Cyberattacks are up 4X. Are you Ready?

In this episode of "Full Tech Ahead," host Amanda Razani interviews Joe Sykora, CEO of Coro. They discuss the massive cybersecurity challenges facing small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who struggle with limited resources and complex "Franken-stacks"—a fragmented mix of disconnected, multi-vendor security tools stitched together via APIs. 

Sykora outlines how Coro eliminates this complexity by providing a unified platform powered by a single agent and a clean, consolidated dataset running roughly 14 integrated modules. This architecture enables an automated cyber threat remediation rate of 92% to 96%. Sykora notes that cyberattacks have surged 3 to 4 times per client compared to last year due to malicious AI use. 

To address this, he champions operational simplicity, a 100% channel-partner model, and urges security leaders to embrace rapid product cycles and platform consolidation to maximize MSP profit margins and eliminate costly misconfigurations.

Key Quotes

• "Coro is a complete cybersecurity platform... We have a single agent that we provide roughly fourteen different modules... we cover all aspects of cyber."
• "The number one risk is people... but number two is misconfiguration. I've seen a lot of clients through the years have issues with something was misconfigured because they had that 'Franken-stack'."
• "As a provider who gets to see things happen, we've already seen almost four X the number of attacks so far this year than all of last year."
• "If you're not using an AI system, I don't see how you keep up... This is kind of hyperscale when it comes to that."

Takeaways

• Ditch the "Franken-stack" for Data Cleanliness: Relying on separate security tools connected via APIs fails to provide a true "single pane of glass." A unified platform ensures a clean, singular dataset, which is the foundational prerequisite for defensive AI to effectively stop and remediate threats automatically.
• Consolidation Cuts Operational Overhead: For MSPs, the primary cost is not software licensing but backend operational labor. Switching from fragmented tools to a unified architecture allows a single security analyst to manage 100 to 200 clients seamlessly, compared to just 20 or 30 under an enterprise legacy setup, heavily expanding profit margins.
• Defensive AI is Mandatory: With AI-driven phishing and social engineering attacks scaling up to 4X per client in 2026, cyber threats no longer contain obvious grammar mistakes or broken logos. Keeping up with this hyper-scale execution requires immediate adoption of automated, defensive AI ecosystems.
• Embrace Hyper-Fast Change Cycles: The landscape is shifting so quickly that traditional long-term product roadmaps are being superseded by immediate, rolling update cycles. Cybersecurity leaders and developers must remain adaptable and open to constant system refactoring to survive market disruption.

Coro website and social handles:

https://www.coro.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/corocyber/

https://x.com/coro_cyber?s=20

https://www.youtube.com/@coro-cybersecurity

Many Thanks to Coro for sponsoring this episode!

Find Amanda Razani on LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-razani-990a7233/

Follow the FTA LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/full-tech-ahead/

Visit the FTA website: https://fulltechahead.com/

Check out the Substack Channel: https://fulltechahead.substack.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Hello and welcome to Full Tech Ahead. I'm your host, Amanda Razzani. And with me today, I'm excited to have Joe Sakura. He is the CEO of Coro. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Great, Amanda. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Doing well. I'm so excited to have you on the show. Can you share a little bit about Coro and what services does Coro provide?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Sure. Yeah, Coro, it's a platform, it's a complete cybersecurity platform, right? We have a single agent that we provide roughly 14 different modules. So we cover all aspects of cyber. We do that through one data set. And then what we do is we take that data set, we can use AI to then, you know, we we correlate and then we can remediate. And those of you out there that know AI, obviously, the cleaner the data set, the more effective it is. So we're seeing anywhere from 92 to actually some of our clients are seeing about 96% automated stop rate as far as the bad things that are happening out there. And literally we cover all aspects of cyber, right? We have endpoint, we have EDR, email, network, compliance. Um Gardner has this kind of uh deemed uh workspace protection, right? That's kind of the new buzz term where we do have a direct integration to Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. So um, yeah, many, many things we do. I've been in cyber for a long time, uh, going on 30 years, and I've I've been at many places, and this is it's almost a uh too good to be true. And I tell people you have to seeing is believing. So uh definitely try it out to to see what we can do.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Absolutely. The world of cybersecurity has greatly changed, especially over the past few years with AI. So to that note, our topic today is gonna be about small to medium-sized businesses and you know, smaller teams that are sort of using a FrankenStack set of tools for their cybersecurity needs and kind of the struggle that that causes for managed service providers and security leaders. Um, to that note, from your experience, what is the biggest security challenge that small businesses are facing today?

