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Watch their Back-up By Mark Pendergrast New SMB realities create MSP opportunities within cloud backup T he country at large, and small and mid-sized business (SMBs) in particular, are grap- pling with a new reality creat- ed by the COVID virus. As challenges mount for businesses looking to keep employees connected and productiv- ity at normal levels, an opportunity is emerging for MSPs to provide support and add value to their customers. Indeed, MSPs can help small busi - nesses during this time by offering a cloud backup service. For SMBs wres- tling with remote work, having a cloud backup solution has evolved from a “nice to have” to an essential safe- guard for keeping businesses secure and operating as normal.   The main catalyst for this height - ened opportunity is the influx of dispa - rate work environments as businesses move to remote work, coupled with an increase in online threats that the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed. Now more than ever, businesses need a stable and secure solution to provide employees with access to necessary documents and tools while remote.  The rapid and forced adoption of the current remote-work scenario has been well documented. As shelter- in-place orders, social distancing mandates and fears of second surges continue to change the landscape of our workplaces, cloud-based pro- ductivity tool use has skyrocketed. Microsoft Teams, with 50 million daily active users, grew over 37 percent in one week, the company announced back in March. The downstream effect of ram - pant cloud adoption for MSPs is mul- tifaceted. It means a surge in sup - port tickets, from end users needing help both setting up and using new tools. It also means that nearly all critical business data is now exclu- sively created, shared, modified and stored in the cloud. Data no longer only resides in the (relatively) safe confines of an on-premises cor- porate network. Emails, files, and collaboration tools are overwhelm- ingly accessed from home networks – sometimes over secure VPN but often not. Plus, the wide disparity of work-from-home environments makes IT support even more critical than ever, yet more challenging for MSPs to provide.  Growing Security Risks for SMBs With IT resources stretched thin and cyber-attacks on the rise, SMBs are in a precarious situation as they struggle to adapt to the shifting threat landscape. Security company Cloud- fare, for instance, recently reported that online threats had risen as much as six times their normal levels in just four weeks this spring. Again, we are not living in normal times. The COVID-19 pandemic has delivered a breeding ground for cyber-attacks and dropped it at the feet of SMBs – many of whom are ill-prepared for the fight. Adding insult to injury, New Zea- land’s Security Brief reported that 80 percent of the overall threat land- scape is using COVID-19 as leverage for these attacks. Here in the U.S., Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently announced that the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reviewed more than 3,600 cases related to COVID-19 scams since April 21, 2020 alone.  AT YOUR SERVICE: XaaS 12 CHANNEL VISION | May - June, 2020