As is customary, Acronis has held its annual “Acronis Partner Day” event these days in PortAventura (Tarragona), within the framework of MSP Global 2024. The conference offered a day full of information on the latest advances in cybersecurity, technological innovation and growth opportunities for managed service providers (MSP).
Acronis Partner Day 2024 made it clear that cybersecurity and technological innovation will continue to be fundamental pillars for MSPs in the coming years. With a strong combination of AI, detection and response solutions, and a renewed focus on resilience and collaboration, Acronis and its partners are prepared to meet the challenges posed by the ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.
Acronis Partner Day 2024: Innovation, Cybersecurity and New Opportunities
The event began with a welcome by Ezequiel Steiner, CEO of Acronis, Gaidar Magdanurov, President and Chief Marketing Officer, and Katya Ivanova, Director of Sales. In their initial intervention, they highlighted the progress made in recent years, including the growth of the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud platform and improvements in threat detection and response. Also highlighted was the introduction of new functionalities, such as Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and expanded artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) capabilities.
The event agenda promised to delve into essential topics for the MSP community, such as cyber threat research and the continued development of products and services designed to offer greater security coverage and operational efficiency:
- Cyber Threats: Actionable Intelligence: One of the most anticipated presentations was that of Vicente Díaz, security engineer at Google and strategist at VirusTotal, who presented the session titled “Actionable Threat Intelligence for the MSP Community.” During his talk, Díaz explained how artificial intelligence is transforming the way information on cyber threats is collected and analyzed. He also highlighted the importance of having actionable intelligence and context so that MSPs can effectively protect their customers. Intelligence data without adequate context can often generate noise instead of value, hence the importance of personalizing intelligence to maximize its efficiency and relevance.
Acronis Partner Day 2024 highlighted advances in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and key strategies for MSPs to maximize protection and profitability
- MSPs Under Attack: Daniel Clayton, vice president of cybersecurity at Expel, gave a keynote titled “MSP Under Fire,” addressing the growing risk MSPs face as they become preferred targets for malicious actors. Clayton, with more than 30 years of security and intelligence experience at agencies such as the NSA and GCHQ, reviewed notable attacks, such as the SolarWinds incidents and the REvil ransomware, to illustrate the sophisticated and persistent nature of the threats. In this way, he insisted on the need to adopt a proactive security posture and strengthen defenses by implementing measures such as the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA), access controls, backups and a solid detection and response strategy. In addition, he recommended that MSPs ensure they have 24-hour monitoring and have well-defined and practiced response plans, to minimize the impact of attacks when they occur.
Cybersecurity Expert Panel: The Blue-Hat Summit
One of the highlights of Acronis Partner Day was the cybersecurity expert panel titled “The Blue-Hat Summit.” Panelists included Vicente Díaz, Daniel Clayton, Kevin Reed (Chief Information Security Officer at Acronis), Robert Neumann (Director of TRU Labs at Acronis), and David McPherson (Chief Information Officer at Melius Group). This panel offered deep insight into how organizations can strengthen their defenses against increasingly complex threats.
The conversation focused on the need for collaboration between enterprises and the MSP community to share knowledge and improve protection tools, such as extended detection and response (XDR) solutions that enable greater visibility and correlation of security events.
Strategic Investments and the future of Acronis
Throughout the day, the company took the opportunity to share good news about the future of Acronis: the investment of the Swedish group EQT, one of the main private equity firms in Europe, in the company. This capital injection will not involve a restructuring or changes in the Acronis team, but rather reinforces the company’s commitment to continue innovating and expanding its cybersecurity platform for MSPs.
Speakers emphasized that this investment will allow Acronis to continue its focus on developing advanced cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and automation solutions to provide more options and flexibility to the MSP community.
