Acronis Blog
Acronis Cyber Protection Center
James Slaby

Latest stories from James Slaby

July 21, 2021 — 5 min read
Acronis
July 21, 2021 — 5 min read
MSPs learn cyber protection best practices from sports tech leaders at #MSInspire
Technology leaders from two of Acronis #CyberFit Sports Partners wowed attendees at Microsoft Inspire 2021 with a live panel discussion entitled, “Lessons for MSPs from Professional Sports Teams on Protecting Microsoft Environments”.
June 15, 2021 — 2 min read
Acronis
June 15, 2021 — 2 min read
Catching a wave: Exploring the hosting industry’s rapid growth
If you think the web hosting services business is maturing, flattening, maybe getting stale, think again. Last year, the global hosting market generated a robust $75 billion in revenues despite a modest slowdown attributed to the pandemic. In 2021, its growth is accelerating again, forecast to grow to $267 billion by 2028, according to Fortune Business Insights. That is a rocket worth catching a ride on.
June 08, 2021 — 3 min read
Acronis
June 08, 2021 — 3 min read
What’s a live ransomware attack look like? Take a look
In the wake of the Colonial Pipeline breach and the JBS attack, ransomware has recaptured everyone’s attention – including your management. See what happens when malware threatens the family road trip or backyard barbecue. That makes it an opportune moment to upgrade your understanding of how ransomware attacks work, and revisit your strategies for protecting your company’s data and uptime against this most destructive and increasingly widespread malware threats. Acronis is giving you two excellent chances to do just that.
April 05, 2021 — 2 min read
Acronis
April 05, 2021 — 2 min read
Building MSP cybersecurity services isn’t hard with the right advice
Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) struggled through a fretful year of sudden pandemic-driven changes: employees forced to work from home, sensitive data abruptly moved to cloud-based SaaS applications, and a baffling array of new cyberthreats – including 350,000 new malware threats being identified every day and a 400% increase in cybercrime last year being reported by the FBI. For 2021, that last challenge is particularly daunting: few SMBs are capable of keeping pace with a daily barrage of ransomware attacks, tech supply-chain incursions like the SolarWinds breach, and severe vulnerabilities like Microsoft’s recent Exchange Server fiasco – especially in light of their paltry tech budgets and headcount. SMBs are desperate to outsource these problems, and that presents a huge opportunity for MSPs willing to step up and help.
March 11, 2021 — 2 min read
Acronis
March 11, 2021 — 2 min read
SaaS backup: Lessons from OVHcloud’s data center fire
In the wee hours of Wednesday, March 10, 2021, a fire destroyed or damaged four major data centers operated by OVHcloud, the French company that is Europe’s largest operator of cloud infrastructure.
March 11, 2021 — 4 min read
Acronis
March 11, 2021 — 4 min read
SMBs face cybersecurity challenges post-pandemic
After a year of struggling to adapt to the pandemic-driven shift to remote work, rapid SaaS application adoption, and an FBI-documented 300% increase in cybersecurity attacks, small and mid-sized business (SMB) tech leaders and advisors are looking ahead with relief to a return to relative normalcy. But certain challenges are expected to remain, especially in light of their paltry budgets. In fact, Untangle’s 2020 SMB IT Security Report notes that 39% of SMBs are still investing less than $1,000 per year on IT security. Our recent panel-driven virtual conference, A New Playbook to Protect Your Users from Cyberthreats in 2021, examined how small-business IT managers anticipate that many changes wrought by the pandemic will have lasting effects on their cybersecurity strategies.
February 11, 2021 — 3 min read
Acronis
February 11, 2021 — 3 min read
Acronis cybersecurity expert predicts 2021's top threats for Security Boulevard
Attendees of a recent webinar hosted by tech news site Security Boulevard got a preview of the universe of cyberthreats that businesses will face this year based on the analysis of Candid Wüest, Acronis VP of Cyber Protection Research, and his team.
