My Experience at Kaseya Connect

Kaseya Connect Global Conference

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Jeff Wolverton CEO of PivIT Strategy. I recently attended the Kaseya Connect Global Conference at the MGM Grand Resort in Las Vegas.  The Conference is an annual event that brings together leaders and experts in the IT service industry to discuss and share insights on how to evolve their companies. The 5,000+ attendees had the opportunity to attend keynote presentations, participate in workshops and discussions, and network with peers from across the globe.

While the conference covered a range of topics related to IT services, it was clear that the focus was on cybersecurity. Given the increasing prevalence of cyber-attacks and the damage they can cause, it’s no surprise that this was such a critical topic of discussion. I felt that 80% of the content was dedicated to it, seeing how it’s such a big issues and challenge in so many ways.

SMB Statistics

After the conference, I reviewed my notes from the various sessions and came up with the following waterfall of facts that I found very interesting:

• According to McKinsey, Small and Midsize Businesses (“SMBs”) make up a massive segment of the US economy, 44% of GDP, close to half of all employment and half of the $370B in overall tech spending.
• Shift of SMBs spending more on tech than large enterprises (examples: Online commerce, remote workers, cloud enablement, automation).
• SMB’s exposure to cyber-security threats is greater than it has ever been.
• 80% of cyber-attacks go after SMB Market
• 93% of all cyber incidents come through human error (ex. phishing, system mis-configuration).
• 60% of companies hit by ransomware don’t survive.

Those were staggering statistics to me.  My experience in working with most SMB companies reveal that they are way behind in the battle to protect against these threats.  In another session that outlined some of the myths on most SMB’s current thinking about Cybersecurity include:

• Size – Too small – we are not on anyone’s radar.
• Denial – Won’t happen to us.
• Blindness – What is the worst that could happen.

In reality, this could not be farther from the truth.  SMBs are the new target as they are making even more investments in technology than the large enterprises now, and the “bad guys” know that they lack the sophistication to protect their infrastructure.

While some SMBs are aware, the alarms need to continue to ring to increase awareness for those not making cybersecurity a priority.  Most SMB companies need a cultural change that support the need for investment into the right layers of security and processes to protect the company and to perform regular Security Awareness Training for their employees to keep the awareness in the forefront.

PivIT Strategy

At PivIT Strategy, we would enjoy the opportunity to work with you to improve your Cybersecurity people, processes and technologies.  If you are interested, we can start with a Network Health Assessment that can quickly deliver a comprehensive health report that assigns a risk score to every aspect of your organization’s IT Network, Security, Microsoft 365 Cloud Environment, SQL-Server and Exchange Instances. 

Don’t rest on your laurels thinking that you have it covered.  Let us work with you to gain complete visibility and remediate any issues you may have.  Click here if you would like to learn more about our offerings.