Inefficient Incident Response Times Are Costing Businesses Billions

Cybercriminals aren’t just stealing your customers’ credentials and financial information–they are also stealing your time. As cyber attacks continue to increase in frequency, organizations are spending countless hours manually finding, identifying and removing malicious email threats. This can be a lengthy process, which gives attacks time to spread across the organization and cause more damage.

According to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigation Report, it takes as little as 16 minutes for a user to click on a malicious link from a phishing campaign. In most cases, it takes an organization three and half hours to respond to a single campaign. Even with advanced security services, many of today’s threats are finding ways to bypass gateways. Due to this, end users are exposed to a multitude of threats.

To meet today’s growing security demands, MSPs need to adopt a proactive multi-layered approach to their security offering and find ways to streamline their incident response procedures. When done correctly, incident response can help to limit the impact of these threats and prevent future attacks from happening.

Yet, regardless of how the attack happened, identifying and remediating attacks can be time consuming. In a recent Barracuda survey, it was found that on average it takes businesses 212 minutes (3.5 hours) to remediate an attack, whereas 11% of respondents spend more than six hours doing so. This can be taxing on internal resources, which is why it is essential for businesses to streamline their incident response process.

Improving Your Incident Response Times with Automation

Even large MSPs and organizations have challenges with the time and resources needed to promptly identify and remediate each malicious incident. Instead, providers often find themselves prioritizing which incident needed to be addressed first, which can in turn leave businesses–and their data–at risk.

To avoid leaving customers exposed to additional risks, you should consider using automated incident response solutions. This can help you and your team easily identify all internal users who have received a malicious email and remove all instances of it–saving valuable time.

If a user was affected, you can also use automated incident response solutions to deliver alerts, instructions or additional information to help them avoid the threat. Recent Barracuda research shows that automating your incident response can help you reduce your response time by 95%, and 78% of customers who automate their incident response report that it now takes them less than 10 minutes. This cost savings allows you and your team to invest time in other revenue-generating areas of the business.

An automated incident response solution is something that can scale across your customers’ accounts. Paired with a successful multi-layered email security strategy, you can help mitigate and protect your customers from advanced persistent threats. However, malicious emails aren’t just entering through gateways; business email compromise (BEC) and account takeovers (ATO) are on the rise. According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, these types of attacks have cost businesses $26 billion in the last three years.

To minimize this risk, you might want to consider leveraging AI technology to protect against spear phishing attacks. For example, Barracuda Sentinel is an AI-based solution that detects anomalies and communication patterns in your customers’ inboxes. If there are abnormal communication patterns, the message is flagged and quarantined. This advanced technology can help you prevent and detect incidents before they pose a huge risk to the organization.

While no solution can be perfect, implementing robust security services can help you save time and diminish vulnerabilities for your customers. Cybercriminals might be targeting your SMB customers’ credentials, data and financial information–but don’t let them steal your time.

Chris Crellin is Senior Director of Product Management for Barracuda MSP, a provider of security and data protection solutions for managed services providers, where he is responsible for leading product strategy and management.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.