Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Microsoft Defender is widely deployed across small and midsize businesses. It is built into the Microsoft ecosystem, familiar to IT teams, and effective at detecting suspicious activity on endpoints. However, detection alone does not stop an attack. As cyber threats evolve, the biggest risk is not missing alerts. It’s failing to investigate and respond to them fast enough. The risk lies in what happens after an alert is generated.

The biggest ransomware attacks of 2025 have shown that this threat remains critical for organizations across all sectors. Incidents such as the Change Healthcare attack, which compromised the data of nearly 190 million individuals, and the attack on Jaguar Land Rover, which forced production lines to halt and caused losses amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, show that a single incident can impact both operational continuity and information confidentiality.

Thirty years in cybersecurity doesn’t matter unless it changes something. Technology anniversaries often focus on looking at the past, product launches, or company milestones. But cybersecurity doesn’t reward longevity alone. It rewards outcomes, including safer organizations, stronger partners, and security models that actually work in the real world.

The latest findings from WatchGuard Technologies reveal a stark reality for managed service providers: cyber threats are not only increasing—they’re evolving faster than traditional defenses can keep up. In its newest Internet Security Report, WatchGuard identified a 1,548% spike in new, unique malware from Q3 to Q4 2025. Nearly one in four threats bypassed signature-based detection, highlighting a critical gap in reactive security models still used across many customer environments.

In today’s corporate environments, browsers have become one of the most active entry points for endpoints. They are at the center of daily workflows, a gateway to SaaS applications, cloud services, and critical business resources, which places them high on attacker radars.

For years, cybersecurity relied on a perimeter-based model, where the network defined the boundary between what was secure and what wasn’t. With the adoption of cloud computing, SaaS applications, and hybrid working, that control has shifted to identity, making credentials the primary target for attackers.

In December, many managed service providers (MSPs) took the opportunity to review their strategies and reassess priorities, while the end of the year encourages a closer look at how the market is evolving. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) remain very strong in the MSP sector. According to a Drake Star report, 107 transactions were recorded in the United States in Q1 2025, with a disclosed total value of more than 1 trillion dollars.

Staying ahead of cyber threats has never been more critical, and WatchGuard is here to help you do just that. Join cybersecurity experts Corey Nachreiner (CSO) and Marc Laliberte (Director of Security Operations) on February 19, 2026 for the Inside the Threat Landscape: Biannual Cybersecurity Briefing, a must-attend, live webinar designed to equip you with the latest threat insights and defensive strategies straight from the WatchGuard Threat Lab.