Already under pressure to increase their capabilities, MSSPs are going to have their hands full next year as cybercriminals unleash even more attacks, including bold attempts to take down critical internet infrastructure.

Recent research paints a dark picture in terms of the threats cybersecurity providers will be battling in the coming year. These include more targeted ransomware attacks, increasing cryptocurrency mining and unstoppable nation-state attacks.

Based on research from Secureworks, Sophos, WatchGuard Technologies and Arctic Wolf Networks, we’ve compiled a list of 12 cybersecurity trends that will challenge MSSPs and other security providers even more in 2019.

Sophos’ Scott Barlow

Scott Barlow, Sophos’ vice president of global MSP, tells us that MSSPs must become security experts for their customers.

“They must be prepared to protect customers against all types of attacks, whether a commodity ransomware attack bought as a kit on the dark web or a uniquely designed, higher-level deliberate attack,” he said. “MSSPs should also consider security innovation and partner with vendors that are innovating with deep learning technologies, synchronized security, endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities to minimize time spent investigating and remediating attacks, and educating and training their partners.”

EDR can monitor process behaviors to help detect and respond to emerging threats like vaporworms, a new breed of fileless malware, according to WatchGuard.

“Authentication is the cornerstone of all security, and yet it presents the weakest link in most organizations’ defenses,” said Corey Nachreiner, WatchGuard’s chief technology officer. “All the best security controls in the world don’t mean a thing if attackers gain access to a privileged credential, and countless data breaches have proven that passwords alone are not sufficient. To solve this issue, the industry has moved towards biometrics, but unfortunately, most still treat them as a single-factor of authentication. This is a mistake, as all single factors eventually get broken.”

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is the only way to secure credentials in the future, he said. Though MFA is mature in the enterprise, most midmarket companies have not deployed it throughout their organizations since traditional MFA solutions can be costly and complex to implement, he said.

“This represents a huge greenfield opportunity for the IT channel,” Nachreiner said. “We recommend channel partners consider more SMB-friendly MFA solutions … to solve the authentication security problem.”

Also, when it comes to Wi-Fi, most customers trust the Wi-Fi “lock” icon more than they should, he said.

“That lock icon tells you that your Wi-Fi traffic is encrypted using WEP (bad), WPA2, or soon WPA3, which does secure it from passive sniffing,” Nachreiner said. “Unfortunately, this does not mean your layer 2 Wi-Fi traffic is protected from very basic attacks leveraging techniques involving rogue clients or Evil Twin APs. In 2019, solution providers should focus on more aggressively protecting their WiFi customers with wireless intrusion prevention system (WIPS) solutions that can actively block these attacks.”

Scroll through our gallery for what’s ahead in cybersecurity.