Industry News

Our industry news section covers a broad range of news items of particular relevance to the cybersecurity industry and managed service providers (MSPs).

This section also included details of the latest white papers and research studies relating to malware, ransomware, phishing and data breaches. These articles provide some insight into the general state of cybersecurity, the industries currently most heavily targeted by cybercriminals, and figures and statistics for your own reports.

Hackers and scammers conduct massive spam campaigns designed to infect as many computers as possible. These attacks are random, using email addresses stolen in large data breaches such as the cyberattacks on LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter and Yahoo. However, highly targeted attacks are increasing in frequency, with campaigns geared to specific industries. These industry-specific cyberattacks and spam and malware campaigns are detailed in this section, along with possible mitigations for reducing the risk of a successful attack.

This category is therefore of relevance to organizations in the education, healthcare, and financial services industries – the most common attacked industries according to recent security reports.

The articles contain information about current campaigns, spam email identifiers and details of the social engineering tactics used to fool end users and gain access to business networks. By following the advice in these articles, it may be possible to prevent similar attacks on your organization.

TitanHQ Launches PhishTitan – AI-Driven Phishing Protection for M365

TitanHQ is proud to announce the addition of a new solution to its cybersecurity portfolio that helps businesses combat the growing threat of phishing. PhishTitan provides powerful phishing protection for Microsoft 365 that is capable of catching and remediating sophisticated phishing attempts, including spear phishing attacks, business email compromise, phishing emails generated by artificial intelligence tools, and zero-day phishing threats that Microsoft’s native defenses for M365 fail to detect and block. It is these threats that pose the biggest threat since they are missed by Microsoft’s email security defenses and are difficult for employees to identify as malicious since they lack many of the red flags that employees are taught to look out for in security awareness training programs.

PhishTitan incorporates TitanHQ’s proprietary machine-learning algorithm, which integrates directly with M365. PhishTitan performs an AI-driven analysis of inbound emails (internal and external) which includes textual analysis, link analysis, and attachment scanning. Links are analyzed via multiple curated feeds that constantly update the solution to allow malicious websites linked to phishing and malware distribution to be identified and blocked. Phishing emails often include links that have been masked to hide the true destination URL. PhishTitan rewrites URLs to show the true destination. One tactic used by phishers to bypass email security solutions is to only weaponize links in emails after delivery. To protect against this tactic, PhishTitan checks inbound emails before delivery to inboxes and also offers time-of-click protection against malicious links in emails.

Attachments are scanned with twin antivirus engines, and suspicious email attachments are sent to the sandbox for behavioral analysis. Machine learning detection models scour the body of emails looking for tell-tale signs of phishing and adapt to constantly changing phishing tactics.  The machine learning algorithms also learn from reports of phishing attempts by end users, which they can report with a single click using a TitanHQ-supplied Outlook add-in. PhishTitan can also be configured to apply banner notifications to external emails and protect against the leakage of sensitive company information.

The solution has been designed to meet the needs of businesses of all types and sizes and has been developed from the ground up to meet the needs of managed service providers (MSPs) to allow them to easily add advanced phishing protection to their service stacks. It takes around 10 minutes to set up the solution, and around 6 minutes for MSPs to onboard new clients.

The solution was trialed across the TitanHQ user database of more 12,000 customers and 3,000 MSPs in Q4, 2023, with TitanHQ customers reporting that the solution outperforms their existing anti-phishing solutions. TitanHQ is now pleased to start offering the new product to new customers. For more information on PhishTitan phishing protection Microsoft 365 contact TitanHQ today. PhishTitan is available on a 14-day free trial and product demonstrations can be arranged on request to show you how easy the product is to use and exactly what it can do.

“A staggering 71% of MS business users suffer at least one compromised account monthly. With this in mind, the overwhelming feedback from our customer base has been that phishing is the number one problem to solve in the email security community,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “We therefore allocated resources and investment to develop a solution with new, cutting-edge, robust, fast phishing threat intelligence driven by a team of security specialists. We are pleased to be able to meet the market’s needs with a product that delivers.”

TitanHQ Wins 4 “Top Solution” Expert Insights Awards

TitanHQ products have received four “Top Solution Awards” from Expert Insights in Q4, 2023 in the Email Security, Web Filtering, Security Awareness Training, and Email Archiving categories.

Expert Insights is a leading business software review website that is used by IT decision-makers for researching the best business software solutions. The platform has more than 1 million readers a year and helps more than 85,000 businesses each month with their software purchase decisions. The website includes honest and impartial technical reviews and helpful guides to allow IT decision-makers to purchase with confidence.

Each Quarter, Expert Insights recognizes the world’s best B2B technology solutions through its awards program. The awards are based on Expert Insights’ independent technical analysts and editorial team, customer feedback, and industry recognition. In Q4, 2023, Expert Insights issued awards in over 40 categories, from authentication to zero trust security.

“We are thrilled to unveil our list of the ‘Top Solutions’ for Winter 2023, highlighting the extraordinary innovation in the B2B technology landscape,” said Craig MacAlpine, CEO and Founder of Expert Insights. “These awards celebrate leading solutions across more than 40 product categories, based on our own technical analysis and the engagement of thousands of enterprise tech professionals that use Expert Insights to research solutions each month.”

TitanHQ’s cybersecurity solutions were recognized and were named top solution in four categories:

  • Email Security – SpamTitan
  • Web Filtering -WebTitan
  • Security Awareness Training – SafeTitan
  • Email Archiving – ArcTitan

SpamTitan is a cutting-edge email security solution for blocking spam and protecting against email threats. The solution has artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities and can block all known malware, zero-day malware threats, and phishing, spear phishing, and business email compromise attacks.

WebTitan is a leading DNS filtering solution that allows businesses to carefully control the web content that can be accessed via wired and wireless networks and allows businesses to restrict access to certain websites to improve productivity, reduce legal risk, and protect against phishing, malware, ransomware, and other online threats.

SafeTitan is a comprehensive security awareness training and phishing simulation platform for teaching employees security best practices and improving resilience against the full range of cybersecurity threats. The platform provides training in real-time in response to poor security behaviors, which are triggered immediately when those behaviors are detected to ensure that training is delivered when it is likely to have the biggest impact.

ArcTitan is an easy-to-implement “set-and-forget” email archiving solution that helps businesses meet their legal responsibilities for data retention and ensures that no email is ever lost, with lightning-fast search and retrieval.

“Our team is truly honored by Expert Insights’ acknowledgment of TitanHQ as the ‘Top Solution’ Provider in their Q4 2023 Awards.,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “This recognition across multiple categories underscores our commitment to empowering our partners and MSPs with cutting-edge technology, enabling them to deliver advanced network security solutions to their clients.”

TitanHQ Announces New Partnership with India’s Leading Managed Service Provider

TitanHQ has recently announced a new partnership with one of India’s leading managed service providers, Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS). TTBS is the leading provider of business connectivity and communications solutions in India and has the largest portfolio of ICT services for businesses in the country.

Like many countries, India is facing a major increase in cybercrime. 78% of Indian organizations experienced a ransomware attack in 2021, web-based attacks have jumped sharply, and a 2022 Group-IB study placed India third globally for phishing attacks in 2021 with more attacks than any other country in the Asia-Pacific region. Indian businesses need to ensure that they have the necessary defenses in place to combat increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, especially attacks that target employees.

Businesses often turn to their managed service providers for cybersecurity and seek solutions that can protect them against malware and phishing. TTBS provides cybersecurity solutions to SMBs and its cybersecurity packages have now been improved with the addition of SpamTitan email security and the WebTitan DNS-based web filter. Both solutions are 100% cloud-based, easy for MSPs to add to their service stacks, and easy to manage.

TTBS provides advanced email security with phishing protection through the Tata Tele Email Security Plus Program, which delivers advanced threat protection for email through TitanHQ’s AI-driven SpamTitan anti-phishing solution. Protection against Internet-based threats is provided through the Tata Tele Smart Internet Program, which includes web filtering provided by WebTitan. WebTitan is fed threat intelligence from a network of 650 million endpoints, ensuring malicious websites are blocked before threats are encountered.

“We are delighted to partner TitanHQ to offer Tata Tele Email Security- an advanced email security solution that is in line with Zero Trust security agenda of enterprises,” said Vishal Rally, Sr. VP & Head – Product, Marketing and Commercial, Tata Teleservices Ltd. “As a leading technology enabler TTBS is committed to simplifying and democratizing email security for businesses of any size. This partnership will ensure the protection of enterprise sensitive data efficiently and cost effectively”.

“We are excited to partner with Tata Teleservices to offer their growing customer base our advanced threat protection layer for email and web security,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “Over several years Tata Teleservices has excelled in the areas of customer service and security, our partnership further cements this commitment”.

If you are an MSP that has yet to start offering cybersecurity packages to your clients, or if you are keen to improve protection through AI-driven cybersecurity solutions, give the TitanHQ channel team a call to find out more about how TitanHQ can help you better protect your clients and improve your profits.

TitanHQ Feature Updates Announced for SafeTitan, WebTitan, and SpamTitan

TitanHQ has made several enhancements to its suite of cybersecurity solutions this month, including an update to the SafeTitan security awareness training and phishing simulation platform to better meet the needs of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and the release of a new version of the WebTitan DNS-based web filtering solution – Version 5.03, which is now being rolled out for all customers. SpamTitan spam-filter users are also due to get an upgrade, with version 9.01 of the platform due to be released.

The SafeTitan update added a new Auto Campaigns feature for MSPs to better meet the needs of their SMB clients and protect them against increasingly sophisticated phishing threats. While it is vital to have an email security solution such as SpamTitan in place to block email-based threats, workforces also need to be provided with security awareness training to ensure they have the skills to recognize and avoid the full range of cyber threats.

The SafeTitan platform can be used by SMBs for training their workforces and giving them practice at identifying threats and also by MSPs to meet the training needs of their clients. The new Auto Campaigns feature is an automation tool that allows MSPs to reduce the time spent planning and managing security awareness and phishing simulation campaigns for their SMB clients. The AI-driven feature helps MSPs streamline the security training process and improve efficiency while saving time and resources. The Auto Campaigns feature allows MSPs to create an annual set of phishing simulation campaigns for all clients within minutes.

WebTitan is an award-winning web filtering solution that is used by thousands of SMBs, enterprises, and MSPs for controlling access to the Internet and blocking web-based cyber threats. The latest version of the platform includes several new features and bug fixes.

Users now benefit from a new summary report page, the custom block page has a new layout, and several new features have been added. These include support for the customization of the global default policy on the MSP level, which allows the application of a custom default policy on the creation of a customer account. Support has been added for the customization of the default policy on the customer level, it is now possible to inherit the allowed & blocked domains from the customer default policy, and support has been added for allowing/blocking a top-level domain (TLD) on a customer policy and global domains.

SpamTitan is due for an imminent upgrade which will include several new, advanced MSP features. Version 9.01 will have a new history/quarantine feature for MSPs, that will allow them to quickly act on customer emails at the MSP level. Link Lock inheritance has been added at the MSP level to avoid having to drill down to individual domains to make changes, and a new pattern filtering feature has been added which simplifies SpamTitan administration for MSPs and allows them to secure all customers from one place. There is also a simplified mail view, which improves the user experience and makes email analysis simpler.

MSPs also have an Other Products option, which allows them to easily offer other products in the TitanSecure bundle to customers – ArcTitan email archiving, WebTitan web filtering, and SafeTitan security awareness training – and provide a comprehensive, multi-layered security defense system to customers.

Effective Workforce Training to Improve Cybersecurity in Healthcare

On March 30, 2022, the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee cleared the Healthcare Cybersecurity Act – new legislation that promises to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of the U.S. healthcare and public health sectors. The U.S. healthcare sector has taken a battering in recent years as cybercriminals have stepped up attacks on the sector. Healthcare organizations are an attractive target due to the vast quantities of sensitive data they store. The data can easily be monetized and used for identity theft and medical fraud, and preventing access to that data puts patients at risk, which increases the probability that extortion attempts will be successful. Cyberattacks on the healthcare sector have proven to be lucrative, with healthcare providers often forced into paying huge ransom demands to decrypt their files, prevent the exposure of stolen data, and get critical systems back up and running quickly to improve patient safety.

In 2020, healthcare cyberattacks increased by 55% breaking the record set the previous year. More than 26 million medical records were compromised that year, which increased to over 40 million records in 2021 and 2022. 2023 looks like it will see similar numbers of records compromised. Healthcare is a critical industry and healthcare cybersecurity is a patient safety issue. Action is desperately at the federal level to improve resilience to cyberattacks and the Healthcare Cybersecurity Act is a step in the right direction. The Healthcare Cybersecurity Act calls for the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services to collaborate and come up with a plan for improving the security posture of the sector. Within a year of the legislation being passed, CISA is required to complete a detailed analysis of the risks to healthcare assets and data, identify the information security challenges faced by organizations in the sector and come up with a plan to address the shortage of cybersecurity staff, including making recommendations for cybersecurity training for the workforce and enhancing incident response. The legislation also calls for the creation of a Cyber Security Operations Center specifically for the healthcare sector to share real-time threat intelligence to help defend against and respond to cyberattacks.

In the meantime, the cyberattacks continue. While hospitals and health systems are investing heavily in cybersecurity and are improving their technical defenses, hackers are developing new methods to attack the sector, often by exploiting human weaknesses. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires healthcare providers, health plans, and other covered entities to develop a security awareness training program for employees, but the legislation was signed into law two decades ago and provides little in the way of detail as to what such a program should include or how often training should be conducted. Follow the letter of the law and you will be compliant but will do little to improve your security posture. What is required is a comprehensive training program that can be easily tailored to all members of the workforce and training them on how to recognize the specific threats they are likely to encounter.

The ultimate goal of security awareness training is to develop a security culture, and that simply isn’t possible with an annual training session. Security awareness training needs to be ongoing, with employees up to date on the latest threats, and training needs to be reinforced. This is an area where TitanHQ can help. TitanHQ offers healthcare organizations an easy-to-use platform for developing healthcare-specific training courses covering a broad range of security topics. The platform includes training content on hundreds of topics, delivered through computer-based training courses, videos, and quizzes. The content is engaging and gamified and has been developed to be easy to fit into busy healthcare workflows, with the training content taking no more than 10 minutes per module.

