Unprecedented Times Impacting Cybersecurity Channel Partners
Channel leaders have to adapt to changes in market routes.
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Netenrich‘s Justin Crotty said when it comes to cybersecurity, everything’s accelerating at an unprecedented rate.
“It’s hard because everything’s amplified,” he said. “So you see a war in Russia and Ukraine, and everyone thinks, ‘Oh, this is really bad.’ But the reality is that stuff’s been going on for a long time. And from a partner perspective, I think what’s unprecedented … if you put yourself in a partner’s shoes, is the complexity of SecOps and ITOps, especially for companies that are in both. They’re MSPs with security services or MSPs trying to get into it, or security providers that are starting to get pulled into ITOps. We view ITOps and SecOps coming together as RiskOps. And the complexity of that proposition to most partners is a big problem because not only do you have maturity required in cybersecurity, and oftentimes they can’t fill the roles, but it’s the same thing on ITOps as those come together.”
In addition, there’s a data problem and the data is really difficult for partners to manage, Crotty said.
“So I think that sort of stew of challenges is probably in some sense unprecedented for partners,” he said. “So what do they do? A lot of them will do a niche focus. I’m going to focus on one component or one element, or one swim lane and I’ll try and do that. Or I’ve got to figure out how to orchestrate all of this for a customer, all of this complexity. And that’s extremely difficult for most partners to do really well.”
But partners’ clients are in much worse shape, in many cases, so it’s a “huge opportunity” for the channel, Crotty said.
“We chose cybersecurity, this ever-changing, always-evolving 24/7, around-the-world career to be in,” Trellix’s Kristi Houssiere said.
“So by way of that, we know that it’s going to be dynamic and every day is going to be a new day, and that’s why we chose this,” she added. “That’s why our partners chose this. It’s exciting. The evolution of security, it just keeps evolving, and I don’t think there’s ever going to be a time where we say, ‘OK, we’re there, we’re done.'”
Information and intelligence sharing is important in the cybersecurity industry, “so we can tell our partners and tell our customers, and tell other vendors that we work with that ‘Hey, this is what’s happening; let’s band together and help each other out because that’s what they’re doing,'” Houssiere said.
“That’s what the cybercriminals are doing,” she said. “Why can’t we come together and share information with government, the private and public sectors? I think it’s important that we look at this unprecedented time, learn from it and move forward, and make our partners and our customers more resilient.”
NTT Application Security‘s Matt Lantinga said cybersecurity is getting more complex and there are “constantly new threats out there.”
“There are constantly new ways that bad actors are figuring out a way to penetrate networks and compromise individuals, compromise customers, whatever it may be,” he said. “So I think we’re always going to feel like we’re in an unprecedented situation. We just coming off COVID-19 and we’ve got cyber warfare that’s being threatened, and before that, we had nation-state. And these bad actors are geniuses. Just when you think you’ve got a hole plugged, there are four more holes that just opened up. So the complexity is going to continue. I can’t envision it slowing down anytime soon. I can’t envision that in two years we won’t again say, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s even worse now than it was two years ago.’ So that’s the world we live in and that’s the industry we chose to be in.”
Sophos‘ Scott Barlow said during the pandemic, MSPs basically saved a lot of SMBs’ businesses.
“They transitioned to remote workforce, they secured everything and they migrated data to the clouds, all of that,” he said. “And you look at what’s happening with cybersecurity now and these MSPs are stepping up again. I think a lot of them need these playbooks and these templates that they can go and execute for their customers. And a lot of vendors now have extended detection and response (XDR) pulling in telemetry from a variety of different sources to hydrate the data lake to make that information available for these MSP and MSSP partners, and customers so that they can identify exactly what’s happening across their entire customer base or the customer’s network. And then taking that one step further and applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to filter through all of the noise from all of these alerts and all of the telemetry that you’re going to have from a variety of sources and making it consumable by a partner or by a customer.”
Proofpoint‘s Joe Sykora said partner programs are changing to accommodate everything taking place in the market, the threat landscape and more.
“I think all of us here are always tweaking our program or changing things,” he said. “All of us will probably say ease of doing business is No. 1. I am seeing a route-to-market discussion where it’s unique. My program was more traditional resale when I came here. I’ve really seen a lot of shift toward a lot of the programs around carriers and influencers, and everything else, because now partners are embracing those things. One of the things that was accelerated during the pandemic was marketplaces. Marketplaces were already moving forward very fast as far as the straight resell, but that was just accelerated. So now I have partners who are redefining themselves, even in cyber, where that’s the motion they want — to go sell on marketplaces. And with others, we know we have to do more of an influencer in our programs. So for us it’s more routes to market.”