January 20, 2021 — 3 min read
Acronis
January 20, 2021 — 3 min read
Malwarebytes targeted by cyberattack group that hit SolarWinds
You don’t have to work in cybersecurity to be aware of the recent discovery that a sophisticated state actor had potentially compromised tens of thousands of private companies and government institutions in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. The means was a software supply-chain: attackers breached the software distribution infrastructure of tech vendor SolarWinds, embedding malware in its popular Orion network management tool. When customers downloaded the latest Orion product update, the malware surreptitiously spread throughout their organizations, in many cases finding and forwarding sensitive data to external servers controlled by the attackers. Now comes news that SolarWinds was not the only victim of this Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attack. Cybersecurity vendor Malwarebytes disclosed earlier this week that it had also been victimized by the same threat actors.
December 23, 2020 — 7 min read
Acronis
December 23, 2020 — 7 min read
Defending against supply chain attacks like the SolarWinds breach
The success of the massive SolarWinds supply-chain attack presents an urgent new cybersecurity challenge to every business. We plumb the tactics used in the SolarWinds breach and show how Acronis defends against it and similar attacks.
October 29, 2020 — 4 min read
Acronis
October 29, 2020 — 4 min read
FBI warns of large-scale ransomware threat to the U.S. healthcare industry
The threat of a large-scale ransomware attack once again grabbed headlines in the mainstream press as the U.S.’s Federal Bureau of Investigations, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Health and Human Services warned that cybercriminals were targeting American healthcare providers. The alert, which was issued Wednesday, warned that there was “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers” focused on “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.” The warning comes as hospitals, medical facilities, and healthcare workers around the country are faced with spiking cases of COVID-19. The timing is no accident, as cybercriminals are leveraging the need for these healthcare providers to have access to their data and systems.
October 16, 2020 — 3 min read
Acronis
October 16, 2020 — 3 min read
Acronis #CyberFit Academy Is Getting an Expanded and Revamped Curriculum
The Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2020 kicks off on Monday, October 19, and among its many exciting announcements is an expanded mission and curriculum for the Acronis #CyberFit Academy, formerly known as the Acronis Academy, which delivers online technical and sales training and certification to our MSP, VAR, and distributor partners. I sat down with Jonathan McCarrick, Global Head of Partner Evangelism at Acronis, to get the highlights of this major upgrade of our educational operations. If you're interested in joining these training sessions and earning certifications on the latest Acronis Cyber Protection Solutions, there's still time to reserve your seat - but space is limited so be sure to register soon.
August 05, 2020 — 3 min read
Acronis
August 05, 2020 — 3 min read
Phishing is back in the news, but it never really went away
The recent embarrassing hack of Twitter that led to the compromise of some very famous accounts (Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, et. al.) for use in a bitcoin-stealing scam grabbed global headlines for a few days. The story started winding down with the arrests of three young men in the UK and Florida.  Twitter should feel lucky today that the thieves only set their sights on a small payday (netting less than $120K before they got caught) rather than broadcasting false headlines that might have shaken global financial markets. It’s a useful reminder that phishing remains among the most popular and successful attack vectors for a variety of cybercrimes, accounting for some 30% of all breaches.
April 29, 2020 — 3 min read
Acronis
April 29, 2020 — 3 min read
How MSPs Can Leverage the Power of Platform Integration to Grow, Thrive, and Profit
The typical managed service provider (MSP) faces a daunting array of obstacles to building a successful, sustainable and profitable business. To meet these challenges, MSPs must squeeze efficiencies out of their existing tech infrastructure and staff – even as they add new services. Acronis believes the key to this effort is a broad-based leveraging of integration and automation. We’ve outlined the opportunities to MSPs in deploying broader suites of cyber protection services as well and tactics to address the accompanying integration challenges in a new white paper titled The Five Levels of MSP Platform Integration. Here’s a brief preview.