Administrators can easily develop training courses for individual employees, roles, and departments to ensure it is relevant, and the platform is behavior-driven, with training content automatically generated based on specific employee behaviors such as failed phishing simulations and security errors, such as saving sensitive data in an insecure location. Since the training is generated instantly, it ensures employees receive the training when it is likely to have the maximum impact – immediately after a security mistake is made.

The platform also has enterprise-level reporting, which provides executives with a 360 view of the entire organization and the return on investment, with the data provided in an easily digestible format for management, and detailed reports for the compliance team to demonstrate full compliance with the training requirements of the HIPAA Security Rule.

If you want to improve your organization’s security posture, training the workforce to be more security aware is a great place to start. For more information on SafeTitan, to sign up for a free trial, get in touch with the TitanHQ U.S. team today.

SpamTitan Named Leader in 5 Categories in G2 Winter 2023 Grid Report

G2 (formerly G2 Crowd) has recently published its G2 Crowd Grid® Winter 2023 Report, which highlights the leading IT security products for businesses. G2 Grid Reports are based on satisfaction scores from genuine business users of IT solutions and are plotted into a quadrant along with market presence data, with each solution positioned in one of four quadrants: Leader, High Performer, Contender, and Niche. The Leader quadrant indicates products have high satisfaction scores from users and a strong market presence.

TitanHQ is happy to announce that SpamTitan Email Security has been placed in the Leader quadrant in five categories: Cloud Email Security, Small Business Email Security, Email Anti-Spam SMB, Email Protection, and Email Security, and was also given a top five position in 12 other categories.

G2 is a trusted source of reviews of technology for business and is used by thousands of businesses to help them with their purchasing decisions. G2 includes more than 2,072,000 reviews of business software from genuine users of the solutions, and those data are combined with social media reviews and other trusted online sources of data for its quarterly Grid reports. The G2 platform and Grid Reports are relied upon by more than 5 million buyers every month.

TitanHQ is a Galway, Ireland-based provider of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. Those solutions include email security, DNS filtering, email archiving, email encryption, security awareness training, and phishing simulations. The products consistently attract high satisfaction scores from users on G2 and other business software review platforms such as Capterra, Gartner, GetApp, and Software Advice. Across those platforms, SpamTitan has attracted more than 500 5-star ratings based on customer reviews, and SpamTitan is also the category leader for email security on PeerSpot and Expert Insights, two other highly trusted review platforms.

The high scores show how much users love using SpamTitan products – SpamTitan Cloud, SpamTitan Gateway, and SpamTitan Plus – and how effective they are at blocking email-based threats. SpamTitan Plus is the latest addition to the SpamTitan family of products and was launched last year to provide leading-edge protection against phishing attacks, in particular, real-time phishing threats by utilizing AI and machine learning and extensive threat intelligence data – more than any other anti-phishing solution on the market. The result is 1.5x faster detection of malicious emails than the leading industry anti-phishing solutions from Barracuda, Proofpoint, and Mimecast. In addition to providing excellent protection, SpamTitan is easy-to-implement, easy to use, and far more affordable for businesses than many similar solutions. Users also benefit from exceptional front-line support. If any problems are experienced, help is rapidly provided.

The naming of SpamTitan as a leader in so many categories is a testament to the hard work of everyone at TitanHQ, and the considerable investment in the product. “The overwhelmingly positive feedback from SpamTitan users on independent review sites is a return for the massive investment we made into our products and threat intel,” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO, TitanHQ.

If you want to save money on email security without sacrificing protection, why not give SpamTitan a try by taking advantage of the free trial of the solution today and see for yourself why SpamTitan products are consistently rated so highly by users.

Use Cyren for Email and Web Security? – You Need to Change Provider Immediately!

The cybersecurity company Cyren has collapsed, leaving its customers at risk. If you use Cyren for email and web security, you should change provider immediately!

It is sad news when any company is forced to significantly reduce its workforce, which for Cyren recently involved laying off 121 employees “in response to current market conditions and associated challenges with raising additional capital.” Cyren issued a press release saying that such extensive layoffs represent a significant reduction in all of the company’s workforce, and that “in the absence of additional sources of liquidity, management anticipates that the Company’s existing cash and projected cash flows from operations will not be sufficient to meet the Company’s working capital needs in the near term.”

So what does that mean for close to 1 billion users that rely on the company’s cybersecurity solutions? TitanHQ contacted the company’s CISO in relation to the news and received a response. “The SDK will work for as long as the systems in the cloud will continue running. Unfortunately, we have no personnel left to watch after the systems, so it is hard to predict how long they will run for.”

As a provider of email and web security solutions, TitanHQ can confirm that without constant updates to anti-spam signatures, the ability of a solution to block new phishing attacks will rapidly diminish, which means that customers will be exposed to threats. While it is possible that Cyren will be able to attract further investment, in the short term customers should be very concerned. Unfortunately, a mass exodus of customers is the last thing Cyren needs, but those customers need to ensure that they continue to be protected against email and web-based threats, which means switching to another solution provider.

TitanHQ has already received many calls from Cyren customers following the company’s February 1, 2023, press release announcing the financial difficulties the company is facing and has offered those customers a special deal that can provide short-term protection while they decide on the best next step, and that is to extend the free trial of SpamTitan Email Security and the WebTitan DNS Filter to 30 days.

Both solutions can be implemented in a matter of minutes and will ensure Cyren customers remain protected against email and web-based threats. The TitanHQ team has been busy helping Cyren customers get up and running with the two solutions over the past 2 weeks since the announcement was made.

Naturally, TitanHQ would love to continue to provide these solutions to Cyren customers past the 30-day free trial and hopes they continue to use the solutions, but this is a no-obligation free use of the platform aimed at helping Cyren customers stay protected. If after the end of the 30 days they decide to go elsewhere, that is no problem at all. This is a totally free offer with no obligation to continue and with no strings attached.

The TitanHQ team will be monitoring capacity – which is already hugely overprovisioned – to ensure that there is no impact on current users, and response times to queries are constantly monitored to ensure that customers are not impacted. TitanHQ’s infrastructure can also be rapidly scaled up to meet demand should the need arise.

Cyren customers wishing to take advantage of the offer should contact TitanHQ to speak to the migration team, and assistance will be provided to get you up and running quickly.

TitanHQ Ranks 45th in the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards

Growth at TitanHQ has been tremendous over the past two years thanks to a sizable investment from the UK private equity firm, Livingbridge, in 2020, and the release of new cybersecurity solutions to better meet the needs of SMBs, enterprises, and the MSPs that serve them. TitanHQ has released SpamTitan Plus, which builds on the strong performance of SpamTitan Cloud and delivers industry-leading protection from phishing along with the security awareness training and phishing simulation platform SafeTitan – The only behavior-driven security awareness training platform that delivers security awareness training in real-time in response to security mistakes by employees.

For many years, TitanHQ has been enjoying strong organic year-on-year growth, and over the past couple of years has significantly expanded its footprint in the United States, helped by several strategic new hires and a new office in Shelton, Connecticut, staffed by a highly experienced team. That growth has recently been recognized by Deloitte, which has ranked TitanHQ as the 45th fastest-growing company in Ireland at the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards. This is the second year in a row that TitanHQ has made the Top 50. The 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards is one of the most prestigious award programs for technology companies in Ireland and has been running for 23 years. The positions calculated by Deloitte are based on the previous four years of revenue growth.

“As the business environment becomes more complex, the Irish technology sector has shown great resilience and tenacity. This year’s ranking shows growth across a broad range of sectors with companies coming up with innovative solutions to address changing consumer and business demands while faced with adversity,” said David Shanahan, Partner, Deloitte. “It’s also encouraging to see so many new entrants, including seven in the top ten. Despite the challenges of late, the Irish indigenous tech sector continues to succeed.”

Combined, the top 50 companies in the list have generated more than €500 million in revenue, averaging €10 million per company, and in 2021 employed more than 5,500 people. The average growth rate for all companies was 594%. This year there were 17 companies that made it into the top 50 for the first time, with 7 of those companies ranking in the top 10. 8 Irish counties and all four provinces are represented in the list, and this year has seen an increase in the number of companies with female CEOs. 7 of the 50 companies are led by women.

“Organic year-on-year growth and recent significant investment have turbocharged TitanHQs growth. This has allowed TitanHQ to accelerate ambitious growth plans through increased investment in product development – and in people,” TitanHQ’s CEO, Ronan Kavanagh.

 

5-Award Haul for TitanHQ in Expert Insights Fall 2022 ‘Best-Of’ Awards

TitanHQ has collected 5 awards for its cybersecurity solutions in the Expert Insights Fall 2022 ‘Best-Of’ Awards across 5 product categories.

Expert Insights is an online platform for businesses that provides independent advice on business software solutions to help businesses make informed purchasing decisions about software solutions. The advice provided on the website is honest and objective, and the site features helpful guides to help businesses purchase with confidence. The site is used by more than 85,000 businesses each month, with the website helping more than 1 million readers each year.

Twice yearly, Best-of awards are given to the top ten solutions in each of the 41 product categories. The awards showcase the best quality solutions that are helping businesses to achieve their goals and defend against the barrage of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. The awards are based on several factors, such as the features of products, market presence, ease of use, and customer satisfaction scores, with the award winners chosen by the in-house team of editors. The editorial team conducts research into each solution to assess its performance, functionality, and usability, and assesses the reviews from genuine business users of the solutions.

TitanHQ collected five awards for its products in the Spring 2022 Best-of awards, and this has been followed up with another 5 Fall 2022 Best-of awards. TitanHQ was given a Best-of award for SafeTitan in the Phishing Simulation and Security Awareness Training categories, SpamTitan Cloud received an award in the Email Security category, WebTitan Cloud got an award in the Web Security category, and ArcTitan won in the Email Archiving category. Further, ArcTitan Email Archiving was rated the top solution in the Email Archiving category and SpamTitan was rated the top solution in the Email Security category.

There were several big winners at the Fall 2022 Expert Insights Best-of awards, with TitanHQ joining companies such as ESET, CrowdStrike, and Connectwise in winning big.

“We are honored that TitanHQ was named as a Fall 2022 winner of Expert Insights Best-Of award for phishing simulation, email security, security awareness training, web security and email archiving” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh.  “Our cloud-based platform allows partners and MSPs to take advantage of TitanHQ’s proven technology so they can sell, implement and deliver our advanced network security solutions directly to their client base”.

TitanHQ Adds Several New Features and Enhancements to the WebTitan DNS Filter

WebTitan Cloud is an award-winning DNS filter that prevents access to malicious websites and allows businesses to control the web content users can access with precision. This week, TitanHQ has announced the release of a new version of WebTitan Cloud, that includes new features to improve usability, security, protection for remote workers, and provides greater insights into DNS requests. These new features now form part of an industry-leading feature set that is in a cloud-delivered solution that is easy to set up, use, and maintain.

New UI with Advanced Reporting Features

If you are a current WebTitan Cloud user, the first change you will notice is the new user interface which provides easy access to all WebTitan Cloud features. The enhancements provide intuitive, advanced, relevant, and easy-to-digest data, through new interactive reports and data visualization tools, which are embedded into the UI to improve the user experience.

The advanced security reports show malware-infected clients, malware-infected domains, malware-infected users, blocked phishing sites, blocked phishing domains, and blocked phishing sites by user, and the view can be customized by date and client IP. New reports show behavior, blocked sites, and trends to provide insights into network use and threats. These reports have been added based on the feedback received by WebTitan Cloud users.

Interactive Threat Intelligence with DNS Data Offload

The latest version of WebTitan Cloud provides users with easier access to valuable threat intelligence to aid IT decision-making, network troubleshooting, and security planning. Users can now list DNS request history on screen, download DNS request logs, view all DNS data to gain valuable insights into activity, and easily extract DNS query data for sophisticated integrations and advanced data analysis.

DNSSEC Security Enhancements

WebTitan Cloud now benefits from security enhancements to protect against DNS attacks by strengthening authentication using Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC uses digital cryptographic signatures to verify the origin and integrity of data during the DNS resolution process to protect against malicious DNS poisoning attacks. Users of WebTitan Cloud can implement DNSSEC through a simple and straightforward process to improve security.

WebTitan OTG Improvements for Protecting Off Network Users

The WebTitan On-the-Go (OTG) agent allows users to extend the protection of WebTitan Cloud to off-network users, no matter where they connect to the Internet. WebTitan OTG was introduced some time ago; however, the latest release includes several enhancements. The JSON Config filters have been replaced for OTG devices, and the agent used to protect, manage, and monitor off-network users has been significantly improved. It is also much easier to add and update exceptions to OTG devices through an easy-to-use interface.

“This WebTitan release is hitting so many key pillars of success for TitanHQ. The data offload feature has been requested by many customers and creates real differentiation for our solution in the market. This coupled with our new advanced reporting were major requests from our MSP customers,” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO of TitanHQ. “Finally, security is at the heart of what we do and are, the addition of DNSSEC just continues to add to our credentials.”

Vote for SpamTitan in the PeerSpot 2022 User Choice Awards!

For more than 10 years, PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station) has been helping tech pros make intelligent decisions on the best information technology solutions to implement to ensure they get the solutions that perfectly address the needs of their businesses. The PeerSpot Buying Intelligence Platform is powered by the world’s largest community of enterprise tech buyers and bridges the gap between vendors and buyers. Vendors are helped through the voice of their customers, and enterprise tech buyers receive relevant and practical advice to help them make better purchasing decisions. The platform provides in-depth reviews of products, online forums, and tech buyers have access to direct Q&A support.

This year sees PeerSpot launch its first Annual User’s Choice Award program to recognize the products that are helping businesses to achieve their goals. Customers of enterprise technology vendors are invited to vote for their favorite B2B Enterprise Technology products across 11 product categories.

In 2022, those product categories are:

  • Endpoint Protection for Business
  • Firewalls
  • Backup and Recovery Software
  • Network Monitoring Software
  • HCI
  • All-Flash Storage Arrays
  • Email Security
  • Ethernet Switches
  • Application Security Tools
  • Functional Testing Tools
  • Rapid Application Development Software

In order for a solution to be included in the relevant category, it must be amongst the highest-rated products on the PeerSpot Buying Intelligence Platform. That requires a product to have generated significant user engagement on the platform and to have been rated highly by verified users of the solutions.