Channel leaders have to adapt to changes in market routes, Sykora said.
“As our partners want to consume our technologies or solutions differently, we have to be there to say ‘OK, I will support that,'” he said. “If we don’t, the days of, ‘Hey, this is the way you need to buy my stuff’ are gone. Right at this point, it’s how can we integrate to your stack? How can we make things easier for you, Mr. Partner? That’s one thing that I have seen. And every year we look at do we need to tweak something.”
Fortinet‘s Jon Bove said the marketplace and how technology is consumed are changing and “very disruptive.”
“I also think there are some vendors that are just not as committed to partners and are competing with them, whether on technologies directly to the customer or services,” he said. “And I think there’s a lot of uncertainty there. I see service providers that are taking their customers off of their network and putting them on a competitive network and are vocal about that. These organizations are becoming competitive providers. And so I think it ultimately comes back to the questions that I face. Are are you going to be consistent in your go to market (GTM)? Are you going to be consistent about how you think about partners in your business? And it’s a board-level discussion at the vendor.”
There’s been an evolution in aligning the right route to market for the right customer type, and “we’ve had to evolve in how we do things,” Bove said.
“It’s a tough time to be a partner because there are a lot of people that are shedding that loyalty,” he said. “The biggest of the big companies or the smallest of the small that are just starting up, it may have a background in direct to consumer. They may not see the value. Then they’ve got to go re-pivot and try to plug that in after the fact, which is not the easiest of chasms to cross. We have to be able to stand and deliver in terms of what we do, both externally, but also internally, and be able to report on the news in terms of the impact of the business and be representative of our partner ecosystem, and at the same time, be representative of the organizations that we work for. So I think it’s an interesting dynamic to people, even.”
Malwarebytes‘ Brian Thomas said unprecedented times breed complexity, and there’s this “starving SMB force and MSP force that’s looking for simplified solutions and services.”
“Especially with what’s going on today, you see an awakening on both sides,” he said. “You see an awakening on the MSP side that service our SMB customers. And they’re saying they’re treating cybersecurity for the first time in the same way for their SMB businesses as they provide physical security. That’s a huge shift from what has occurred over the last five years. And on the vendor side, we’re all saying the same thing, but now we’re identifying all of these conduits, routes to market that really didn’t exist three to five years ago. The distribution keeps shifting, marketplaces keep shifting and our MSPs are asking us to be more flexible than we’ve ever really become. And now we’re kind of forced into the situation of evaluating them on their merits and then choosing who we go to go to market with and when. It’s a big awakening, I think, at the moment.”
Malwarebytes‘ Brian Thomas said unprecedented times breed complexity, and there’s this “starving SMB force and MSP force that’s looking for simplified solutions and services.”
“Especially with what’s going on today, you see an awakening on both sides,” he said. “You see an awakening on the MSP side that service our SMB customers. And they’re saying they’re treating cybersecurity for the first time in the same way for their SMB businesses as they provide physical security. That’s a huge shift from what has occurred over the last five years. And on the vendor side, we’re all saying the same thing, but now we’re identifying all of these conduits, routes to market that really didn’t exist three to five years ago. The distribution keeps shifting, marketplaces keep shifting and our MSPs are asking us to be more flexible than we’ve ever really become. And now we’re kind of forced into the situation of evaluating them on their merits and then choosing who we go to go to market with and when. It’s a big awakening, I think, at the moment.”
With the war in Ukraine, massive M&A and private investment and raging cybercrime, it’s an unprecedented time for cybersecurity channel partners.
It’s also a challenging time for cybersecurity channel chiefs. They’re scrambling to keep track of all of the changes while providing cybersecurity channel partners with everything they need to drive sales and growth.
Our cybersecurity roundtable at the 2022 Channel Partners Conference and Expo addressed this topic. This is the third in a series of articles highlighting various topics addressed by the roundtable. The first was on partner stress from the M&A frenzy. And the second was on threats and issues beyond ransomware.
Panelists included:
Scott Barlow, Sophos‘ vice president of global MSP and cloud alliances.
Jon Bove, Fortinet’s vice president of channel sales.
Justin Crotty, Netenrich‘s senior vice president of channels.
Kristi Houssiere, Trellix‘s senior director of global channel strategy and operations.
Matt Lantinga, NTT Application Security‘s vice president of sales and global strategic accounts.
Joe Sykora, Proofpoint’s senior vice president of worldwide channels and partner sales.
Brian Thomas, Malwarebytes’ vice president of worldwide MSP and channel programs.
See our slideshow above for more from the roundtable about stresses associated with being a cybersecurity channel chief in this time.
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Edward Gately or connect with him on LinkedIn. |
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