Barracuda tackles intensified threat landscape with latest releases

Barracuda has made three important announcements, including:

• Continued innovation of its XDR platform with integration between Barracuda CloudGen Firewall and Barracuda XDR
• The mapping of threat detection rules against MITRE ATT&CK(TM) framework
• The addition of Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) capabilities to its Security Operations Center (SOC)

The intensified threat landscape has created an environment where it's no longer if but when an attack will occur, the company states. In the past 12 months, Barracuda researchers identified and analysed 106 highly publicised ransomware attacks and found the dominant targets are still in five key industries: education, municipalities, healthcare, infrastructure, and financial.

The number of ransomware attacks increased year-over-year across each of these five industry verticals, and attacks against other industries more than doubled compared to what we saw last year.

Spear phishing is also on the rise and according to the recent Barracuda report, Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends Vol. 7, the average employee of a small business with less than 100 employees will experience 350% more social engineering attacks than an employee of a larger enterprise.

With cyber attacks increasing in both frequency and sophistication, having standalone security solutions is no longer sufficient for partners to effectively protect their customers, Barracuda states.

To be successful, partners need to enable businesses to achieve the basic cybersecurity hygiene required by today's environment. That cybersecurity hygiene includes proactive monitoring with extended visibility, building concentric rings of security layers, and around the clock detection and response, because cyber criminals work around the clock.

With the new integration between Barracuda XDR and CloudGen Firewall, partners can gain visibility and insights by offering 24x7 SOC services, and increase efficiency by reducing product silos, mitigating alert fatigue, and streamlining management of their customers' environments.

The new mapping of detection rules to the MITRE ATT&CK framework provides the Barracuda SOC team with guidelines and the ability to quickly address detection gaps.

The introduction of SOAR to the Barracuda SOC infrastructure ensures faster response time, streamlines processes, and more importantly, provides increased protection when a cyber attack takes place.

Barracuda acquired SKOUT Cybersecurity in 2021 to further enable partners with their security offerings. During the past year, Barracuda has integrated the Barracuda email protection portfolio, and now Barracuda CloudGen Firewall, with Barracuda XDR services.

The Barracuda XDR offering spans Endpoint Security, Email Security, Cloud Security, Network Security, and Server Security, enabling partners to create security services that align with todays business environments and to deliver holistic cybersecurity-as-a-service for their customers, the company states.

Neal Bradbury, SVP, MSP Business at Barracuda, says, "We're always looking for ways to empower partners, and MSPs specifically, to take their business to the next level and an important part of that is enabling them to confidently secure their clients' environments.

"Earlier this year, we completed the integration of Barracuda XDR with our email protection portfolio. Now, by integrating the Barracuda CloudGen Firewall with Barracuda XDR, mapping detection rules to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, and adding SOAR to our SOC infrastructure, we can provide comprehensive visibility across multiple attack surfaces through the Barracuda XDR dashboard, while increasing the speed of detection and response time through our SOC."

Richard Flanders, Customer Strategy Director at Aura Technology, comments, "The security requirements businesses must continue to change as the overall threat landscape evolves. As an MSP, our customers expect us to provide comprehensive security services that not only prevent but also proactively detect and respond to cyber threats. This is not something most managed service providers are built for.

"The Barracuda XDR solution combines data across our security stacks through a single dashboard view, giving us the visibility we need to proactively monitor our customers' infrastructure. Its team of security experts and mature SOC is a strong differentiator we can rely on to expand our service to support 24x7 detection and response."