The winners in each category will be decided by popular vote.

TitanHQ is proud to have had its SpamTitan solution included as one of the top spam filtering, anti-phishing, and anti-malware solutions in the email security category. SpamTitan provides layered protection for enterprises, SMBs, and managed service providers and blocks email-based threats such as phishing, malware, spam, viruses, and botnets. The solution incorporates signature- and behavior-based detection to block malware threats and predictive technologies to anticipate zero-minute threats.  SpamTitan is much loved by users not just for its performance, but also ease of set up, use, maintenance, price, and the industry-leading customer support provided by TitanHQ. SpamTitan has an overall star rating of 4.6/5 on the platform.

If you love using SpamTitan and it has helped your business block more threats, cut down on the resources you have had to devote to email security, or saved you money, TitanHQ encourages you to vote for SpamTitan. Voting will take around a minute of your time. Votes are being accepted until September 16th, 2022, and the winners in each category will be announced by PeerSpot on October 25, 2022.

Vote for SpamTitan Email Security Here

Predictive Threat Detection Capabilities Enhanced in SpamTitan Plus

TitanHQ has announced an update has been made to its flagship anti-phishing solution, SpamTitan Plus. The new enhancements have been added to the predictive phishing detection capabilities of SpamTitan Plus to help users block personalized URL attacks.

Phishing attacks on businesses have become much more sophisticated and new tactics are constantly being developed to evade standard email security solutions. While commercial email security solutions perform well at identifying and blocking spam emails, achieving detection rates in excess of 99%, blocking phishing emails is more of a challenge and many phishing threats sneak past email security solutions and are delivered to inboxes.

One of the ways that cyber threat actors bypass email security solutions is by creating personalized URLs for their phishing emails. One of the methods used by email security solutions for blocking phishing URLs is a real-time blacklist of known malicious URLs and IP addresses. If an email is sent from an IP address that has previously been used to send spam or phishing emails, the IP address is added to a blacklist and all emails from that IP address will be blocked. The URLs in phishing campaigns are set up and massive email runs are performed. When those URLs are detected as malicious, they are also added to a blacklist and will be blocked by email security solutions.

However, it is becoming increasingly common for personalized URLs to be used. These URLs can be personalized for the targeted organizations at the path and parameter level, and since a unique URL is used in each attack, standard anti-phishing measures such as blacklists are ineffective at detecting these URLs as malicious. That means the emails containing these malicious URLs are likely to be delivered to inboxes and can only be blocked after they have been delivered. That typically means an employee needs to report the email to their security team, and the security team must then act quickly to remove all phishing emails in that campaign from the email system. That process takes time and there is a risk that the links in the emails could be clicked, resulting in credential theft or malware infections. Most of the phishing detection feeds that are used by email security solutions do not gather the necessary intelligence to be able to inform customers of the level at which a phishing campaign should be blocked. SpamTitan Plus, however, does have that capability.

“With predictive phishing detection, SpamTitan Plus can now combat automated bot phishing,” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO of TitanHQ. “At TitanHQ we always strive to innovate and develop solutions that solve real-security problems and provide tangible value to our customers. The end goal is to have our partners and customers two or three steps ahead of the phishers and cybercriminals.”

SpamTitan Plus

SpamTitan Plus is an AI-driven anti-phishing solution that is capable of blocking even the newest zero-day phishing threats. The solution has better coverage than any of the current market leaders and provides unparalleled time-of-click protection against malicious hyperlinks in phishing emails, with the lowest false positive rate of any product. SpamTitan Plus benefits from massive clickstream traffic from 600+ million users and endpoints worldwide, which sees the solution block 10 million new, never-before-seen phishing and malicious URLs a day.

The solution protects against URL-based email threats including malware and phishing, performs predictive analyses to identify suspicious URLs, URLs are rewritten to protect users, real-time checks are performed on every click, and the solution includes 100% of all current market-leading anti-phishing feeds. That translates into a 1.5x increase in unique phishing URL detections, 1.6x faster phishing detections than the current market leaders, and 5 minutes from initial detection of a malicious URL to protecting all end user mailboxes.

For more information about the best phishing solution for businesses, give the TitanHQ team a call today. Current users of SpamTitan Plus already have these new capabilities added, at no additional cost.

TitanHQ Finalist in the 2022 CompTIA UK Spotlight Awards

Following on from being included in the Expert Insights’ list of the Top 100 Most Innovative Cybersecurity Companies of 2022, TitanHQ has been named a finalist in the 2022 CompTIA UK Spotlight Awards in the Innovative Vendor Award Category.

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is an advocate for the $5 trillion global information technology ecosystem and the estimated 75 million professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers the world’s economy.

CompTIA provides education, training, certifications, philanthropy, and market research and promotes industry growth, the development of a highly-skilled workforce, and the creation of an environment where innovation happens and opportunities are made possible through technology that is available to all.

Every year, CompTIA recognizes individual and organizational excellence in the UK tech industry through the CompTIA UK Spotlight Awards, which took place on June 16 at the CompTIA UK Business Technology Community Meeting, in Bristol.

TitanHQ is delighted to have been named a finalist at this year’s awards and to be recognized for its innovative cybersecurity solutions that are helping SMBs and Managed Service Providers defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.

Over the past 12 months, TitanHQ has enjoyed excellent growth, has brought in a wealth of new talent, and has released two innovative new cybersecurity solutions to its product portfolio: SpamTitan Plus and the SafeTitan Security Awareness and Phishing Simulation Platform.

SpamTitan Plus provides cutting-edge, industry-leading protection against zero-day phishing threats. The AI-driven anti-phishing solution has better coverage, a significant uplift in phishing link detections, and faster detection speeds, with the lowest false positive rate of any product. The solution includes updates from massive clickstream traffic of 600+ million users and endpoints worldwide, which protects against 10 million+ new, never-before-seen phishing and malicious URLs each day.

According to research, 97% of users fail to identify all phishing emails, so advanced phishing protection is essential. So too is security awareness training, to teach employees how to identify phishing and other threats and increase threat reporting rates to security teams.

TitanHQ now offers a comprehensive platform that businesses can use to train their employees to be security titans and create a human firewall to complement their technical anti-phishing safeguards. SafeTitan includes an extensive library of interactive, fun, and engaging training content, a phishing simulator, and is the only behavior-driven security awareness training platform that delivers security awareness training in real-time.

If you want to benefit from these new solutions and any of TitanHQ’s other innovative cybersecurity protects – DNS filtering, email encryption, and email archiving- contact TitanHQ today.

TitanHQ Named in Top 100 List of the Most Innovative Companies in Cybersecurity

TitanHQ has collected several accolades already in 2022 for the full range of cloud-delivered solutions. The 2022 tally now includes recognition as one of the top 100 most innovative cybersecurity companies.

The Expert Insights’ Top 100 Most Innovative Cybersecurity Companies list was created to recognize the most innovative companies in cybersecurity – companies that develop highly innovative solutions to better protect businesses and consumers from increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. The Top 100 list is broken down into 12 different categories, with TitanHQ included in the Email and Messaging Security Category.

It is vital for businesses of all sizes to implement robust defenses to block email-based attacks. Email is the leading vector for malware delivery and phishing attacks are increasing in number and sophistication. As TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh, pointed out, “The overwhelming feedback from our users and customer base has been that phishing attacks are becoming more advanced, proficient and dangerous. Phishing is the number one problem to solve in the email security community.”

TitanHQ’s SpamTitan suite of products provides cutting-edge, robust, and rapid protection against phishing attacks, malware threats, and other email-borne cyberattacks. In addition to the SpamTitan Gateway and SpamTitan Cloud solutions, TitanHQ recently released SpamTitan Plus, which provides best-in-class protection against phishing attacks, with the most comprehensive coverage of any solution, incorporating 100% of current market-leading anti-phishing feeds. That translates into 1.5x faster URL threat detection, 1.6x faster phishing detection than the current market leaders, and just 5 minutes from initial detection of malicious URLs to protecting all mailboxes.

“Over the past year, TitanHQ has significantly grown its global presence, strengthened its executive leadership team, and added to its product and services portfolio, all of which have contributed to our impressive placement on the 2022 Expert Insights’ Top 100 Most Innovative Cybersecurity Companies list,” said Kavanagh.

The latest accolade follows on from TitanHQ collecting no fewer than five Expert Insights’ ‘Best of’ Awards in the spring for SpamTitan Email Security, WebTitan DNS Filter, ArcTitan Email Archiving, with two awards for SafeTitan Security Awareness Training.

Tom Watson Appointed as New TitanHQ Channel Chief

TitanHQ has recruited the popular channel veteran Tom Watson, who will serve as the company’s new Channel Chief to help bring profitable growth to all TitanHQ Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners.

TitanHQ is committed to serving the MSP community and channel and offers a wide range of cybersecurity solutions that have been developed from the ground up to meet the needs of MSPs. The TitanHQ product portfolio now includes best-in-class email security, DNS filtering, email archiving, email encryption, and security awareness training and phishing simulation solutions, that are easy to implement, manage, and fit seamlessly into MSP’s service stacks. The solutions are delivered through an MSP-centric platform to allow MSPs to provide defense-in-depth security solutions to their SMB and enterprise clients.

Demand from MSPs in North America for TitanHQ solutions has prompted a major expansion of US operations. TitanHQ is well aware that such tremendous growth must be supported by locally sourced experienced advisors such as Tom Watson. Tom brings considerable experience to TitanHQ, having previously owned an MSP business and served as Channel Chief at top-level vendors such as NinjaOne and Axcient. Tom will be based at TitanHQ’s new North American base in Shelton, Connecticut, where he will be working alongside locally sourced talent such as TitanHQ VP of Sales, Jeff Benedetti, and his North American team.

Tom has been tasked with managing TitanHQ’s MSP tradeshows, roadshows, and webinars, and will oversee the creation of a brand-new MSP partner program. “I see my role as being more of a liaison than anything,” said Tom, regarding his new position at TitanHQ. “TitanHQ already has a fantastic offering. You’ll be hearing me talk about that in the future. For now, I think it’s more important to highlight the commitments TitanHQ has made to the channel. This is a company that is 100% dedicated to making sure they serve the MSP community.”

Tom went on to explain the reason why he chose to join the TitanHQ team. “I’ve wanted to work for a rising cybersecurity company for quite a while now. Here I know I can use my skills and understanding of MSP operations, sales, and marketing to help MSPs succeed. Working together with TitanHQ we can give MSPs everything they need to provide quality cyber services to their clients.”

Everyone at TitanHQ is excited about Tom joining the company and the role he will play in ensuring TitanHQ remains the leading provider of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions to MSPs serving the SMB market by supporting growth in the North American market.

“As we continue to further expand into the North American market, introducing industry experts like Tom to our team is vital to allow us to continue to partner with MSPs looking for best in class cybersecurity solutions,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “We are thrilled to welcome Tom to the team, his wealth of experience working with the MSP sector will serve us well as we continue on our growth journey.”

TitanHQ Collects Five Expert Insights Spring 2022 Best-Of Awards

This month, TitanHQ has collected five prestigious awards for its cloud-based security solutions from Expert Insights. Expert Insights is an online publication with editorial and technical teams in the UK and US, that provide insights into cybersecurity and cloud-based technologies to help businesses make the right purchasing decisions.

Hundreds of B2B solutions are covered on the website, along with editorial buyers’ guides, blog articles, and industry analyses, with interviews and technical product reviews written by industry experts. More than 80,000 business owners, IT admins, and users visit the website every month to research products ahead of making a purchase.

Expert Insights issues ‘Best-Of’ awards to recognize companies that have developed products that provide essential services to businesses, help drive business growth, improve efficiency, and secure their IT environments against an ever-increasing range of cyber threats. The Expert Insights’ Spring 2022 Best-Of awards are issued across a range of categories, including cloud software, security, and storage, with up to 11 vendors chosen in each category. Vendors and their products are selected based on extensive research into the solutions by industry experts, and from feedback from genuine business users of the solutions. “These awards recognize the continued excellence of the providers in these categories,” said Joel Witts, Expert Insights’ Content Director.

TitanHQ collected awards for SpamTitan Email Protection, WebTitan DNS Filter, ArcTitan Email Archiving, and SafeTitan Security Awareness Training, with each product being awarded Best-in-Class in their respective categories.

SpamTitan was named as the Best Email Security Gateway and was ranked the number 1 solution. WebTitan ranked best in the Web Security Solution category, ArcTitan was ranked number 1 in the Email Archiving Solution for Business category, and SafeTitan collected two best-of awards, one in the Security Awareness Training Category and another in the Phishing Simulation category.

“The recent pandemic and the growth of remote working initiatives have further highlighted the need for multiple layers of cybersecurity and our award-winning solutions form key pillars in this security strategy,” said TitanHQ CEO Ronan Kavanagh. “We will continue to innovate and provide solutions that MSPs can use to deliver a consistent, secure, and reliable experience to their customers.”

TitanHQ Recruits 12 New High Profile Staff Members in Response to Blistering U.S. Growth

Less than two months after hiring channel chief Jeff Benedetti, TitanHQ has announced 12 further strategic new hires who will form a new North American team to service the US and Canadian Managed Service Provider (MSP) market.

The new team members have extensive channel experience, having previously held positions at the likes of Datto, Skout Cybersecurity, Agile Blue, and Barracuda and are based in TitanHQ’s new North American base in Shelton, Connecticut, headed up by Channel Chief Benedetti.

The new team includes Eric Morano, who has been appointed Director of Channel Development. Eric has 15 years of sales leadership and GTM experience at Datto, Skout Cybersecurity (BarracudaMSP), AgileBlue XDR, CDW, and Verizon. Moreno will be responsible for optimizing TitanHQ’s partner engagement and growth.

New Channel Account Managers include Craig Somma, who has 25 years of technology sales GTM leadership that was gained at Tech Dept, Micro Warehouse, and Gov Connection, Joseph Rende who has 10+ years of channel sales experience at Gartner and Datto, Pat DeAngelis who has 10+ years of MSP technology experience at Datto, Threatlocker and Armor Cybersecurity, and Jeff Brown has 10+ years of sales experience at Datto, SKOUT Cybersecurity, Agile Blue. New Account Executives include Alex De Los Santos, who has 8 years of sales experience at Datto and ADP, Alex Nankervis, who has 8 years of sales experience at Datto and Indeed, Kyle Leyerzapf, who has 5 years of sales experience at Datto, Patrick Barry who has 6 years of sales and accounts experience with Accu-Tech Corporation and Maxim Healthcare, and Jamal Ibrahim, who has 4 years account management experience with Altium and RCG. Marc Bonnaci has also joined the Sales Development team and has 7 years of sales and professional experience most recently at Agile Blue.

