MSPs’ Need for Cyber Resilience and a Culture of Cybersecurity: An Interview with Jerald Dawkins, Ph.D.
By: Anna Fleeman, Director of Marketing, Cerberus Sentinel.
Over the last few years, MSPs (Managed Service Providers) have become a major target for cyberattacks, running the gamut from distributed denial of service (DDoS), social engineering exploits, and ransomware threats to remote work vulnerabilities. Large, global corporations such as Deloitte, Accenture, and Atos have been infiltrated and exploited. Even with the many calls to better the cybersecurity landscape of MSPs, the attacks continue; just in the last couple of months, two considerable hacks compromised the health and identity data of millions of people as well as numerous companies’ private, mission-critical records. When MSPs are infiltrated, so are all their customers; it is an exponential risk.
In light of these recent cyberattacks, I sat down with Jerald Dawkins, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer of Cerberus Sentinel, to understand how Cerberus Sentinel partners with MSPs to ensure protection against these attacks. Jerald asserts, “these are risks to be managed, not problems to be solved,” indicating the need for a partnership that not only secures the information of the MSPs and their customers, but also empowers MSPs to securely operate, grow, and offer more to their customers.
Many organizations are struggling to define security roles and responsibilities, and MSPs are no exception. Some MSPs have simply added ancillary security products to their offering and then identify as MSSPs (Managed Security Service Providers), assuming this provides cyber resilience. In reality, this is often a façade and a quick way to increase revenue without actually protecting their customers or the MSPs themselves. This is especially problematic for customers in regulated technology industries, such as healthcare, finance, and the payment card industry (PCI). Most MSPs do not have the subject matter expertise across such industries to fully protect and secure themselves or their customers. Moreover, Cerberus Sentinel can assist MSPs to effectively heed the recent advisory from the CISA, NSA, FBI, et al. to ensure that MSPs implement cyber-related best practices including full transparency between the MSP and their customers. As Jerald concludes, “MSPs need a capable partner to be their cybersecurity experts.” With our substantial experience hiring the best of the cyber best, providing 24 by 7 monitoring, safeguarding cyber resilience, and engendering a culture of cybersecurity, Cerberus Sentinel is the ideal partner.
With the Cerberus Sentinel solution, MSPs do not need to build an internal team of experts or develop and employ the expensive enterprise-level products needed for cyber resilience. Cerberus Sentinel has it all. “We don’t just solve a problem, we become a partner – an ally – to manage critical, and often exponentially, increasing cyber risks,” Jerald puts it simply. Such a partnership establishes and maintains a culture of cybersecurity, ensuring that both the MSPs and their customers are fully protected from cyberattacks.
For more information on how we collaborate with and support our partners, check us out: https://www.cerberussentinel.com.
A little more about Jerald: He currently serves as Chief Technology Officer of Cerberus Sentinel, which recently acquired one of the companies Jerald co-founded, True Digital Security. Jerald holds CISSP, NSA IAM, and CNSS 4011-4015 certifications and earned a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa, one of the top-rated cybersecurity programs in the U.S.