Avant Special Forces Summit: Advisors Face the Cybersecurity Question
Most partners say they sell cybersecurity, but most haven't even begun.
![Avant Special Forces Summit Avant Special Forces Summit](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/blt83c80d1420b868d2/652416e32e41a11c61330147/IMG_7786-1-e1663709735670.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Michelle Hyde provides enterprises technology advisory services with The Hyde Group. She said delivering cybersecurity requires crafting a sophisticated plan for the customer.
“You’ve got to do a business impact analysis; you’ve got to do risk analysis; you’ve got to do gap analysis; you’ve got to understand RPO and RTO. All of those elements have to be present in a cybersecurity endeavor. And then finally, a business continuity and disaster recovery [plan] that aligns and is an adjacency to cybersecurity,” Hyde said.
She added that the engagement must touch on the customer’s internal security practices, including employee and acceptable use policies.
Hyde also urged partners to gain a deeper understanding of the customers to whom they want to sell cybersecurity.
“If you’re not a student of business and you don’t understand how the business works, there’s no way that you’re going be able to just product position when it comes to cybersecurity. It’s way too encompassing. Cybersecurity affects every single department,” Hyde told Channel Futures.
Idris Odutoye is a technology advisor at ATA Trusted Advisors.
He said more and more IT leaders have opened themselves up to the agent channel. He said that while most organizations have appointed their own security person, that person is very open to finding help. Odutoye pointed to how the never-ending series of data breaches is putting IT leaders on notice.
“I think that’s making customers aware that they don’t know everything they thought they knew. They realize that just talking to a trusted advisor doesn’t hurt,” Odutoye told Channel Futures. “Once they’re exposed to all of the different providers and service offerings we have, it enlightens them that they could actually get assistance from their trusted advisor, whereas they would have never thought it before.”
David Nuti is the senior vice president of America for Nord Security.
He said that several years ago, only about 5% of agents would have felt comfortable selling cybersecurity. Now that number has increased to around 20%, he said.
Of course, that number only concerns the partners who have truly trained and equipped themselves on the topic.
“I think it has the attention of the majority of the partners, but security is not something you can just side-dabble,” Nuti told Channel Futures. “You have to make the commitment to say, ‘No – dammit – I’m gonna win in these categories.”
Eclipse’s Dave Dyson agreed that agents need to go all-in on building a cybersecurity practice if they want to sell the technology. That’s because these conversations with clients are “deep and sophisticated and hard,” Dyson said.
“If you don’t have a practice, you’re literally just like slinging on products at a client. And that’s not how anybody wants to buy security because it’s way too important of a topic. Customers don’t want to take any chances there,” Dyson told Channel Futures.
Why do partners avoid engaging on cybersecurity? Nuti said the barrier revolves around technological expertise. He pointed instead to the energy that goes into security’s longer sales cycles. For example, a deal involving MDR or managed SOC could take upward of a year.
“I may spend months or a year-plus working on an opportunity and then be disappointed at the end, because it doesn’t go my way,” Nuti told Channel Futures.
But he encouraged partners that engage customers around security can lead to an ever-expanding engagement.
“The cool thing about selling security is, it never ends,” he said. “Security is by definition a feedback loop. No one’s ever at the end of the game for security. They’re either underdeployed, or they’re fully deployed, and they’re constantly optimizing.”
Ben Thornton is the chief technology officer at Opex Technologies.
He said the agent channel didn’t historically deal in cybersecurity because they lacked the supplier contracts. However, that tide has turned. He credited Avant for building a foundation of suppliers.
“They’ve done a really good job of bringing together some of the really good MDR providers and good MSSPs that can bring the right toolset to bear,” Thornton told Channel Futures. “Most clients don’t need 44 products or whatever. What they need are the couple of right products managed really well.”
He noted that a gap in the TSD portfolio remains with some of the larger point vendors. That includes identity and access management (IAM), privileged access management (PAM) and security services edge (SSE). Vendors like Okta, Netskope and Zscaler aren’t compensating agents.
However, he said Avant is pushing to bring more of those vendors into the fold.
“It’ll be good to have access to it, but I think the most important stuff here,” Thornton said.
Another challenge of selling cybersecurity is that it involves talking to a different segment of the customer. Agents who have traditionally sold to a CIO, an IT director or infrastructure director, probably won’t be talking to that person if they want to sell cybersecurity.
“Traditionally, the channel has been more focused on other areas. And when you talk CCaaS, you mostly need to talk to the business line. They’re the ones making those decisions, not the telecom guy. It’s the same thing in security in the larger organizations. It’s the security team and security guy that traditionally we haven’t been able to sell to,” Thornton said.
Thornton noted that those stakeholders are collaborating with each other more as certain technologies converge. For example, Gartner projects that 50% of SD-WAN deployments will come out of a SASE deal.
“The network conversation is just becoming a security conversation,” Resourcive president Kyle Hall told Channel Futures.
As a result, SASE can function as a natural bridge to help agents move into a conversation with the CISO.
Hiring in general is difficult enough for partners; hiring cybersecurity specialists is even more challenging. But agents are seeing massive benefits that come from investmenting in cybersecurity.
To that end, IT sourcing firm Resourcive this week announced the acquisition of cybersecurity consultancy Proteus Advisors. The deal gives Resourcive, which was already playing in cybersecurity, a full-blown security module.
Read our story about the acquisition.
Avant president Drew Lydecker on Tuesday delivered another one of his patented “MOAPs” (mother-of-all-presentations), which told a centuries-long story of technological innovation. He thanked Avant’s partners for their efforts helping the company grow since its inception in 2009.
“It was all because of you. We believed in you. We challenged each other. We worked like a pro and trained like a pro. We challenge every thought about what is possible about this industry,” Lydecker told the audience.
CEO Ian Kieninger said that as of Monday, Avant had already tallied its largest-ever attendence at the Special Forces Summit in the history of the event.
The Tuesday morning keynote session featured a panel of six contact-center-as-a-service providers: Five9, Genesys, Nice, Observe.AI, Talkdesk and Ujet.
The fifth floor lounge was a scene of constant reunions on Tuesday.
Here (from left to right) Dave Dyson of Eclipse, Morgan Granfield of Digital Realty, and MaryTom Hofer and Lucas Salvage of Kairos Data Communications pose for a photo.
The fifth floor lounge was a scene of constant reunions on Tuesday.
Here (from left to right) Dave Dyson of Eclipse, Morgan Granfield of Digital Realty, and MaryTom Hofer and Lucas Salvage of Kairos Data Communications pose for a photo.
AVANT SPECIAL FORCES SUMMIT — Technology advisors are selling more cybersecurity services, but the increase comes with a steep investment.
Partners heard a lot about cybersecurity at the Avant Special Forces Summit in Austin, Texas on Tuesday. The technology services distributor hosted a number of breakout sessions on the topic and has lined up several presentations from cybersecurity providers. And if you talk to any partner on the floor, cybersecurity will inevitably come up as a point of emphasis for their firm.
But selling cybersecurity means different things for different people. And for many partners, they’ve only scratched the surface of building a security practice.
Eclipse’s Dave Dyson
“There’s not a heck of a lot of people selling,” Eclipse CEO Dave Dyson told Channel Futures. “So some of us are dabbling. A lot of people are intimidated and not doing it at all. And then you have the occasional unicorn who sells a ton of security, because that’s their specialty.”
Channel Futures is on the scene at Special Forces Summit interviewing technology advisors about their security growing pains.
Scroll through the 13 images above to hear from partners and vendors about what it takes to build a cybersecurity practice.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email James Anderson or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
Read more about:
AgentsAbout the Author(s)
You May Also Like