The new TitanHQ North American Team

The past three months have seen significant activity at TitanHQ. In addition to bringing in Benedetti to head the channel team, TitanHQ launched its SpamTitan Plus Anti Phishing solution in December 2021 and announced the acquisition of Cyber Risk Aware in February, and launched SafeTitan Security Awareness Training.

SpamTitan Plus is a cutting-edge, AI-driven anti-phishing solution with more comprehensive “zero-day” threat protection and intelligence than all of the current market leaders, with significant uplifts in phishing link detections and much faster detection speeds. This new addition to the SpamTitan product family has been very well received.

Cyber Risk Aware is a global leader in security awareness training to mitigate human cyber risk, and the platform is used by many companies to train their workforces to improve threat awareness. The platform, which has been re-launched as SafeTitan, is an intuitive, real-time security awareness training platform that improves awareness and human resilience to ransomware, malware, BEC attacks, and phishing. Demand for the new SafeTitan security awareness training and phishing simulation platform has been exceptional, with huge interest coming from MSPs and IT departments globally.

On top of these major launches, TitanHQ recorded record-breaking growth in January and February 2022 and has generated the highest revenue and new MSP partner figures in its 20-year history. More than 2,200 MSPs now use TitanHQ’s best-in-class SaaS Cybersecurity Platform daily, with the numbers continuing to grow at an incredible rate, especially in the United States and Canada, hence the need to open a new U.S. office and bring in a wealth of new talent.

TitanHQ Completes Acquisition of Cyber Risk Aware

TitanHQ, the leading cybersecurity SaaS business, today announced its acquisition of Cyber Risk Aware. Established in 2016, Cyber Risk Aware is a global leader in security awareness and mitigation of human cyber risk, providing assistance to companies to train the workforce on how to protect the company network.

Cyber Risk Aware delivers real-time cyber security awareness training to staff in response to actual staff network behavior. This intuitive and real-time security awareness training reduces the likelihood users will be impacted by the latest threats such as ransomware, BEC attacks, and data breaches, whilst also enabling organizations to meet compliance obligations. Leading global businesses that trust Cyber Risk Aware include Standard Charter, Glen Dimplex, and Invesco.

The acquisition will further bolster TitanHQ’s already extensive cybersecurity offering. The combination of intelligent security awareness training with phishing simulations and TitanHQ’s advanced email protection and DNS security solutions creates a powerful, multi-layered cybersecurity platform that secures end users from compromise. This is the go-to cybersecurity platform for IT Managed Service Providers and internal IT teams.

“This is a fantastic addition to the TitanHQ team and solution portfolio. It allows us to add a human protection layer to our MSP Security platform, with a fantastic feature-rich solution as demonstrated by the high caliber customers using it. Stephen and his team have built a great company over the years, and we are delighted to have them join the exciting TitanHQ journey.” said TitanHQ CEO Ronan Kavanagh.

The solution is available to both new and existing customers and MSP partners at TitanHQ.com and has been re-branded as SafeTitan, Security Awareness Training. Cyber Risk Aware existing clients are unaffected and will benefit from improvements in the platform in terms of phishing simulation content and an exciting, innovative product roadmap.

Stephen Burke, CEO of Cyber Risk Aware, commented: “I am incredibly proud that Cyber Risk Aware has been acquired by TitanHQ, cybersecurity business that I have greatly admired for a long time. Today’s announcement is fantastic news for both our clients and partners. We will jointly bring together a platform of innovative security solutions that address the #1 threat vector used by bad actors that cause 99% of security breaches, “End User Compromise”. When I first started Cyber Risk Aware, my aim was to be the global security awareness leader in delivering the right message, to the right user at the right time. Now as part of TitanHQ, I am more excited than ever about the unique value proposition we bring to market”.

Jeff Benedetti Joins TitanHQ as New VP of Sales – North America

TitanHQ has appointed channel veteran Jeff Benedetti as the company’s new Vice President of Sales – North America.

Jeff Benedetti – TitanHQ VP of Sales, North America

TitanHQ is the leading web filtering, email filtering, and email archiving Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business and already has a strong presence in North America, with the North American operations run from TitanHQ’s U.S. base in Tampa, Florida. TitanHQ has been enjoying strong growth in the region and the new appointment will help to ensure the growth continues over the long term.

Jeff Benedetti has nearly two decades of experience in sales and go-to-market leadership in the technology and security markets. Benedetti joins the TitanHQ Go-to-Market leadership team from SKOUT Cybersecurity, where he led the Sales and Marketing teams. The firm was acquired by Barracuda Networks last summer. Prior to the position at SKOUT Cybersecurity, Benedetti served as the Director of US Sales at Datto where he played a key role in improving partner growth and expansion in the U.S. while Datto achieved unicorn status and an acquisition by Vista Private Equity. Benedetti has also held leadership roles at Apple Inc. and Tech Depot.

“End-user compromise is the #1 threat vector for bad actors and causes 99% of security breaches. As the cyber problem compounds, MSPs continue to be a single resource to secure their customers’ users, networks, and infrastructure,” said Benedetti. “The opportunity to enable our partners with a best-in-class security platform and partner program built for growth is massive.”

TitanHQ has been providing security solutions to business and managed service providers (MSPs) for more than 20 years and now provides email security, DNS security, email archiving, and email encryption services to more than 8,500 businesses worldwide. Among TitanHQ’s customers are more than 2,500 MSPs, which use TitanHQ solutions to protect themselves and their clients from malware, ransomware, botnets, viruses, phishing attacks, and other cyber threats.

TitanHQ has developed its solutions to meet the needs of MSPs, with MSP needs factored into the products at the development stage. The company has grown to become the leading provider of cloud-based email and web cybersecurity solutions for MSPs serving the SMB market, and the company is enjoying continued, strong growth. TitanHQ is looking to continue to build long-term growth and as the IT service provider of choice for MSPs.

“We are thrilled Jeff has joined TitanHQ to further expand our already strong growth in the U.S. market. As a well-respected International sales executive within cybersecurity, Jeff is an important addition to TitanHQ. His decades of expertise will be pivotal in driving growth and will benefit partners and customers as TitanHQ continues to innovate and grow,” said TitanHQ CEO Ronan Kavanagh.

Meet the TitanHQ Team at Zero Trust World 2022

This coming February, some of the world’s brightest cybersecurity professionals will be converging at Threatlocker’s Zero Trust World 2022 in Orlando, Florida. Over the course of the two-and-a-half-day event which runs February 21-23, attendees will be treated to live hacking demonstrations, will be able to take part in hands-on exercises in workshops, and there will be training opportunities and certification labs. The event is very much focused on providing valuable insights into how to become an even more successful MSP and IT professional.

This year, attendees will hear from some of the world’s leading cybersecurity professionals who will be discussing the importance of zero trust in today’s cyber threat landscape and other important cybersecurity topics. They will provide expert advice that can be actioned when attendees return to their jobs to better defend against the full range of cyber threats.

This year, TitanHQ is excited to be attending the event and will be exhibiting and showcasing SpamTitan Email Security, WebTitan DNS filtering, ArcTitan email archiving, and EncryptTitan email encryption.

For the past 20 years, TitanHQ has been providing cloud-based security solutions to SMBs and managed service providers serving the SMB market. Today, more than 12,000 businesses rely on TitanHQ’s security solutions, including more than 2,500 MSPs in 150 countries.

If you are attending the event, be sure to visit the TitanHQ stand to find out more about TitanHQ solutions and to discover how they can make your life easier, protect against cyber threats, and improve the profitability of your business.

If you have not yet booked your place at the event, you can register here.

TitanHQ Placed 33 in 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 List

TitanHQ has been included in the 2021 Deloitte Technology Fast 50 List of the fastest-growing tech companies in Ireland. The Award program has now been running for 22 years and celebrates innovation and entrepreneurship in Ireland’s indigenous technology sector.

Deloitte compiles the list based on percentage revenue growth over the past 4 years, with TitanHQ ranking in position 33 in the list after a long period of sustained growth. That growth continued throughout the COVID-19 pandemic when many businesses have struggled. Not only has the company significantly increased its customer base over the past 4 years, the workforce has also had a major expansion. Between September 2020 and April 2021, TitanHQ’s workforce doubled in size.

As well as impressive organic growth, TitanHQ has benefitted from investment from Livingbridge Investor Group which has allowed the company to continue to recruit the best talent to support its business and invest in product development. As well as making improvements to its existing product portfolio, the company released a new product this month – SpamTitan Plus.

SpamTitan Plus builds on the protection provided by SpamTitan Gateway and SpamTitan Cloud but significantly improves detection of the malicious URLs in emails that are used for phishing and malware distribution. SpamTitan Plus has coverage of all major phishing feeds and has the fastest and best detection rates of malicious URLs than any of the market-leading anti-spam solutions.

“As a result of increased demand globally for our solutions, we have invested heavily in product development and embarked on a recruitment campaign to double our workforce in a program that will allow that growth to continue,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “The quick move to remote working last year has made us all aware of how important it is to be adaptable and have the right security solutions in place to protect users, customers, company data, and systems.”

TitanHQ’s customer base has now increased to more than 12,000 businesses, including over 2,500 managed service providers in 150 countries, with much of TitanHQ’s growth over the past 4 years due to the increase in overseas customers. That growth was also recognized by Deloitte, which awarded TitanHQ runner-up spot in the Scale Up Award. The Scale Up Award recognizes companies that have enjoyed significant overseas growth over the past 4 years.

“Congratulations to all of the companies that ranked this year. This is the first year we have seen the impact the pandemic has had on revenues of Irish tech companies,” said David Shanahan, Partner, Deloitte “It will come as no surprise that many of this year’s winners have achieved accelerated growth and scale as a result of the pandemic and being able to capitalize on the global move to a digital way of life.”

SpamTitan Plus Launched by TitanHQ to Combat Zero-Day Phishing Attacks

Phishing is the number one cybersecurity threat faced by businesses and attacks are becoming highly sophisticated. Phishing is used to obtain sensitive information such as login credentials and for distributing malware and ransomware. 91% of all cyberattacks start with phishing emails.

Many businesses now provide security awareness training for the workforce to raise awareness of the threat from phishing and to teach employees the skills that will allow them to identify and avoid phishing emails, but the click rates in phishing emails remain high. According to Security Affairs, 97% of users fail to identify phishing emails. The reason is phishing emails are now being created that are virtually indistinguishable from genuine communications from trusted sources and phishers are experts at social engineering.

The best defense against phishing is a spam filter – A technical solution that scans all inbound (and outbound) emails and performs a wide range of checks and analyses, all of which must be passed in order for an email to be sent to an inbox. Spam filters scan the message headers and message body for signs of spam and phishing, and attachments are scanned using anti-virus engines that identify known malware variants. Hyperlinks in messages are also checked; however, phishers are constantly developing new techniques for hiding malicious URLs from email security solutions.

TitanHQ’s spam and phishing protection solution – SpamTitan – already provides excellent protection from spam and phishing emails; however, a new product – SpamTitan Plus – has now been launched that significantly improves detection rates. SpamTitan Plus provides advanced phishing protection with better coverage, better phishing link detections, faster detection speed, and also has the lowest false positive rate of any product.

“The overwhelming feedback from our users and customer base has been that phishing attacks are becoming more advanced, proficient, and dangerous. Phishing is the number one problem to solve in the email security community,” said TitanHQ CEO Ronan Kavanagh. “With that in mind, we allocated resources and investment to develop a solution with new, cutting-edge, robust, fast phishing threat intelligence driven by a team of security specialists. We’re very happy with the result – SpamTitan Plus”.

SpamTitan Plus includes leading-edge, AI-driven anti-phishing prevention and incorporates the newest “zero-day” threat intelligence, providing better protection than current market-leading email anti-spam service providers at neutralizing malicious links in emails.

All URLs in emails are inspected to determine if they are malicious and are rewritten, and a time-of-click analysis is performed. This is important as the URLs in phishing emails may not be malicious at the time of delivery and may be weaponized with malware after they have passed email security checks. The time-of-click protection involves several dynamic checks, including a page evaluation to identify spoofed websites and login pages and the following of any redirects. If a user clicks on a malicious URL, instead of being directed to the website they will be sent to a local block page that provides further information.

Independent tests of SpamTitan Plus show:

  • 100% coverage of phishing threats from the current market-leading anti-phishing feeds
  • 5X increase in unique phishing URL threat detection than the current market leaders
  • 6X faster and more rapid phishing detection than the current market leaders

10 million new, previously undiscovered phishing URLs are detected every single day and there is only a 5-minute delay from the initial detection of a malicious URL to protect an end user’s mailbox.

SpamTitan is relied upon by 12,000 customers and 3,000 Managed Service Providers for protecting against spam and phishing emails. They can now choose to significantly improve protection with SpamTitan Plus. For more information about SpamTitan Plus, Give the TitanHQ team a call today.

TitanHQ Recognized as Leading Irish Cybersecurity Company

With the number of cyber threats increasing, it has never been more important for business leaders to ensure their networks and systems are well defended. Throughout the pandemic, companies have been reporting data breaches at an alarming rate, with many of those cyberattacks having a devastating impact on victims.

Look no further than the ransomware attacks on the Irish Department of Health and the Health Service Executive in May 2021. Those attacks saw highly sensitive data stolen, files encrypted, and doctors and nurses were prevented from accessing patient records. The attacks resulted in almost all systems being taken offline, all core services were affected, and many outpatient services had to be canceled. The effects of the cyberattacks were still being felt several months later.

In light of the increased threat of attack and the seriousness of the consequences should an attack succeed, Think Business, Ireland has raised awareness to the importance of improving cybersecurity defenses. To help Irish businesses find the cybersecurity solutions they need, Think Business, Ireland has recently compiled a list of the top 26 Irish-owned businesses that are leading the charge in the fight against cybercrime.

