Cyber security a ‘both sides’ issue for the channel
Here’s a question that almost sounds like a riddle: How can an established trading company be really busy while doing no business?
It’s a contradiction that Ingram Micro has found itself grappling with over the past week as it has battled to contain and remediate a ransomware attack which it made public in a statement on 5 July. At that point, the distributor said it was “working diligently to restore the affected systems so that it can process and ship orders”.
Two days later, it announced “important progress” on restoring its transaction business with the availability of subscription orders globally. A day later, on 8 July, Ingram Micro stated that it believed the incident had been “contained and the affected systems remediated” with the assistance of third party cyber security experts.
The next day, it reported that it was “operational across all countries and regions where we transact business”.
All good news for Ingram Micro, its customers (channel businesses) and suppliers. But while the ransomware attack appears to have been dealt with in a reasonably swift amount of time, it raises some critical, potentially disturbing issues for channel companies.
The most important of these is the vulnerability of channel businesses to attack given their position as middlemen (or middlewomen) in the supply chain. Channel businesses can often be perceived as the weak link in this chain. I don’t think this is necessarily because their own systems are less secure than those they interact with but merely because they interact with so many other systems and the chances are that some of them could be less secure and, as a consequence, the attack vector against channel companies is so much greater.
It is often argued that channel businesses need to be as secure as their suppliers and customers but I would suggest that, if anything, they need to be even more secure because of their position in the supply chain. They are vulnerable because they have greater connections to both sides of the chain, supplier and customer.
MSPs holding all the cards
Channel businesses are also a more attractive target precisely because of their position in the supply chain. And that position is becoming even more compelling as channel partners become more embedded in customers through managed services. Robin Oddy, principal analyst at Canalys, was quoted in MicroScope saying: “Partners have become the number one threat vector for customers, because a partner holds all the data. And the more that they hold the managed services piece, the more that they hold the financial data and the more the MSPs have become the single threat vector for the channel.”
This is hardly surprising but it does highlight the importance of security considerations in the MSP model – and the wider channel model. For customers, there is the dilemma of whether the potential benefit of outsourcing services is worth the possible greater security risk to their data of doing so.
For channel businesses, the difficulty is that providing a managed service (or product for that matter) may well be an attractive proposition but the greater responsibility attached to doing so in terms of cyber security could, potentially, cause huge reputational damage if there is a successful cyberattack against them and, by proxy, their customers.
There’s a balance to be struck here because it must be incredibly hard to attain and afford the level of expertise required to guarantee protection against all cyber threats, particularly for channel companies which can often be smaller than their customers.
Note that even a business as large as Ingram Micro was dependent on leading third party cyber security experts to contain and remediate the ransomware incident.
This suggests that there can be no 100% guarantee of security but it also means channel businesses need to be incredibly diligent and vigilant to try and reduce the likelihood of a successful cyberattack and, if they do fall prey to such an attack, that they are able to contain the effects and restore systems as quickly as possible.
Given that channel companies and MSPs are often the public face to the customer, they also need to ensure that they have thoroughly tested the security claims made by the vendors whose products and services they are supplying and wrapping services around.
The role of channel companies is often referred to as trusted advisors but the level of trust they obtain from customers because of their capabilities is only one part of the overall equation. Customers are often also entrusting the vendor because of the channel partner’s recommendation. The inevitable consequence of a successful cyberattack is a loss of trust in the channel partner.
All vendors, partners and customers appreciate, trust is an integral part of the supply chain, but while it takes time to gain trust, it can be very easy to lose it very quickly. As channel partners become more embedded in their customers’ business, particularly through managed services, the cost and burden of that trust – and the consequences of losing it – become ever greater.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers