Hackers had multiple big wins in the first half of 2015, starting with two high-profile breaks at Sony and the U.S. government. Insurance giant Anthem was hit in February when as many as 80 million customers may have had their account information stolen, and hackers had success at GitHub and Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group in March. Lufthansa, the IRS, mSPY, and Japan’s National Pension System fell during the next three months. Now, a little past midyear, security breaches at the online cheating site Ashley Madison and at the U.S. federal Office of Personnel are evidence that the business of hacking continues to mature and grow more sophisticated.  

The isolated hacker sitting in a dark basement working as a lone ranger on one computer is a rare breed in 2015. More often, well-planned, systematic threats come from highly organized groups armed with a business plan, employees, an arsenal of computing power, and healthy revenue streams. Hacking is business that grows more profitable every year and employs skilled experts from around the globe, especially in active regions in China and Russia. These businesses are automating security attacks and becoming more successful every day.

Based on the latest statistics,  

• Hackers are launching more than 10,500 attacks per hour, and more than 390,000 new malware programs per day. ¹
• The attacks have been steadily rising, sometimes doubling, each year since 2008. ¹
• Approximately 81% of breaches occur in small to medium-sized businesses. ²
• The average loss per attack for small and medium-sized businesses in 2014 was $95,900³
• The average data breach cost for U.S. companies in 2014 was $5.85 million.

The level of fear among companies, especially small and medium-sized organizations without a deep bench of security expertise, is soaring. Most don’t know how to prevent a hack from exposing customer data, and they worry about backlash from customers, media and social networks.

To defend customers from these attacks, the game plan for managed service providers must be to take a layered approach and include advanced threat detection from a top-rated, technology leader. The risks are real—and much too high—to not have a strong, solid defense that identifies malware in real time and prevents threats from reaching your customers.  

Take the first step by getting to know more about the security threats that are out there and how managed service providers can defend their vulnerable customers.

¹AV-Test.org

²Verizon 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report

3 Infographic (http://i.crn.com/custom/SmallBusiness_security.jpg)