Ireland punches well above its weight when it comes to cybersecurity. Ireland is a top investment location for global cybersecurity players, but there are many homegrown Irish companies that provide truly world-class cybersecurity solutions on the global stage, including software-as-a-service offerings and cloud-based security solutions.

One of those companies is Salthill, Galway-based TitanHQ, which has been included in the list of the country’s top cybersecurity firms. TitanHQ has been in business for 25 years and has won multiple awards for its email security, web filtering, and email archiving solutions and the company has been enjoying impressive growth at a time when many businesses were under incredible strain due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company has ambitious growth plans and has been heavily investing in product development and people, with that investment expected to significantly improve on the 12,000 businesses and 2,500 managed service providers that rely on its solutions to keep cyber threats at bay.

Helped by significant investment from Livingbridge investor group, the company’s growth has been turbocharged. Over the past 18 months, TitanHQ has more than doubled its workforce, which now consists of a rock-solid team of 90+ people. The company has certainly earned its place in Think Business, Ireland’s list of the top 26 Irish cybersecurity companies to watch out for.

“We are delighted to be listed next to some of the biggest names in the Irish Cybersecurity space. As the threat landscape continues to be a significant risk to organizations across the globe, we are dedicated to continuous innovation to provide consistent, secure, and reliable protection to our customers,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanah.

Left to Right: Ronan Kavanagh, CEO, Diane Wright, people operations manager, Sean Morris, chief technical officer, Gina Mc Grath, digital marketing executive, and Dryden Geary, marketing director.

Left to Right: Ronan Kavanagh, CEO, Diane Wright, people operations manager, Sean Morris, chief technical officer, Gina Mc Grath, digital marketing executive, and Dryden Geary, marketing director.

TitanHQ Achieves Clean Sweep at Expert Insights Annual Awards

Expert Insights has announced its Fall 2021 Best-of Cybersecurity Awards and each of TitanHQ’s products was ranked No1 in their respective categories. This is the second successive year where TitanHQ has had a clean sweep and topped the list for Best Email Security Gateway, Best Web Security Solution, and Best Email Archiving Solution for Business. In addition, SpamTitan ranked top in the Best Email Security Solution for Office 365 category.

Expert Insights is a recognized online cybersecurity publication and industry analyst, that has technical and editorial teams in both the United States and United Kingdom. The publication covers cybersecurity and cloud-based technologies, and its website is used by more than 80,000 business owners, IT admins, and others each month to research B2B solutions. Expert Insights produces editorial buyers’ guides, blog posts, conducts interviews, and publishes industry analyses and technical product reviews from industry experts.

The annual awards are intended to recognize the leading cybersecurity companies and their products, with the winners selected based on industry recognition, customer feedback, and research conducted by its editorial team and independent technical analysts.

SpamTitan Email Security and WebTitan Web Security were both recognized for their powerful threat protection, and along with ArcTitan Email Archiving, were praised for ease-of-use, cost-effectiveness, and industry-leading technical and customer support.

“TitanHQ are proud to have received continued recognition for all three of our advanced cybersecurity solutions. As the threat landscape continues to be a significant risk to organizations across the globe, we are dedicated to continuous innovation to provide consistent, secure, and reliable protection to our customers,” said Ronan Kavanagh, TitanHQ CEO.

The advanced threat protection, ease-of-use, and cost-effectiveness of the solutions are part of the reason why TitanHQ is the leading provider of cloud-based security solutions for managed service providers serving the SMB market. These factors have helped to make the solutions the gold standard for SMBs looking to improve security and ensure compliance.

5 Ways to Protect Against Healthcare Phishing Attacks

The healthcare industry has long been targeted by cybercriminals looking to gain access to sensitive patient data, which is easy to sell on the black market to fraudsters such as identity thieves. In recent years hackers have turned to ransomware. They gain access to healthcare networks and encrypt data to prevent patient information being accessed and issue a ransom demand to the keys to decrypt files. Since the start of 2020, these two goals have been combined. Hackers have been gaining access to healthcare networks, then exfiltrate data prior to deploying ransomware. If the ransom is not paid, the data is leaked online or sold on. Patient data may even be sold even if the ransom is paid.

Both of these attack types can be achieved using phishing. Phishing allows threat actors to steal credentials and raid email accounts and use the credentials for more extensive attacks on the organization. Phishing emails can also trick healthcare employees into downloading malware that gives attackers persistent access to the network.

Protecting against phishing attacks is one of the most important ways to prevent data breaches and stop ransomware attacks, but there is no single measure that can be implemented that will provide total protection. Here we explain 5 steps that healthcare organizations should take to protect against healthcare phishing attacks. These include measures required by the HIPAA Security Rule so can help to ensure you achieve and maintain compliance.

5 Measures to Protect Against Healthcare Phishing Attacks

Each of the measures we have listed below is important and will work with the others to significantly improve your security posture; however, the first measure is the most important of all as it will stop the majority of phishing emails from being delivered to employee inboxes.

Spam Filtering

To achieve Security Rule compliance, HIPAA regulated entities must implement technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of electronic protected health information. A ant-spam service is one of the most important technical safeguards to protect against email-based attacks such as phishing. Spam filters will generally block in excess of 99% of spam and phishing emails and 100% of known malware.

Any inbound email must pass through the spam filter where it will be subjected to a variety of checks. These include antivirus scanning to block malware, checks against blacklists of known malicious IP and email addresses, and frameworks such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to identify and block email impersonation attacks. Advanced spam filters such as SpamTitan include additional malware protection through the use of a sandbox. Email attachments are executed in this safe environment and are checked for potentially malicious actions. This measure helps to identify previously unknown malware and ransomware variants.

SpamTitan also uses techniques such as Bayesian analysis to determine the probability of an email being spam or malicious. Greylisting is also used, which involves the initial rejection of a message with a request to resend. Spam servers do not tend to respond to these requests, so the lack of response or delay is a good indicator of spam.

SpamTitan also incorporates machine learning techniques, ensuring spam filtering improves over times. Thresholds can also be set for individual users, user groups, departments, and organization-wide, to give the greatest protection to accounts that are most likely to be targeted.

2-Factor or Multi-Factor Authentication

2-factor or multi-factor authentication is another technical safeguard to protect against phishing attacks. 2FA/MFA blocks the next stage of a phishing attack, where credentials for an account have already been obtained by an attacker, either through phishing, brute force attacks or other methods.

In addition to a password, a second factor must be provided before an individual is authenticated. This is often a token on a verified device. When an attempt is made to use a password to access the account from an unfamiliar device, location, or IP address, another factor must be provided before access is granted. This is typically a code sent to a mobile phone. 2-factor authentication will block more than 99.9% of automated attempts to gain access to an account according to Microsoft.

Security Awareness Training

Security awareness training is concerned with educating the workforce about threats such as phishing and teaching them how to recognize and avoid those threats. In security awareness training, employees are taught how to identify phishing emails and social engineering scams and are taught cybersecurity best practices to eradicate risky behaviors. Employees are targeted by phishers and not all phishing emails will be blocked by a spam filter. By training the workforce, and providing regular refresher training sessions, employees will get better at identifying and avoiding threats.

The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights explained in guidance for the healthcare industry that teaching employees how to recognize phishing is part of the requirements for HIPAA compliance. Financial penalties have been imposed for organizations that have not provided security awareness training to the workforce.

Conduct Phishing Email Simulations

Training for the workforce will raise awareness of threats, but it is important to test whether training has been assimilated and if it is being applied in real world situations. By setting up a phishing simulation program, security teams will be able to gauge how effective training has been. A failed phishing simulation can be turned into a training opportunity, and employees who regularly fail phishing email simulations can be provided with further training.

Phishing email simulation programs use real-world phishing examples on employees to see how good they are at identifying phishing emails. They can be used to gain an understanding of the types of phishing emails that are being opened and which links are being clicked. This information can be used to improve security awareness training programs.

Sign Up to Receive Threat Intelligence

Another important step to take to protect against phishing attacks is to stay up to date on the latest threats. The tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP) of hackers and phishers is constantly evolving, and being aware of the latest TTPs will help healthcare organizations mitigate the threats.

Stay up to date by reading the threat alerts published by agencies such as CISA, the FBI, NSA, and HC3, and consider signing up an information sharing and analysis center to receive timely cyber threat intelligence updates. Knowing about new phishing campaigns targeting the sector will allow steps to be taken to block those threats, whether that is a cybersecurity newsletter for staff, implementing new spam filter rules, or other proactive steps to reduce risk.

SpamTitan 7.11 Release Includes New Geo-blocking Email Security Feature

TitanHQ has released a new version of its award-winning email security solution that includes a new security feature – Geo-blocking email filtering, as well as several other security updates and fixes to improve usability.

Geo-blocking is a feature that has been requested by customers and has now been included in the product at no additional cost to users. Geo-blocking, as the name suggests, allows SpamTitan users to block or allow emails originating from certain geographical locations, based on either IP address or country. This feature allows businesses to add an extra layer of protection to block geographic threat vectors and stop malware, ransomware, and phishing emails from reaching inboxes.

The new feature allows businesses and organizations to block emails coming from any country. This extra control is important, as most malware-containing emails come from a handful of overseas countries – Countries that most small- to medium-sized businesses do not normally work with. Blocking emails from those countries eliminates threats, without negatively impacting the business.

Activating the geo-blocking feature could not be any easier. SpamTitan users can click to restrict emails from any country in the SpamTitan Country IP Database and all emails coming from those countries will be blocked. There will naturally be instances where things are not so cut and dry, but that is not a problem. Geo-blocking can be activated for a specific country, and IP addresses, domains, or email addresses of trusted senders within those countries can simply be whitelisted to ensure their messages are delivered.

“Geoblocking has been a much-requested feature and as always we listen to our customers and provide what they need to implement the very best email security they can,” said TitanHQ CEO Ronan Kavanagh. “After experiencing 30% growth in 2021, TitanHQ expects these product enhancements and new features to make 2021 another record-breaking year.”

Several other security enhancements have been made to further improve the already excellent threat detection and blocking mechanisms within SpamTitan. SpamTitan 7.11 includes an upgraded email sandboxing feature to provide even greater protection against malware, ransomware, phishing, spear-phishing, Advanced Persistent Threats, and malicious URLs embedded in emails. These enhancements also provide more detailed information about new threats to help SpamTitan users mitigate risk.

As always with a new release, recently reported bugs have been fixed, and SpamTitan has been further improved with enhanced email rendering in Mail Viewer. Users also now have the ability to remove quarantine report token expiry and improve domain verification, to name but a few of the enhancements.

SpamTitan is delivered either as a 100% cloud-based solution or as an anti-spam gateway, which is run as a virtual appliance on existing hardware. Existing SpamTitan Cloud customers need to do nothing to upgrade to the new version of the solution, released on September 14, 2021. SpamTitan Cloud is automatically updated to the latest version.

Users of SpamTitan Gateway will need to manually upgrade to the latest version via System Setup > System Updates.

How Can MSPs Make Office 365 More Profitable?

Reselling Office 365 doesn’t offer much in the way of profit for MSPs, although there are benefits for MSPs that come from offering Office 365 and it is possible to make Office 365 more profitable.

Before explaining where the margin is for MSPs in Office 365, let’s first take a look at the benefits for MSPs from offering Office 365.

Benefits for MSPs from Offering Office 365 to Clients

SMBs are increasingly moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud and Office 365 is one of the most popular cloud services. Office 365 now has more than 135 million commercial monthly users and that number is growing rapidly.

MSPs may not be able to make much from Office 365 alone, but by providing Office 365 MSPs can win more business and gain a competitive advantage. There is no outlay involved with offering Office 365 to clients, the product is great and meets clients’ needs, and money can be made from handling Office 365 migrations.

MSPs can also benefit from migrating existing clients from Exchange or SBS Exchange to Office 365. Office 365 is far easier to manage so they stand to save a great deal of time on troubleshooting and maintenance, which can be a major headache with Exchange.

By offering Office 365 you can win more business, reduce operational costs, and stay competitive. However, the best way to make money from Office 365 is through add-on services.

How MSPs Can Make Office 365 More Profitable

The margins for MSPs on Office 365 are rather thin to say the least. Many MSPs find that offering Office 365 on its own doesn’t provide any profit at all. Charging extra per license to improve profitability is an option, but clients could just go direct to avoid the extra cost.

The margins may be small, but managing Office 365 does not require a great deal of effort. You may only make around 50c or $1 per user but sign up enough clients and you could get a reasonable return. There is an opportunity for profit at scale; however, to make a decent return you need to sell services around Office 365.

One of the best ways to make Office 365 more profitable is by offering additional security services. Security is an area where Office 365 can be significantly improved, especially spam filtering. Microsoft has incorporated a spam filter and anti-phishing protections into Office 365, but they fall short of the protection offered by a dedicated third-party spam filter.

Phishing is the number one security threat faced by businesses and Office 365 anti-phishing protections leave a lot to be desired. By offering enhanced spam and phishing protection through a third-party spam filter, not only can MSPs make a decent margin on the add-on solution, by blocking phishing attacks and malware at source, a considerable amount of time can be saved on support. Offering spam filtering can help to generate additional recurring revenue, with SpamTitan provided as a high margin, subscription based SaaS solution.

There are plenty of other opportunities for selling third-party solutions to make up for the lack of options in Office 365. Email archiving is an easy sell and a quick win for MSPs. An email archive is important for compliance and security, saves on storage space, and improves efficiency, and gives clients access to emails from any location. Email archiving is available with office 365, but the solution has some severe drawbacks, and may not meet compliance requirements. Offering a feature-rich email archiving solution that is fully compliant, easy to use, with lightning fast search and retrieval should be an easy sell to Office 365 users.

Spam filtering, email archiving, web filtering, and encryption can be bundled together as an enhanced security package, with each element providing a decent return for MSPs. Given the cost of mitigating a data breach, by preventing breaches, an enhanced security offering will pay for itself and should not be too difficult to sell to Office 365 users.

Office 365 MSP Add-ons from TitanHQ

For more than 20 years TitanHQ has been developing innovative security solutions for businesses. Today, more than 7,500 businesses are protected by TitanHQ security solutions and more than 2,000 MSPs have signed up to the TitanHQ Alliance Program.

