Newly Launched Skyhigh Security Prepping First Partner Program
One analyst says STG will likely sell Skyhigh Security before the end of 2022.
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Skyhigh Security presents a new opportunity for its partners and Trellix’s, Arnie Lopez said.
“We’re excited for the opportunity for our partners, with our deep integrations with our sister company Trellix and their open extended detection and response (XDR) solution, we provide additional valuable use cases for our mutual customers,” he said. “Shared threat intelligence, unified data loss policies, and defense in depth across more attack vectors are all services our partners can deliver with our joint offerings. With our partners, we look forward to reaching the goal together to build Skyhigh Security into the leading provider of SSE in the marketplace.”
There are four main competitive advantages for Skyhigh Security, Lopez said.
“First, our portfolio operates as a single platform with a single portal,” he said. “Second, the portfolio is built from a single policy engine, so customers only have to define their policy once. Third, we support the most comprehensive data protection use case in the industry. Lastly, Skyhigh Security meets customers where they are. If they would prefer to start with an on-premises solution first, we offer that. Together these capabilities provide the simplest and most comprehensive platform in the industry leading to lower cost, faster time to value, and faster time to response.”
Skyhigh Security’s partners and customers will see even faster innovation as the company delivers on its SSE road map, Lopez said.
“In addition, they can continue to rely on us without disruption to their business and we are committed to staying integrated across our technology platforms, customer and partner support, and account management,” he said. “We are currently working on our partner program and will be sharing more details as soon as available early in the second half of the year. For now, our sales and channel account managers will be able to sell and get incented on all products within the first half of 2022.”
Omdia’s Eric Parizo said Skyhigh Security will likely be acquired by another, larger company.
“I think the SSE portfolio as a standalone acquisition would be easier to sell and more attractive to an acquirer [than Trellix],” he said. As we’ve seen recently with the separation of the consumer and enterprise elements of Symantec and McAfee, as well as the FireEye/Mandiant breakup, splitting security companies into smaller pieces (so an acquirer doesn’t have to) has proven successful in getting one or both sold off quickly. My expectation is that Skyhigh will be acquired by a large IT platform vendor like IBM, VMware or Oracle, or potentially a major services player like Verizon, before the end of 2022. Unless it can jettison the legacy FireEye network security portfolio, I see less interest in a Trellix acquisition.”
Parizo doesn’t see splitting McAfee Enterprise as being positive for the companies or their existing customers.
“I think it has become critically important to ensure cybersecurity for the cloud and from the cloud is weaved across the solutions that encompass cybersecurity architectures, and the separation of Skyhigh will make it more challenging to modernize much of the legacy Trellix product portfolio,” he said. “Similarly, organizations don’t necessarily want to acquire cloud security solutions in a vacuum either, and to a degree I think Skyhigh will struggle by not having some of the tighter integrations with the Trellix network, endpoint and SecOps solutions.”
“The one potential caveat is in the area of distributed, cloud-driven data protection,” Parizo said. “Cybersecurity vendors have struggled for years to make DLP work across hybrid environments, and to this day solutions are still largely ineffective. If the primary benefit of the spinout turns out to be Skyhigh narrowing its focus and finally overcoming the industry’s long-standing distributed data protection challenges, then regardless of whether a well-heeled suitor comes calling, realizing that opportunity could potentially make the Skyhigh spinoff worthwhile.”
“The one potential caveat is in the area of distributed, cloud-driven data protection,” Parizo said. “Cybersecurity vendors have struggled for years to make DLP work across hybrid environments, and to this day solutions are still largely ineffective. If the primary benefit of the spinout turns out to be Skyhigh narrowing its focus and finally overcoming the industry’s long-standing distributed data protection challenges, then regardless of whether a well-heeled suitor comes calling, realizing that opportunity could potentially make the Skyhigh spinoff worthwhile.”
Skyhigh Security, which includes the McAfee Enterprise security service edge (SSE) portfolio, will introduce its partner program later this year.
Symphony Technology Group (STG) has completed its split of McAfee Enterprise into two organizations with the launch of Skyhigh Security. It offers cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG), zero trust network access (ZTNA), cloud data loss prevention (DLP), remote browser isolation technology, cloud firewall and cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP).
The rest of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye formed Trellix, a $2 billion cybersecurity titan. STG acquired McAfee Enterprise and FireEye last year.
Seamless Transition for Partners
Arnie Lopez is Skyhigh’s vice president of worldwide systems engineering.
Skyhigh Security’s Arnie Lopez
“Skyhigh Security has partners and will have a partner program,” he said. “We intend to maintain all business relationships and contracts so partners will receive the same sales and marketing support from both Skyhigh Security and Trellix. All conditions, partner portals and legal constructs remain unchanged at this time, bringing a seamless transition to the partners and keeping their familiar processes in place to minimize disruption.”
Eric Parizo is managing principal analyst of Omdia Cybersecurity. (Omdia and Channel Futures share a parent company, Informa.) He said STG’s biggest motivation for splitting McAfee Enterprise is likely the potential resale of both companies.
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