Inside the Headlines: How Threat Actors Are Exploiting Businesses Like Yours
Cyberattacks aren’t random – they follow patterns, target predictable weaknesses, and often hit closer to home than you think. Whether you’re an MSP managing dozens of SMB environments or running IT for your own business, you’re in the sights of attackers looking for a way in.
In this live session, we’ll break down real-world attacks making headlines and map out how and why these incidents happened. You’ll see exactly how attackers move through environments like yours, compare the approaches of a patient, well-resourced threat actor vs. an opportunistic attacker looking for quick wins, and learn how to identify and close the gaps they exploit.
This isn’t just theory – you’ll leave having mentally mapped your own environment against common attack paths, and armed with practical steps to strengthen your defenses right away.
What You’ll Learn:
- The latest attacker tactics targeting SMBs and MSP-managed environments
- Why MSPs are such a high-value target – and how attackers use them as a gateway
- How persistent vs. opportunistic attackers operate differently, and what that means for your security strategy
- Real-world detection gaps uncovered during onboarding and incident response
- Actionable steps you can take now to reduce exposure and increase resilience
Speakers
Jim Waggoner
Jim Waggoner is a product management professional with over 20 years of experience in cybersecurity, helping deliver top-notch solutions for businesses of all sizes. Currently, he’s the Vice President of Product Management in N‑able cybersecurity business unit, and has held similar leadership roles at Trellix, FireEye, McAfee, and Symantec. Jim is all about creating smart strategies, leading teams, and bringing innovative ideas to life.
Lewis Pope
Lewis started his career in the MSP channel, spending six years as a System Administrator, Manager of Service Delivery, and IR Lead with a break/fix operation that eventually matured to a full MSP. Lewis joined N‑able in 2018 as a Sales Engineer, and in 2021 became a member of the Head Nerds team.
As a Head Nerd at N‑able, Lewis is focused on cybersecurity, helping MSPs overcome security and operational challenges by providing education, training, and advocacy for implementation of practical security controls, proper risk management, and incident response. His primary goal is helping MSPs start the cybersecurity maturation process that is needed to contend with modern risks and the evolving threat landscape, as well as finding opportunities for growth.
In his downtime, you can find him hosting gameshows at sci-fi conventions, tinkering with microcontrollers that have way too many LEDs, or reading endless threat-intelligence feeds. He’s also very proud of his daughter, but if we got into all of the reasons for that we’d be here for quite a while.