All TitanHQ solutions have been developed from the ground to meet the needs of the SMB marketplace and MSPs. TitanHQ’s spam filtering solution – SpamTitan, email archiving solution – ArcTitan, and web filtering solution – WebTitan, save MSPs support and engineering time, have great margins, and can be easily integrated into MSPs security stacks to make Office 365 more profitable. All TitanHQ solutions are quick and easy to deploy, and can be implemented into your existing Service Stack through API’s and RMM integrations. The MSP-client hierarchy enables you to keep clients separated and choose whether to manage client settings in bulk or on an individual basis. MSPs benefit from competitive pricing strategies, including monthly billing as we understand your clients are billed monthly.

There are multiple hosting options, including hosting the solution within your own data center, and all TitanHQ products can be supplied as a white label, ready to take your own branding. We have made our solutions as easy as possible to use, with intuitive controls and everything placed at your fingertips. However, should you ever have a problem, you will benefit from the best customer service in the industry, as well as scalable pre-sales and technical support and sales & technical training.

Why SpamTitan is Perfect for MSP’s?

  • The best spam and virus protection for MSPs with dual AV engines and Bitdefender-powered sandboxing
  • Low management overhead – A set and forget solution
  • Use our private cloud or your own data center
  • Extensive suite of APIs for integration into your central management system
  • Multi-tenant solution with multiple management roles
  • Scalable to thousands of users
  • In and outbound email scanning with IP domain protection
  • Extensive drill down reporting
  • Flexible pricing models to suit your needs, including monthly billing
  • Generous margins for MSPs
  • Fully customizable branding

TitanSHIELD Program for MSPs

To make it as easy as possible for MSPs to incorporate our world class network security solutions into their service stacks, TitanHQ developed the TitanSHIELD program. The TitanShield MSP Program allows MSPs to take advantage of TitanHQ’s proven technology so that they can sell, implement and deliver our advanced network security solutions directly to their client base. Under the TitanSHIELD program you get the following benefits:

TitanSHIELD Benefits

Sales Enablement

Marketing

Partner Support Private or Public Cloud deployment Access to the Partner Portal
Dedicated Account Manager White Label or Co-branding Co-Branded Evaluation Site
Assigned Sales Engineer Support API integration Social Network participation
Access to Global Partner Program Hotline Free 30-day evaluations Joint PR
Access to Partner Knowledge Base Product Discounts Joint White Papers
Technical Support Competitive upgrades Partner Events and Conferences
24/7 Priority Technical Support Tiered Deal Registration TitanHQ Newsletter
5 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST) Technical Support Renewal Protection Better Together Webinars
Online Technical Training and FAQs Advanced Product Information Partner Certificate – Sales and technical
Access to Partner Technical Knowledge Base Competitive Information and Research Sales Campaigns in a box
Not-for-Resale (NFR) Key Public Relations Program and Customer Testimonials
Product Brochures and Sales Tools TitanHQ Corporate Style Guide and Logo Usage
Partner Advisory Council Eligibility TitanHQ Partner Welcome Kit
QTRLY Business Planning and Review Access to TitanHQ’s MVP Rewards Program
Access to Partner Support

To find out more about TitanHQ’s MSP offerings, for details of pricing and MSP margins, contact the TitanHQ Alliance Program team today and take the first step toward making Office 365 more profitable.

TitanHQ Launches WebTitan OTG (on-the-go) for Chromebooks with Latest WebTitan Cloud Release

TitanHQ has announced the release of a new version of WebTitan Cloud that includes new security features, easier administration, and the introduction of WebTitan OTG (on-the-go) for Chromebooks for the education sector.

One of the main changes introduced with WebTitan Cloud version 4.16 is the addition of DNS Proxy 2.06, which supports filtering of users in Azure Active Directory. This is in addition to on-premise AD and directory integration for Active Directory. The support for Azure Active Directory will make it easier for customers to enjoy the benefits of WebTitan Cloud, while making management easier and less time-consuming. Support for further directory services will be added with future releases to meet the needs of customers.

Current WebTitan customers do not need to do anything to upgrade to the latest version of WebTitan, as updates to WebTitan Cloud are handled by TitanHQ and users will be upgraded to the latest version automatically to ensure they benefit from improved security, the latest fixes, and new functionality.

The latest WebTitan Cloud release has allowed TitanHQ to introduce a new solution specifically to meet the needs of clients in the education sector – WebTitan OTG (on-the-go) for Chromebooks.

The use of Chromebooks has grown significantly over the past year, which corresponds with an increase in student online activity. WebTitan OTG for Chromebooks allows IT professionals in the education sector to ensure compliance with federal and state laws, including the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), and ensure students can use their Chromebooks safely and securely.

WebTitan OTG for Chromebooks is a DNS-based web filtering solution that requires no proxies, VPNs or any additional hardware and since the solution is DNS-based, there is no impact on Internet speed. Once implemented, filtering controls can be set for all Chromebook users, no matter where they connect to the Internet. The controls will be in place in the classroom and at home and all locations in between.

Administrators can easily apply filtering controls for all students, different groups of students, and staff members, including enforcing Safe Search. The solution will block access to age-inappropriate content, phishing web pages, malicious websites used for distributing malware, and any category of website administrators wish to block. Chromebooks can also easily be locked down to prevent anyone bypassing the filtering controls set by the administrator.

WebTitan OTG for Chromebooks delivers fast and effective user- and device-level web filtering and empowers students to discover the Internet in a safe and secure fashion. Reports can be generated on demand or scheduled which provide information on Chromebook user locations, the content that has been accessed, and any attempts to bypass filtering, with real-time views of Internet access also possible.

“This new release comes after an expansive first quarter. The launch of WebTitan Cloud 4.16 brings phenomenal new security features to our customers,” Said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “After experiencing significant growth in 2020, TitanHQ expects these product enhancements and new features to make 2021 another record-breaking year.”

Strong Growth Sees TitanHQ Almost Double Workforce in 6 Months

It has been an exceptionally busy year for TitanHQ with global demand for TitanHQ solutions has skyrocketing. Enterprises, SMBs and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have been turning to TitanHQ to provide the security they need to protect their now largely distributed workforces from email and web-based attacks during the pandemic and block malware, ransomware, phishing attacks and other growing threats.

TitanHQ’s email security solution – SpamTitan; web security solution – WebTitan; and email archiving solution – ArcTitan, have now been adopted by more than 12,000 businesses worldwide, including more than 2,500 MSPs, with customers including well-known names such as Pepsi, Virgin, T-Mobile, O2, Nokia, Datto, Viasat, and Purple.

The past year has seen tremendous organic year-on-year growth and during the pandemic the company received significant investment from the Livingbridge investor group, which has really helped turbocharge company growth with significant investment in product development.

While many businesses have been forced to contract during the pandemic, business has gone from strength to strength for TitanHQ, as can clearly be seen from the huge investment in people. TitanHQ has embarked upon a major recruitment drive that has seen the TitanHQ workforce almost double since September 2020, with many of the new members of the workforce widely distributed and working remotely.

“As a result of increased demand globally for our solutions, we have invested heavily and embarked on a recruitment campaign to double our workforce in a programme that will allow that growth to continue,” said TitanHQ CEO, Ronan Kavanagh. “We have also invested because while we believe remote working is a by-product of the current pandemic, it is very much going to be the mode of future work. The quick move to remote working last year has made us all aware of how important it is to be adaptable and have the right security solutions in place to protect users, customers, company data, and systems.”

The ambitious growth plans are sent to continue, with new roles created across many departments including sales, technical support, software development, and marketing, with the expanded workforce helping the company to achieve even greater heights and reach even more clients internationally.

If you want to join the growing team at TitanHQ and become a member of an innovative and growing workforce, positions are still available.

Pysa Ransomware Gang Targeting Education Sector

Throughout 2020 the healthcare sector has been a major target of ransomware gangs, but the education sector is also facing an increase in attacks, with the Pysa (Mespinoza) ransomware gang now targeting the education sector.

Pysa ransomware is a variant of Mespinoza ransomware that was first observed being used in attacks in October 2019. The threat group behind the attacks, like many other ransomware threat groups, uses double extortion tactics on victims. Files are encrypted and a ransom demand is issued for the keys to decrypt files, but to increase the probability of the ransom being paid, data is exfiltrated prior to file encryption. The gang threatens to monetize the stolen data on the darkweb if the ransom is not paid. Many attacked entities have been forced to pay the ransom demand even when they have backups to prevent the sale of their data.

Since October 2019, the Pysa ransomware gang has targeted large companies, the healthcare sector, and local government agencies, but there has been a recent increase in attacks on the education sector. Attacks have been conducted on K12 schools, higher education institutions, and seminaries, with attacks occurring in 12 U.S. states and the United Kingdom. The rise in attacks prompted the FBI to issue a Flash Alert in March 2020 warning the education sector about the increased risk of attack.

Analyses of attacks revealed the gang conducts network reconnaissance using open source tools such as Advanced Port Scanner and Advanced IP Scanner. Tools such as PowerShell Empire, Koadic, and Mimikatz are used to obtain credentials, escalate privileges, and move laterally within networks. The gang identifies and exfiltrates sensitive data before delivering and executing the ransomware payload. The types of data stolen are those that can be used to pressure victims into paying and can easily be monetized on the darkweb.

Identifying a Pysa ransomware attack in progress is challenging, so it is essential for defenses to be hardened to prevent initial access. Several methods have been used to gain access to networks, although in many cases it is unclear how the attack started. In attacks on French companies and government agencies brute force tactics were used against management consoles and exposed Active Directory accounts. Some attacks have involved exploitation of Remote Desktop Protocol vulnerabilities, with the gang is also known to use spam and phishing emails to obtain credentials to get a foothold in networks.

Since several methods are used for gaining access, there is no single solution that can be implemented to block attacks. Educational institutions need to use a combination of security solutions and cybersecurity best practices to harden their defenses.

Antivirus/antimalware solution is a must, as is ensuring it is kept up to date. Since many attacks start with a phishing email, an advanced email security gateway is also important. Choosing a solution such as SpamTitan that incorporates dual AV engines and email sandboxing will maximize the chance of detecting malicious emails. SpamTitan also incorporates machine learning methods to identify new methods of email attacks.

End user training is also important to teach staff how to identify potentially malicious emails and train them on cybersecurity best practices such as setting strong passwords, not reusing passwords, and the dangers of using public Wi-Fi networks. Also consider disabling hyperlinks in emails, flagging emails that arrive from external sources, and implementing multi-factor authentication on accounts.

Patches and security updates should be implemented promptly after they have been released to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited. You should use the rule of least privilege for accounts, restrict the use of administrative accounts as far as possible, and segment networks to limit the potential for lateral movement. You should also be scanning your network for suspicious activity and configure alerts to allow any potential infiltration to be rapidly identified. All unused RDP ports should be closed, and a VPN used for remote access.

It is essential for backups to be made of all critical data to ensure that file recovery is possible without paying the ransom. Multiple backups of data should be created, those backups should be tested to make sure file recovery is possible, and at least one copy should be stored securely on an air-gapped device.

TitanHQ Wins 3 Experts Insights’ 2021 Best-Of Awards

TitanHQ has been recognized for its email security, web security, and email archiving solutions, collecting not one, not two, but three prestigious awards from Expert Insights.

Expert Insights was launched in 2018 to help businesses find cybersecurity solutions to protect their networks and devices from an ever-increasing number of cyber threats. Researching cybersecurity solutions can be a time-consuming process, and the insights and information provided by Expert Insights considerably shortens that process. Unlike many resources highlighting the best software solutions, Expert Insights includes ratings from verified users of the products to give users of the resource valuable insights about how easy products are to use and how effective they are at blocking threats. Expert Insights has helped more than 100,000 businesses choose cybersecurity solutions and the website is visited by more than 40,000 individuals a month.

Each year, Expert Insights recognizes the best and most innovative cybersecurity solutions on the market in its “Best-Of” Awards. The editorial team at Expert Insights assesses vendors and their products on a range of criteria, including technical features, ease-of-use, market presence, and reviews by verified users of the solutions. Each product is assessed by technology experts to determine the winners in a broad range of categories, including cloud, email, endpoint, web, identity, and backup security.

“2020 was an unprecedented year of cybersecurity challenges, with a rapid rise in remote working causing a massive acceleration in cybercrime,” said Craig MacAlpine, CEO and Founder, Expert Insights. “Expert Insights’ Best-Of awards are designed to recognize innovative cybersecurity providers like TitanHQ that have developed powerful solutions to keep businesses safe against increasingly sophisticated cybercrime.”

Three TitanHQ cybersecurity solutions were selected and named winners in the Expert Insights’ 2021 “Best-Of” Awards in the Email Security Gateway, Web Security, and Email Archiving categories. SpamTitan was named winner in the Email Security Gateway category, WebTitan won in the Web Security category, and ArcTitan was named a winner in the Email Archiving category. SpamTitan and WebTitan were praised for the level of protection provided, while being among the easiest to use and most cost-effective solutions in their respective categories.

All three products are consistently praised for the level of protection provided and are a bit hit with enterprises, SMBs, and MSPs.  The solutions attract many 5-star reviews from real users on the Expert Insights site and many other review sites, including Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice, Google Reviews, and G2 Crowd.  The cybersecurity solutions are now used by more than 8,500 businesses and over 2,500 MSPs.

“The recent pandemic and the growth of remote working initiatives have further highlighted the need for multiple layers of cybersecurity and our award-winning solutions form key pillars in this security strategy,” said Ronan Kavanagh, CEO, TitanHQ. “We will continue to innovate and provide solutions that MSPs can use to deliver a consistent, secure and reliable experience to their customers.”

Coordinated Law Enforcement Effort Takes Down Emotet Botnet

The notorious Emotet botnet, which has been used in extensive attacks on companies around the globe for many years, has been taken down as part of a coordinated effort by Europol, the FBI, the UK National Crime Agency, and other law enforcement agencies.

The threat actors behind Emotet used their malware to create a backdoor in the systems of many companies, with access then sold to other threat groups to conduct further malicious activities including stealing sensitive data and extortion through the deployment of ransomware.

The operation has been planned for around two years and was coordinated to ensure that the multi-country infrastructure was simultaneously taken down to disrupt any attempts by the threat group to reconstruct the network. Law enforcement agencies have seized control of hundreds of servers and have taken control of the entire Emotet infrastructure, in what will be seen by many to be the most important malware takedowns to date. The takedown has prevented the Emotet gang from communicating with the malware and has resulted in the loss of control of the army of compromised devices that make up the botnet.