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, well, I think, you know, small businesses, medium businesses, and and actually even enterprise businesses now, they're all struggling with the fact that they don't have enough resources, right? So um Coro was, we're 11 years old. We were purpose-built really for that SME right, the lean IT market, where um we realize that you can't have the expertise to run a complete enterprise stack. Um, even if you have the budget to do it, you know, you may not have the expertise. Or if say you have someone that's a specialist in in the endpointer EDR or email that you picked as as far as your stack goes, um, what if they leave, right? What if they leave and then you have to go find some more expertise? So, you know, we were purpose built for the simplicity without sacrificing security, right? So we're still five nine's protection. Um, like I mentioned before, it is it is built to use AI in in defense of all the uh the AI, uh the bad guys out there. That's it, right? A lot of people I talk to, you know, we've seen, and I've been a part of a lot of enterprise solutions, right? Part of that Franken stack, if you will, where we used to connect things via API. It never gave you a single pane of glass, right? So we give you that single pane of glass. If you're an MSP, right, we give you correlation across all of your clients. And uh, you know, some of the new stuff we're working on is you don't even have to interface with our UI. Um, you can we'll actually bring core to where you want to use core, whether it be your AI platform, whether it be Slack, uh if it want Teams, so you can actually interface this in a multitude of different ways. It's all about the simplicity, though, right? We we do that. I think when I was an MSP, because I was, if you go back in the 90s, I was an early adopter to kind of kind of delivering services like that. That was my pitch, right? Was hey, you can't operate an enterprise stack. Maybe you could afford it, maybe you couldn't. Let me come in and do it. But then I had to operationalize things as best as I could as an MSP. And we all know there's still limitations of how many uh clients and analysts can can really work on. Um with our platform, we simplify that even more. So to the MSP, it's operationalizing things, right? So giving you the results with a lot. So instead of working on 20, 30 clients and analysts, you can look at 100 to 200, which you know that uh MSP-wise is just helping you with your overall margin and putting money in your pocket.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

Why is it that the the multi-tool approach often doesn't work as well?

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Well, listen, enterprise solutions are fantastic, right? In fact, I tell everyone if you want to put Core against a single solution, an enterprise solution, we may not have all the bells and whistles uh that you're you're looking for as an end user because there's complexity to it, right? If you all of us that have been in cyber for a long time know the number one risk is people, right? So we have security awareness and training to help with that. But number two is misconfiguration, right? So I've seen a lot of a lot of clients through the years have issues with um something was misconfigured because you know they had that that uh you know that widget or something that they they they didn't turn on right or configure right. But we protect users and MSPs from that, right? Because that's that's definitely where we see a lot of risk. It's interesting because I've always been part of companies that are offering a platform and their platform and begins and ends, and then you use API to do everything else. And even the MSPs out there, for some of the PSA providers, right, and the the MSP tools that are running your business, even some of the things they're offering aren't fully uh integrated together. Again, they've made a lot of acquisitions, they've kind of glued things or Frankenstacked things together. There's not seamless integration. We were purpose-built, right? It's all of our technology uh that we use, and having that single client across operating systems, devices, including mobile, um, there's a huge advantage of that because again, I mentioned it before, the data set, right? Having one single data set that is true and clean to then use AI to your benefit. We all know it's about a clean database. So that's that's really what I've seen out there in the shift in the market uh of why uh some of those tools that are API just don't work. And again, if you've tried it before, you still don't have a single pane of glass that's that's really helping you run the business or provide services to your points.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned AI, and of course, that's you know the big topic these days. What kind of wrench is it throwing into the cybersecurity world? Um, and how how do you advise business leaders address AI when it comes to cybersecurity?

