'7 Minutes' With Vade Secure's Chief Solution Architect Adrien Gendre

**Editor’s Note: “7 Minutes” is a feature where we ask channel executives from startups – or companies that may be new to the Channel Partners audience – a series of quick questions about their businesses and channel programs.**

Email security provider Vade Secure, which recently launched a native, artificial intelligence (AI)-based email security add-on for Office 365, is actively growing its North American channel while taking aim at its competitors like Proofpoint, Mimecast, and Barracuda.

The company provides predictive email defense to more than 500 million inboxes globally, utilizing AI, machine learning and data from its global threat centers. It protects against email scams such as phishing and spear phishing, malware and ransomware, and is used by major ISPs, OEMs, SMBs and enterprises globally.

Vade Secure for Office 365 runs on Microsoft Azure, providing Microsoft partners, cloud solution providers (CSPs), and MSPs with a “complementary, high-margin solution for their Office 365 customers,” according to the company.

Gartner estimates that by 2020, 50 percent of Office 365 clients will use third-party security services, and while native Office 365 security catches most spam and known threats, many organizations are strengthening their defenses with a layered approach.

Vade Secure’s Adrien Gendre

Last November, Vade Secure closed a $12 million funding round to accelerate international growth and continue innovation.

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Adrien Gendre, Vade Secure’s chief solution architect, talks about what his company has to offer partners and its strategy to attract more MSPs.

Channel Partners: Tell us what customers love about your product or service. What’s the secret selling sauce?

Adrien Gendre: Traditional reputation and signature-based email security products are only capable of stopping known threats. Our customers adopt and continue using Vade Secure because our predictive approach leveraging artificial intelligence offers superior protection against unknown or emerging threats. Moreover, thanks to our native, API-based integration with Office 365, the solution is extremely easy to deploy. Partners can get new clients up and running in just a few clicks — without the hassle of changing their [mail exchanger] record and disrupting the email flow.

Lastly, customers and partners value our user-centric approach to email security. End users can continue using Office 365 without needing to learn and use a separate quarantine. Moreover, admins can customize user-facing elements, such as in-message spear phishing banners or phishing warning pages, to the client’s brand and preference. This makes us fully transparent to end users.

CP: Describe your channel program — metal levels, heavy on certifications, open or selective, unique features? Do you work with masters and/or distributors?

AG: We have a three-tiered partner program – silver, gold, platinum – with associated certification requirements, and a progressive margin from 20-30 percent. One unique benefit of the program is internal licenses of our product, so partners can protect their own mailboxes and sell with confidence.

We’re aggressively recruiting new MSP partners and building out our channel in North America. In particular, we believe there’s a great opportunity for Microsoft partners who resell Office 365 to also resell Vade Secure as a complementary, value-added service that augments, rather than replaces, native Office 365 security.

We have two distributors in Europe and are close to signing our first global distributor.

CP: Quick-hit answers: Percentage of sales through the channel, number of partners, average margin. Go.

AG: In the corporate market, nearly 100 percent of our sales …

… come through the channel.

Sales to ISPs and telcos are managed directly by Vade Secure. We currently have about 500 partners worldwide, mainly concentrated in Europe and Asia. As I mentioned above, a big focus in 2018 is signing on new partners in North America. Our average partner margin ranges from 20-30 percent, depending on the level of certification.

CP: Who are your main competitors, and what makes your offering better?

AG: Our main competitors are Proofpoint, Mimecast and Barracuda. What sets Vade Secure apart is our native Microsoft API-based integration with Office 365. This allows us to scan internal emails in order to detect and block insider attacks, whereas cloud email security gateway products can only scan incoming/outgoing messages because they sit in line in the SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol) mail flow. Another benefit of being natively inside Office 365 is that there’s no external quarantine or user training required. We simply leverage existing Outlook folders for classification of spam and low-priority emails, while ensuring malicious threats never reach users in the first place.

Another important differentiator of Vade Secure is our advanced, yet user-friendly spear phishing (or business email compromise) detection. We’re able to detect BEC techniques like alias spoofing and use of cousin domains, and put a customizable banner in the email alerting the user of a suspected spoofing attempt. Lastly, for our partners, we offer a provisioning API that enables fully automated provisioning and billing of clients. This means Vade Secure clients can be activated and managed through the central system where you manage all of your products and services.

CP: How do you think your technology portfolio will change in the next three years?

AG: While many security vendors are in the early stages of experimenting with artificial intelligence, Vade Secure has a proven track record of leveraging machine learning predictive models as a key component of our layered approach to email security. We will continue to make investments in AI to improve the efficacy of these models, and ensure they adapt along with the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

Another big road-map theme for us will be exposing components of our technology as APIs so they can be easily and seamlessly integrated with other products and services. These APIs are key to ensuring we fit seamlessly in the landscapes of both our MSP partners, and ISP and enterprise customers.

CP: How do you expect your channel strategy to evolve over that time frame?

AG: We expect the mix of our partner community to shift from resellers to MSPs. It’s clear that companies, particularly in the SMB and midmarket, are turning to MSPs to manage their Office 365 environments. These MSPs will increasingly add third-party security tools to augment native Office 365 security, and help grow their businesses.

CP: What didn’t we ask that partners should know?

AG: Vade Secure’s customer renewal rate is north of 95 percent. This isn’t just great for us; it means that partners can focus on winning new business, versus retaining existing customers. In addition, we heard from many partners at Microsoft Inspire … that insider attacks are a clear and present danger for their clients. We recently published data that reflects this trend. The number of new phishing URLs spoofing Microsoft — and in particular, Office 365 increased 57 percent in [the second quarter]. The goal of these attacks is to harvest Office 365 credentials and launch insider attacks aimed at reaping financial rewards as well as gaining access to valuable data, files, and contacts.