Europol and its partners succeeded in mapping the entire infrastructure, took control of the network, and deactivated the Emotet Trojan. A software update was placed on the main servers used to control the malware, two of which were located in the Netherlands. Infected computer systems will retrieve the update, which will see Emotet Trojan on those systems quarantined.

The Most Dangerous Malware and Most Prolific Botnet

Emotet is arguably the most dangerous malware of recent years and the botnet used to distribute it is one of the most prolific. Around 30% of all malware attacks in 2020 involved the Emotet Trojan.

Phishing emails were used to deliver the Emotet Trojan. Massive phishing campaigns were conducted using a wide range of lures to trick recipients into opening malicious attachments or visiting websites that downloaded the Emotet Trojan. The lures used in the campaigns frequently changed, taking advantage of world events to maximize the probability of the attachments being opened.

Emotet started life as a banking Trojan but was later developed to also serve as a malware dropper. Emotet delivered other banking Trojans such as TrickBot as the secondary malware payload, and ransomware variants such as Ryuk – each of which were dangerous in their own right.

Devices infected with Emotet are added to the botnet and used to distribute copies of the Emotet Trojan to other devices on the network and the user’s contacts by hijacking the user’s email account. A single device on a corporate network that was infected with Emotet could quickly result in widespread infection. The Trojan was also particularly difficult to eradicate, as removal of the infection would only be temporary, with other devices on the network simply re-infecting the cleaned device.

In the leadup to the 2020 Presidential election in the United States, Microsoft and its partners succeeded in seizing control of some of the infrastructure used to control and distribute the TrickBot Trojan. In that case the operation was only temporarily successful, as the TrickBot gang was able to rapidly recover and restore its infrastructure.

Time will tell as to how successful the Emotet takedown has been and whether the operation has only temporarily disrupted the activities of the Emotet gang or whether the takedown has left it completely crippled.

Easy to Implement Anti-Phishing Solutions for MSPs

To protect their clients from phishing attacks, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) need to provide a comprehensive range of cybersecurity solutions. This post explores the risks from phishing and suggests some easy to implement anti-phishing solutions for MSPs to add to their security offerings.

Phishing is the Number One Cyber Threat Faced by SMBs

Phishing is the number one cyber threat faced by businesses and one of the hardest to defend against. All it takes is for an employee to respond to a single phishing email for a costly data breach to occur. The consequences for the company can be severe.

Email accounts contain a wide range of sensitive information. A phishing attack on a UnityPoint Health hospital in Des Moines, IA, in 2018 saw the protected health information of 1.4 million patients compromised.  Also in 2018, a phishing attack on the Boys Town National Research Hospital saw one account compromised that contained the information of more than 105,300 patients. Phishing emails are also used to introduce malware and ransomware. These attacks can be even more damaging and costly to mitigate.

The healthcare industry is extensively targeted by phishers due to the high value of healthcare data, although all industry sectors are at risk. In response to the high number of cyberattacks and the current threat levels, the Trump administration recently launched the “Know the Risk, Raise your Shield” campaign. The campaign aims to raise awareness of the threat from phishing and other attack methods and encourage private businesses to do more to improve their defenses.

Phishing will continue to be a major threat to businesses for the foreseeable future. Attacks will continue because they require relatively little skill to conduct, phishing is highly effective, and attacks can be extremely lucrative.

Easy to Implement Anti-Phishing Solutions for MSPs

There is no single solution that will provide total protection against phishing attacks. Businesses need layered defenses, which provides an opportunity for MSPs. SMBs can struggle to implement effective defenses against phishing on their own and look to MSPs for assistance.

MSPs that can provide a comprehensive anti-phishing package will be able to protect their clients, prevent costly phishing attacks, and generate more business. Effective anti-phishing controls are also an easy sell. Given the cost of mitigating attacks, the package is likely to pay for itself. But what solutions should be included in MSPs anti-phishing offerings?

Listed below are three easy-to-implement anti-phishing solutions for MSPs to offer to their clients, either individually or part of an anti-phishing security package.

Advanced Spam Filtering

Advanced spam filtering solutions are essential. They block phishing emails on the server before they can be delivered to inboxes or employees’ spam folders. An advanced spam filter will block in excess of 99.9% of spam and malicious emails and by itself, is the single most important solution to implement.

SpamTitan is an ideal anti-phishing solution for MSPs. This cloud-based solution supports an unlimited number of domains, all of which can be protected through an easy to use interface. The solution supports per domain administrators, with each able to implement elements of their own email such as searches and the release of messages from the quarantine folder. Reports can be generated per domain and those reports can be scheduled and automatically sent to clients. The solution can be fully rebranded to take an MSP logo and color scheme, and the solution can be hosted in TitanHQ’s private cloud or within your own data center.

Security Awareness Training and Testing

While the majority of malicious emails will be blocked at source, a very small percentage may slip through the net. It is therefore essential for employees to be aware of the risks from phishing and to have the skills to identify potential phishing emails. MSPs can help their clients by providing a staff training program. Many security awareness training companies offer MSP programs to help manage training for clients and a platform to conduct phishing simulation exercises to test security awareness.

DNS-Based Web Filtering

Even with training, some employees may be fooled by phishing emails. This is to be expected, since many phishing campaigns use messages which are highly realistic and virtually indistinguishable from genuine emails. Spam filters will block malicious attachments, but a web filter offers protection from malicious hyperlinks that direct users to phishing websites.

A DNS-based web filter blocks attempts by employees to access phishing websites at the DNS-level, before any content is downloaded. When an employee clicks on a phishing email, they will be directed to a block screen rather than the phishing website. Being DNS-based, web filters are easy to implement and no appliances are required.

WebTitan is an ideal web filtering solution for MSPs. WebTitan can be configured in just a couple of minutes and can protect all clients from web-based phishing attacks, with the solution managed and controlled through a single easy-to-use interface. Reports can be automatically scheduled and sent to clients, and the solution is available in full white-label form ready for MSPs branding. A choice of hosting solutions is also offered, and the solution can connect with deployment, billing and management tools through APIs.

Key Product Features of SpamTitan and WebTitan for MSPs

  • Easy to manage: There is a low management overhead. SpamTitan and WebTitan are set and forget solution. We handle all the updates and are constantly protecting against new threats globally, in real-time.
  • Scalability: Regardless of your size you can deploy the solution within minutes. SpamTitan and WebTitan are scalable to thousands of users.
  • Extensive API: MSPs provided with API integration to provision customers through their own centralized management system; a growth-enabling licensing program, with usage-based pricing and monthly billing.
  • Hosting Options: SpamTitan and WebTitan can be deployed as a cloud based service hosted in the TitanHQ cloud, as a dedicated private cloud, or in the service provider’s own data center.
  • Extensive drill down reporting: Integration with Active Directory allows detailed end user reporting. Comprehensive reports can be created on demand or via the scheduled reporting options.
  • Support: World class support – we are renowned for our focus on supporting customers.
  • Tried & Tested: TitanHQ solutions are used by over 1500 Managed Service Providers worldwide.
  • Rebrandable: Rebrand the platform with your corporate logo and corporate colors to reinforce your brand or to resell it as a hosted service.

TitanSHIELD Program for MSPs

To make it as easy as possible for MSPs to incorporate our world class network security solutions into their service stacks, TitanHQ developed the TitanSHIELD program. The TitanShield MSP Program allows MSPs to take advantage of TitanHQ’s proven technology so that they can sell, implement and deliver our advanced network security solutions directly to their client base. Under the TitanSHIELD program you get the following benefits:

TitanSHIELD Benefits

Sales Enablement

 

Marketing

Partner Support Private or Public Cloud deployment Access to the Partner Portal
Dedicated Account Manager White Label or Co-branding Co-Branded Evaluation Site
Assigned Sales Engineer Support API integration Social Network participation
Access to Global Partner Program Hotline Free 30-day evaluations Joint PR
Access to Partner Knowledge Base Product Discounts Joint White Papers
Technical Support Competitive upgrades Partner Events and Conferences
24/7 Priority Technical Support Tiered Deal Registration TitanHQ Newsletter
5 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST) Technical Support Renewal Protection Better Together Webinars
Online Technical Training and FAQs Advanced Product Information Partner Certificate – Sales and technical
Access to Partner Technical Knowledge Base Competitive Information and Research Sales Campaigns in a box
  Not-for-Resale (NFR) Key Public Relations Program and Customer Testimonials
  Product Brochures and Sales Tools TitanHQ Corporate Style Guide and Logo Usage
  Partner Advisory Council Eligibility TitanHQ Partner Welcome Kit
  QTRLY Business Planning and Review Access to TitanHQ’s MVP Rewards Program
  Access to Partner Support  

For further information on TitanHQ’s anti-phishing solutions for MSPs, contact the TitanHQ team today and enquire about joining the TitanSHIELD program.

 

Combating Healthcare Phishing Attacks: Tips for Healthcare Organizations

The healthcare industry is one of the main targets for hackers, and while ransomware attacks have increased considerably in recent months and vulnerabilities in VPNs, RDP, and software solutions are frequently exploited, healthcare phishing attacks are far more common.

Phishing attacks on healthcare organizations allow threat actors to steal credentials to gain access to email accounts and other systems and steal highly sensitive data. Phishing emails are also used to deliver malware loaders such as the Emotet Trojan, which delivers other malware payloads such as the TrickBot banking Trojan, which in turn delivers ransomware.

Most cyberattacks start with a phishing email, so it is essential for healthcare organizations to ensure they implement safeguards to block these attacks and by doing so, prevent costly data breaches and regulatory fines.

The HHS’ Office for Civil Rights has imposed substantial fines on HIPAA-covered entities for data breaches that have started with a phishing email, including the two largest ever HIPAA fines issued to date – the $16 million financial penalty for Anthem Inc. for its 78.8 million-record data breach and the $6,850,000 penalty for Premera Blue Cross for its breach of the protected health information 10,466,692 individuals.

Tips to Prevent Healthcare Phishing Attacks…

Unfortunately, as far as phishing goes, there is no silver bullet. No single solution will provide total protection against healthcare phishing attacks. What is required is layered defenses – technical solutions providing overlapping layers of security – and adherence to tried and tested cybersecurity best practices. Some of the most important anti-phishing measures you can implemented to stop healthcare phishing attacks are detailed below:

Implement an Advanced Spam Filter

A spam filter is one of the most important technical controls to block phishing attacks and prevent malicious emails from reaching the inboxes of your employees. Advanced spam filters use a combination of blacklists of known malicious IPs, email header and content scanning, link analysis, anti-virus scans, sandboxing, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to detect and block email impersonation attacks, and AI and machine learning to identify zero-day phishing attacks.

You should implement an advanced spam filter and set rules to filter out all suspicious emails and reject malicious messages. Outbound scanning is also important to detect compromised email accounts that are being used to conduct further phishing attacks on your organization and vendors.

Use a Web Filter to Block the Web-Based Component of Phishing Attacks

Email filters are effective, but not infallible. New tactics, techniques, and procedures are commonly developed by threat actors to fool email security solutions. You may be able to block all malware and 99.9% or more of all malicious messages, but some messages are likely to sneak past your defenses.

A web filter provided additional protection by preventing your employees from visiting known malicious URLs that have been masked in phishing emails. Web filters block the web-based component of phishing attacks and malware downloads from the internet and work in tandem with spam filters to improve your security posture and block healthcare phishing attacks.

Implement Multi-Factor Authentication

A SANS Institute report suggests multi-factor authentication will block 99% of attempts by threat actors to use stolen credentials to remotely access email accounts, while Microsoft says MFA will stop more than 99.9% of email account attacks, yet many admins have not implemented multi-factor authentication. A recent survey by CoreView researchers suggests 78% of Microsoft 365 admins have not enabled MFA on their M365 accounts.

In the event of credentials being stolen – in a phishing attack or using brute force tactics – MFA should prevent those credentials from being used to remotely access your accounts.

Provide Regular Security Awareness Training

Technical measures are important for preventing healthcare phishing attacks but don’t forget the human element. Employees need to be trained how to recognize phishing emails and taught the correct response when a suspicious email is received. Security awareness training should also cover cybersecurity best practices.

To create a “security aware” culture in your organization, you need to provide regular security awareness training sessions, including an annual training session for all staff and more frequent shorter sessions or online CBT sessions throughout the year, making sure you keep the workforce aware of the latest threats. Not only will training help to prevent healthcare phishing attacks from succeeding, it is also a requirement for HIPAA compliance.

Conduct Phishing Simulation Exercises

Training is important, but so is testing. If you do not test your employees’ security knowledge, you will not know whether your training has been successful. There will always be employees that require more training than others, and through testing you will be able to identify the individuals that need more help.

Phishing simulation exercises are the best way to achieve this. You can find weak links in your workforce as well as your training program and ensure they are addressed.

Take Care with the Information You Make Available Online

In order to conduct a targeted phishing attacks on your organization, an attacker needs to know your email addresses. This information can often easily be found online in organizational charts and staff directories. Limiting the information you publish online will make it harder for email addresses to be harvested and used in attacks on your organization.

How to Reduce the Severity of Successful Healthcare Phishing Attacks

Healthcare phishing attacks are extremely common and often result in the exposure or theft of large amounts of protected health information. The Office for Civil Rights breach portal lists many email security breaches that have exposed the personal and health information of tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of patients and health plan members.

When conducting a risk analysis, consider what would happen in the event of a breach and take steps to reduce the severity of a breach should your defenses be penetrated. It is a good best practice to implement an email archiving solution to send all emails to a secure, cloud archive to ensure that no email data is lost and to implement policies requiring emails containing PHI to be deleted from your mail system. In the event of a breach, the PHI exposed will be greatly reduced and so too will the breach costs.

By using an email archive, you will still be able to remain compliant and retain al email data, but you will be able to significantly reduce risk while improving the performance of your mail server.

Webinar Sept 22, 2020 – How to Ensure Business Continuity with Email Archiving for your Remote Workforce

Businesses had to suddenly adapt to a new way of working in 2020 due to COVID-19 and the countrywide lockdowns. In order to keep businesses running, many switched to remote working and allowed their employees to work from home. Even though employees are being encouraged to work from the office once again, many businesses have accepted that remote working, at least to some extent, is now here to stay.