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yeah. Well, you know, if this was a more social event, I'd probably tell you we could do an AI drinking game, right? Where every time uh joking aside, listen, AI has been with us for many, many years. You know, of course, of course it started out as machine learning long, long time ago. Like I said, we're 11 years old, so we've always been purpose-built using it. I think the you know, the attacks are are definitely on the rise. And in as a provider who gets to see things happen, we've already seen almost four X the number of attacks so far this year than all of last year, right? Now, that's a combination. One, we've expanded our our customer footprint and we have more clients, but two, even if you look at the attacks per client, right, which we do do, it is up three to four X. So, you know, those attacks and and people using AI for bad, not good, they're growing. And I think everyone knows that. I think, you know, we've all gotten some type of either phishing or or other attack. It it looks really good now, right? Because, you know, before we were able to say, hey, the logo's off, the spelling's off, this isn't the right. So that's where that awareness and training and in training the people is is core. Um, and that's why it's one of our core modules that we integrate into this. If you're not using an an AI system, I don't see how you keep up, right? I really don't. If you're not if you're not using it for good, if you will, and helping you assist your clients. It's um and it's it's only gonna get worse, right? I mean, I think if you rewind back six months ago, you would have never all of us listen for years been using it, but even if you rewind six months ago, it was like, yeah, it's a good tool. It still needs some work. Now I'm talking to people and they're like, holy cow, um, you know, they're shifting platforms too. And who knows where we're gonna be, even three months from now, because this is going faster than anything we've seen before. Um, I think everyone out there understands Moore's law. This is this is kind of uh hyperscale when it comes to that. I mean, things are just changing so, so quickly.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

So for business leaders who are currently using this plethora of different tools for their security needs, and maybe um they do want to switch over to a to a all-in-one visibility platform. What advice do you have for them as far as how to get started? And um how do you address their concerns about, well, we already paid for all these different tools? How you know, how do we see our ROI on, you know, what we already paid for getting rid of that?

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, everyone has tools, everyone has a stack. Um, you know, we're more results driven, and I tell everyone that, you know, we are even we're not an MDR, but we give you MDR um results. And that's that's that's that's really what I think most MSPs are looking for. When I talk to them, and I do, I get to I get very fortunate, I get to travel the world and talk to MSPs all over. That's what they want, right? They don't want the complexity, they want the results. And if we can give you those, and then you provide right detection response and and doing the threat hunting, that's something that is a billable service for all those MSPs out there, and we're not going to compete with you like some of the others out there. Um, so it's it turns into more of an operational discussion. Um, again, we understand commits have been commitments have made, you've built systems. Um, that's why we we again the seeing believing, we let you get started at no cost. And and it's something that our system, you can get up and running in typically less than 30 minutes, right? For an end user. So it's a it's a very intuitive um but powerful tool that you know they could try. I've seen MSPs say, hey, this is great. I'm gonna use it for my small to medium business clients. And then all of a sudden I meet with them in six months and they're like, oh, by the way, I'm now using it in a higher, you know, that I have a client that maybe a school system that has 20, 30,000 users, I'm using Coro. So, you know, it's it's that. Um, of course, we have competitive place displacement programs and everything else, but we even we allow you to consume Coro the way you want to. If you want to just do monthly consumption, great, we'll do monthly consumption. So it's a very flexible. And if you look at our our program that we built, we're 100% channel. The partners out there that know me and and have heard me, uh, I took over about uh almost a year ago in July. We went 100% channel, not channel first, not channel led, 100%, right? No mixed model, we're not selling direct. So we give them the protection they need, which is what a lot of partners are looking for. And and unfortunately, they don't have that as much as they used to. That's the pitch, really, is again your main cost as an MSP is typically not your software license. It's the operational back end. And if you really take a look at that, it's like, okay, well, if I can put, again, if I can multiply the number of clients that you can you can put your analyst on and it's 5x or or or even greater. I've seen some MSPs at 10x, that's real money, right? And that's margin in your pocket where either you can keep it or you can get more aggressive with your pricing if you want to.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Are there any mistakes from your experience that you've seen MSPs make that you'd like to point out, like a different uh shift to their mindset that they should have in any particular area?

