners can easily view the progress of their compliance questionnaires.
• LogIC Enhancements – Added PDF export capability for LogIC compliance framework questionnaires.

Integrations
Integrations provide Blackpoint customers using these products with enhanced MDR service. The integrations enable our 24/7 MDR service to ingest their alerts into our ACTion Engine. From a threat detection standpoint, the system auto-orchestrates our SNAP Agent to collect additional meta-data around the event. When these products generate actionable alerts, they are reviewed and triaged by an experienced MDR security analyst using our patented SNAP-Defense technology to investigate further and resolve any remaining threats. We introduced the following integrations in 2021:

• SentinelOne
• Bitdefender
• Malwarebytes
• Cylance

The Blackpoint Product team will be working on a variety of enhancements and new features in the new year. Here’s a preview of what we have coming up:

• Additional security capabilities
• Increasing our visibility in Cloud applications
• Enhanced LogIC support and features
• Enhanced reporting capabilities
• New, automated response technology
• New integration with other security solutions

Based on what we’ve seen this year, Blackpoint recommends our partners to stay alert and watch out for the following cybersecurity trends:

• A continued cycle of ransomware with a primary goal of data exfiltration for extortion
• Increased offensive action from governments to take down threat groups regardless of borders
• Increased supply chain vulnerabilities from both threat groups and nation-states
• Remote working is here to stay. Individuals within their home network will continue to be at risk of spear phishing and becoming a key target used to gain footholds into larger organizations.

The best end-to-end security is a combination of prevention through cybersecurity best practices and investing in a true Managed Detection & Response (MDR) service that monitors account activity and behavior in real-time. Trust our decades of extensive knowledge in real-world defensive and offensive tactics and contact us to safeguard your business today.