When employees work remotely they are able to stay connected via email, instant messaging tools, and videoconferencing solutions. Many employers have even found that their employees have been more productive working from home. However, while employees are collaborating and connecting in new ways, remote working is not without its risks and many businesses are concerned about how they can protect their data and ensuring compliance in the new, remote working environment.

On Tuesday, September 22, 2020, TitanHQ is hosting a webinar to discuss the threat landscape with respect to remote working and will explain how you can ensure your email archiving and security are fit for purpose to maintain access to data for business and email continuity.

During the webinar TitanHQ experts James Clayton and Derek Higgins will cover the following topics:

  • The Current 2020 Technology Landscape
  • Security & Compliance in a time of Global Remote Working
  • Increase in Companies Relying Solely on Office 365
  • Protecting Business Critical Data
  • The Importance of Continuity in the Era of Remote Working

Attendees will also be introduced to the TitanHQ cloud email archiving solution, ArcTitan, including a live demo of the solution.

Webinar Information

Title:       How to Ensure Business Continuity with Email Archiving for your Remote Workforce

Date:     Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Time: 

  • London/Dublin: 5:00 pm (GMT +1)
  • USA:      12:00 pm ET; 9:00 am PT

Hosts:    

  • James Clayton, ArcTitan Product Specialist
  • Derek Higgins, Engineering Manager, TitanHQ

 

Leading UK Private Equity Firm Invests in TitanHQ

One of the leading mid-market private equity investment firms in the United Kingdom has invested in TitanHQ. TitanHQ is headquartered in Galway, Ireland and is a fast-growing, global vendor of cloud-based cybersecurity solutions for SMBs, ISPs, and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) that serve the SMB market.

TitanHQ’s portfolio of solutions consists of SpamTitan Email Security, WebTitan Web Security, and ArcTitan Email Archiving. These solutions have been adopted by more than 8,500 businesses worldwide and are offered by approximately 2,500 MSPs in 150 countries.

TitanHQ, originally Copperfasten Technologies, was formed in 1999 and started life providing email security solutions to businesses in Ireland, but has since grown into a global company that provides SaaS solutions to companies including Pepsi, ViaSat, Virgin, O2, and Datto. The company has been recorded impressive growth and has become the leading provider of cloud-based security solutions to MSPs serving the SMB market, with an ARR of more than $15 million.

Livingbridge invests in companies with a value of up to £200 million and has an Enterprise 3 fund for investment in fast-growing companies up to the value of £50 million, with the latter fund used to invest in TitanHQ.

Livingbridge identified TitanHQ as a target for investment based on a proven track record at delivering powerful cloud-based SaaS solutions and being well positioned to benefit from strong, growing market momentum. The investment in TitanHQ will help accelerate the company’s ambitious growth plans through investment in people and product development.

TitanHQ received investment from Bill Mc Cabe’s Oyster Technology Investments at inception, and Oyster Technology Investments will continue to maintain a significant stake in the business.

“We are excited to be taking this next step in our growth journey with Livingbridge, a partner that understands the unique strengths of our business, shares our vision for success and has the experience and resources to help us to achieve it,” said Ronan Kavanagh, Chief Executive Officer of TitanHQ. “The recent pandemic and the growth of WFH initiatives has further highlighted the need for multiple layers of cyber security and our solutions form key pillars in this security strategy.”

“We are delighted to be partnering with TitanHQ, a uniquely positioned business with a well-differentiated product portfolio operating in a fast-growing, attractive market that is benefiting from strong macro tailwinds,” said Nick Holder, Director at Livingbridge. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Titan HQ to accelerate its growth trajectory over the coming years and we look forward to working closely with the management team to fulfil the company’s potential.”

Join TitanHQ and Magic Johnson at MVP GrowthFest on June 23, 2020

The COVID19 pandemic has created challenges for all businesses which are trying their best to adapt to a new normal. Businesses are slowing opening up their offices once again but it will be a long time before a return to “business as usual.” In fact, massive changes have had to take place and life after lockdown is likely to be considerably different to life before it.

Managed Service Providers have also had to adapt, and many Channel companies have realized the massive changes due to the pandemic have brought a wealth of opportunities. They are not suffering as a result of the challenges but have adapted their operations and have gained considerable growth momentum. How have these forward-thinking MSPs turned the pandemic into profit? What have they done to grow their businesses in such difficult times?

On June 23, 2020, MSPs will have an opportunity to get answers to these questions and discover how they can grow their business and thrive during the pandemic and in a post-COVID-19 world.

In line with social distancing requirements, MVP GrowthFest is a virtual event where MSPs will have the opportunity to learn how obstacles that appear to be blocking progress are challenges that can easily be overcome.

MVP GrowthFest is a 3-hour event headlined by the 3-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award winning superstar, Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. Magic Johnson will be providing insights into the obstacles he has faced during his life and how he succeeded through a combination of talent, tenacity, and a strong commitment to the community.

The event will celebrate the energy that powers growth and the drive to thrive in uncertain times and MSPs will be treated to four powerhouse panels where a combined 15 Channel All-Stars will be providing valuable insights and practical steps to not only survive the pandemic but use it as an opportunity to grow and thrive.

TitanHQ’s Sales Director, Conor Madden, will be leading a security powerhouse panel and will explain how selling security is best achieved through education, and how this approach is essential for the modern-day MSP tech stack.

Currently, cyberattacks are occurring at unprecedented levels. Cyber actors having seized the opportunities COVID-19 has given them. MSPs can position their security stacks front and central and help businesses protect against these threats.

MSPs will naturally need the right solutions, and that is an area where TitanHQ can help, being the leading provider of cloud-based email and web security solutions to MSPs serving the SMB marketplace. TitanHQ solutions have been developed specifically to meet the needs of MSPs and are available at a price point that allows them to be packaged easily to significantly boost profits.

At the security powerhouse, attendees will also hear from:

  • Jon Murchison – CEO, BlackPoint Cyber
  • Kevin Lancaster – CEO, ID Agent & GM Security, Kaseya
  • Jessvin Thomas – President & CTO, SKOUT

Three further powerhouse sessions will be taking place at MVP GrowthFest giving MSPs further insights and assistance to grow their businesses and boost profits. There will also be $2,000 in prizes given out at the event.

Managing Through Change

Featuring:

  • Dan Wensley – CEO, Warranty Master
  • Joe Alapat – CEO & Founder, Liongard
  • Ryan Walsh – Chief Channel Officer, Pax8

Establishing Trust in the New Normal

Featuring:

  • Dave Goldie – Vice President of Channel, Cytracom
  • Ted Roller – Channel Chief, ConnectBooster
  • Andra Hedden – CMO, Marketopia
  • Frank DeBenedetto – Founder, AudIT

Leading & Accelerating through the Recovery

Featuring:

  • Tim Conkle – Founder, The 20
  • Dennis O’Connell – Vice President, Taylor Business Group
  • Ted Roller – Channel Chief, Zomentum

Advance registration is required

 Click Here to Book Your Place at MVP GrowthFest

Webinar – Keeping your Remote Workers TWICE as secure with SpamTitan & WebTitan

Worried about protecting remote workers from phishing, zero-day attacks, malware and dangerous websites?   

On Thursday, May 21, TitanHQ will be hosting a webinar to explain how to better protect remote workers and their devices from attack. This webinar is ideal for current SpamTitan customers, prospective customers, Managed Service Providers and Small to Medium Enterprises.

We’ll show you why it’s vital  to protect against the  email and web component of cyberattacks – a web filter serves as an important, layer of security to block phishing attacks and malware and ransomware downloads.

Join Derek Higgins, Engineering Manger TitanHQ, Eddie Monaghan, Channel Manager TitanHQ, Marc Ludden, Strategic Alliance Manager TitanHQ and Kevin Hall, Senior Systems Engineer at Datapac on Thursday, May 21st @11am CDT.

We will discuss:

  • Covid-19 exploitation by cybercriminals in malicious cyber attacks
  • Meeting the challenge of protecting a fully distributed workforce

– Spotlight on WebTitan features and security layers for managing user security at multiple locations. Deep dive into the features and benefits of the latest version of WebTitan Security.

– The sophisticated nature of advanced persistent threats faced today and how WebTitan mitigates your risk against these threats.

  • Most cyberattacks have an email and web-based component –How WebTitan serves as a vital layer of security to block phishing attacks, malware and ransomware downloads.
  • Why WebTitan is the leading web security option for the Managed Service Provider who service the SMB and SME market.

Webinar Details

Webinar – Keeping your Remote Workers TWICE as secure with SpamTitan & WebTitan 

Date : Thursday, May 21st, 2020

Time : 11 – 11.30am CDT

 

TitanHQ Presenting at Blackpoint Cyber’s Remote Reality LIVE

Blackpoint Cyber announced its Remote Reality LIVE conference, which will occur online April 8th and April 9th 2020.

The conference will focus on managed service providers (MSPs) and how they can stay secure, profitable, and resilient as the world increases remote operations during the COVID-19 pandemic – registration and attendance are free. The two-day conference will include sessions by former leaders of the United States’ government cyber security and intelligence communities as well as cyber security experts and business veterans from the MSP services and technology industry.

Blackpoint Cyber announces its virtual cyber security conference for MSPs – Remote Reality LIVE. Featuring a keynote from the former Acting Director of the CIA and sessions from tech giants Datto, Webroot, Marketopia, and more.

Jon Murchison, Blackpoint’s CEO and founder, and former US government cyber operations expert, explains the conference’s objective: “IT services and infrastructure have become mission critical for organizations to survive in this new economic landscape brought on by COVID-19. MSPs are the key to our success and, especially during these times, a collective national asset to their respective countries. That’s why we are bringing together experienced government and industry leaders to help MSPs navigate the current economic and security environments. We’re excited to provide one of the first online and socially-distanced conferences dedicated to MSPs and cyber security.”

Blackpoint has partnered with leading technology, service, and marketing firms for the conference, including:

  • Datto: leading global provider of cloud-based software and technology solutions purpose-built for MSPs
  • Webroot: Cybersecurity Solutions Purpose-Built for MSPs and SMBs
  • Convergint: Global, Service-based Systems Integrator
  • Marketopia: Lead Generation and Marketing for Technology Companies
  • ID Agent: Dark Web and Identity Theft Protection
  • TitanHQ: Email and DNS Security
  • Compliancy Group: HIPAA Compliance-as-a-Service
  • Atlantic Data Forensics: Premier Incident Response and Forensics
  • ProSource Technology Solutions: Leading Managed Service Provider
  • Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT): Premier Real Estate Investment Trust

Michael Morell, former Deputy Director and Acting Director CIA, will present the keynote session on national security implications of the Coronavirus outbreak. While at the CIA, Mr. Morell was President George W. Bush’s daily intelligence briefer during the 9/11 attacks and was awarded the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA’s second highest honor.

Additional former US government cyber security and intelligence expert speakers include: Bill Priestap, former FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence, Chris Inglis, Former Deputy Director of NSA, Dave Sears, retired Commander and Navy SEAL, and Kevin Donegan, former United States Navy Vice Admiral and previous commander of the US Navy’s 5th fleet out of Bahrain. Security and MSP industry leaders will also present informational sessions, such as lead generation in a virtual world, security in the MSP space, cyber security for commercial real estate, the threat landscape of remote workers, and more.

Matt Solomon, VP of Business Development & IT at ID Agent, shares his sentiments on the conference: “ID Agent is very excited to participate in one of the first virtual MSP events since in-person events have been taken off the schedule. MSPs still need education during this period and we are honored to be part of such an esteemed group of vendors.”

In addition to learning how to stay secure and prosper, conference attendees will also be eligible for giveaways and prizes.

Participants may register online: Remote Reality Live – Free Registration

Cost of Spam in Academia Calculated by Researchers

It has been well documented how much time businesses waste dealing with spam and there is no denying the threat that malicious spam emails (malspam) pose, but it is not just a problem for big business. Spam in academia is also a major problem.

A recent study published in the journal, Scientometrics, explores the cost of spam in academia. The study was primarily focused on spam emails sent by new, non-peer-reviewed journals that are attempting to gain a share of the market. These journals are adopting the same spam tactics often used by scammers to sell cheap watches and cut-price medications and for phishing and spreading malware.

Three researchers – Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, Aceil Al-Khatib, and Panagiotis Tsigaria – attempted to quantify the amount of time that is being wasted dealing with those messages and the losses that result.

To assess the extent of the problem, the researchers used figures from several studies on spamming to obtain an average number of targeted spam emails that academics receive each day. They opted for a conservative figure of 4-5 messages, per academic, per day. Most of those messages take just a few seconds to open and read but that time mounts up. They assumed an average time of 5 seconds per message – less than half a minute per day. That equates to $100 per researcher, per year at an average hourly rate of $50. Using the United Nations estimate of the number of researchers in academia globally, the total global cost of spam in academia was estimated to be $1.1 billion a year.

That figure is based on the lost time alone and does not factor in non-targeted spam emails – bulk unsolicited emails not specifically targeting researchers. Add in the time dealing with those messages and the global cost reaches $2.6 billion a year. To put the cost into perspective, $2.6 million is much more than the time researchers devote to peer review, which has been estimated at a cost of $1.9 billion a year. The figures do not include the considerable losses due to phishing, malware, and ransomware attacks. Factor in those costs and the losses would be several orders of magnitude higher.

Co-author of the study, Panagiotis Tsigaris, a professor of economics at Thompson Rivers University in Canada, explained that there is no silver bullet when it comes to dealing with spam and suggested several ways that the cost of spam in academia could be reduced.

Tsigaris suggests that penalties should be increased for publishing in predatory journals, and that academics should be educated about spam email and that improvements should be made to email filtering technology.

Here at TitanHQ, we are well aware of the problem of spam, both in terms of the productivity losses that spam causes, and harm caused by malicious spam emails.

To help prevent losses and downtime due to spam and email-based threats, TitanHQ has developed a powerful, easy-to-use, and cost-effective cloud-based spam filtering solution called SpamTitan. SpamTitan has been independently tested and shown to block in excess of 99.9% of spam email, 100% of known malware and ransomware threats, and thanks to a host of detection measures and sandboxing, SpamTitan is also effective at blocking zero-day (new) malware and ransomware threats.

To find out more about SpamTitan and how you can block more spam and ensure malicious emails do not reach your researchers’ inboxes, give the TitanHQ team a call today.