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Well, I'm not gonna say mistake, right? Because listen, I think all businesses are there to make mistakes. You learn from your mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes when I had my businesses. And, you know, I think I think it's more around just giving a fresh look that just because you have maybe the most expensive platform um or expensive solution, you really need to look at the complexity, right? Because now you can deliver very, very effective security. Um, it's not that's not the way it used to be, right? That that flexibility and operational efficiency is is real. And that's that's the thing that I think most of because listen, I still have a lot of friends, you know, we're all getting older, and we've been doing this for you know 20 to 30 years. Um, what we used to offer as best debris, you know, the old best debris products where we built this really complex stack, um sing's believing, right? And and trust me, I had to, I had to actually work with the system before I joined Cloro. I did a full evaluation. And then of course I have a few friends that also looked at, they're like, this is this is crazy. Why aren't they telling more people? So that's why I'm here, right? So that is that is one of the things that that I tell MSPs is you you should at least always be looking at new things out there. Maybe we're not a fit today, but you never know. I'll argue there's always something that you can improve in your your system and it's worth giving it a try.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Well, as rapidly as technology is advancing, what's the next thing that you think cybersecurity leaders should be focused on and getting prepared for? I might throw out quantum, I don't know, but what's out there? What's next?

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah, quantum. Listen, quantum's not uh, I know we've been, I I don't even want to tell you what I started dabbling with quantum and and and and uh it's been a while. So it's been out there. And you know, I think the big advice, the the advice I can give is just embrace change, right? Because things are moving at such a fast pace that I can't even tell you if you even look at at product cycles, right? And roadmaps and everything else, sure, we have our roadmap that's a a short and then a long term, just like everyone else. But we've gone to product cycles that are almost, you know, almost immediate, right? Because you can look in any of you using any of the AI platforms, I think every time you log in, what do you see? Hey, there's an update, right? There's a new version. So it's this constant thing, right? It's this constant upgrading and and making our systems better. So embracing that and embracing change and in and keeping an open mind is is really, I think, what we're all gonna have to do. I mean, I also have that conversation with friends because I have four children and they're like, what are the kids? What are you telling them they should get into? Of course, I always say, as long as they're happy, that's all that matters. Listen, uh, I have two sons. One of my son is really interested in technology and everything else, and and I encourage it. But, you know, I'm probably not gonna tell them you should go into development, right? I mean, but uh, but we'll see, right? We'll see. It's keeping that open mind. And um, you know, we could talk in another six to 12 months, and I'm sure we could uh we can talk about what has changed uh because you know it's gonna change, it's gonna change quickly.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

It sure is. Well, if there was one key takeaway you could leave our audience with today, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

One key takeaway is try us out, right? Seeing is believing. I think that um, you know, it is a it's a no-cost trial. You can go to our website, you can reach out to myself or anyone on the team. You know, we have people that are from the channel and they've been in the channel for a long time. So they understand the needs of of what you need as an MSP. I think it's give it a shot, right? It's gonna be it's gonna be no cost to you. And uh I think you're gonna like what you see.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing your insights and sharing about what Koro offers.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Thanks, Amanda.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And thank you to our audience. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below and I'll try to respond back as soon as possible. And until the next podcast, have a wonderful week.