Small businesses face the same cybercriminals as large enterprises but rarely have a security team watching their systems around the clock. Huntress, a cybersecurity company focused on bringing enterprise-grade protection to businesses of all sizes, has announced a set of new capabilities designed to close that gap.
The idea behind the launch is straightforward: what hits one business should protect all the others. Huntress monitors nearly 300,000 businesses, 17 million identities and 6 million endpoints. When its 24/7 Security Operations Centre (SOC) spots an attack on one customer, it now turns that knowledge into automatic protection for the rest.
What’s new:
- Same-day blocking: when Huntress confirms infrastructure used in an attack on Microsoft 365 accounts, it blocks that infrastructure across every eligible, opted-in customer on the same day, stopping repeat attacks at sign-in
- Lookback: for new customers, Huntress checks up to 180 days of past login history for signs an attacker is already inside and shuts down active compromises
- Remote ransomware disruption: automatically cuts off unprotected machines being used to launch ransomware across a network (generally available 30 November)
- Brute Force Sentry: shows password-guessing attacks against remote access tools such as RDP and SSH, including which accounts are being targeted (generally available 18 November)
- Defence Drills: short, hands-on training based on real attacks Huntress is seeing now, including instant lessons for employees caught out by a ClickFix scam
- Identity Posture Assessment: an on-demand scorecard of a business’s Microsoft 365 security, with a prioritised list of fixes
Why It Matters For SMEs
Two of the new features speak directly to risks smaller firms often underestimate.
The first is that an attacker may already be inside.
During early access, Lookback helped a managed service provider discover that one of its customers, a business handling a $2 million real estate wire transfer, had been compromised three days before Huntress was even switched on. Catching it allowed the provider to step in.
The second is the gaps in coverage that most growing businesses have. Huntress found that nearly 30% of the ransomware cases it observed this year started on a machine with no security software installed. Attackers use these overlooked devices as a launchpad. Huntress’ new capability detects this and blocks the unprotected machine from talking to protected ones, stopping ransomware from spreading.
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Turning Mistakes Into Lessons
Staff remain a common entry point for attackers, and Huntress is changing how it trains them. Rather than relying solely on scheduled courses, Defence Drills can kick in the moment something goes wrong.
If an employee falls for a ClickFix attack, a scam that tricks users into running malicious commands and Huntress stops it, the employee sees a pop-up explaining what happened and is directed to a quick hands-on lesson. The aim is to learn from the mistake in real time rather than risk repeating it.
“Defending against threats moving at machine speed requires knowing the adversary better than anyone else and anticipating their next move by continuously learning from every attack and leveraging our scale and elite security researchers to turn that intelligence into stronger protection,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, Chief Product Officer at Huntress. “These innovations demonstrate how we’re bringing together unrivalled human expertise, AI and real-world threat intelligence to protect businesses at the speed adversaries operate.”
Built With Msps In Mind
Many SMEs access Huntress through managed service providers and the company says these updates are designed to give those providers stronger protection with less manual effort, from automated blocking to compromised applications being disabled without partners needing to intervene.
“At Courser, our goal is to give all businesses access to the same level of cybersecurity protection and expertise that larger enterprises rely on, without the cost or complexity,” said Steven Drew, Chief Technology Officer at Courser: “Huntress is an important part of that strategy, bringing advanced threat detection, expert threat research, and a 24/7 security operations centre to our broader security offering. Their continued innovation helps us strengthen protection across our network of managed service providers and deliver better security outcomes for the businesses we serve.”
