Secure Browser Provider Island Appoints Forescout Vet to Lead Channel

Island, a secure browser provider, has hired Keith Weatherford, previously with Forescout, as vice president of worldwide channel sales.

Island’s Keith Weatherford

Weatherford brings more than 20 years of experience developing and implementing channel partner strategies for security companies. He’ll build and scale Island’s channel presence.

Before joining Island, Weatherford was Forescout‘s vice president of worldwide channel sales. He’s also held channel sales leadership roles at Symantec, Blue Coat Systems and McAfee.

Weatherford’s appointment follows the recent addition of Richard Greene as Island’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships.

The Island Enterprise Browser enables organizations to protect users and data at the very point where they interact with SaaS and internal web applications. Using the Island Enterprise Browser, security teams fully control the last mile. That includes basic protections such as copy, paste, download, upload and screenshot capture, to more advanced security demands such as data redaction, watermarking and multifactor authentication (MFA) insertion.

Why Weatherford Joined Island

“There are many reasons why I took this role,” Weatherford said. “The leadership team is one of the best I have ever worked with, the tech/product is incredible and developing at a pace that anyone would be challenged to keep up, and the opportunity to build a channel go to market (GTM) from the ground up.”

Island will focus on VARs and resellers in the commercial space, and SIs and resellers/VARs in the federal space, he said.

“We are seeing consultancies reach out already for both internal use and advisory business,” Weatherford said. “I certainly want to move to MSP/MSSP’s quickly though. They will help us get to the massive midmarket opportunity.”

Island has the baseline partner program elements in place, including deal registration and margin protection. “But we need more,” he said.

“I will introduce teaming plans and incumbency protection quickly,” Weatherford said. “We have also been incredibly flexible in how we work with partners outside of the program four walls. We have already solved channel conflict in creative ways to ensure any partner that leans in with us and leads with Island is compensated for their efforts. This year also allows me to listen to where the market is heading and build ahead of those trends.”

For example, Island will be looking at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) channel partner private offer, he said.

“We want to help customers who want to buy down their cloud commitments, but serve that need through partner private offers as one example,” Weatherford said. “We will look at Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Azure marketplaces as well.”

Adding SPIFFs Top Priority

SPIFFs are at the top of Weatherford’s to-do list.

“Our deal registrations in the month of February alone are double what we saw in the fourth quarter,” he said. “We are seeing an activity hockey stick right now. I want to throw some aggressive SPIFFs into the market to continue to accelerate that pace. When customers experience a demo or a proof of concept of the Island Enterprise Browser, we see use case deals immediately hit our pipeline.”

Island is focusing on use cases that solve immediate problems for customers, Weatherford said. Those include contractor access, bring your own device (BYOD), business process outsourcing (BPO) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

“If we can solve these use cases without introducing an agent and eliminate backhauling traffic, and deliver better policy control and an improved end user experience, we think we can check all the key stakeholder boxes,” he said. “Once we land, we are incredibly confident we can move to the primary browser position for these customers and drive ROI through reduced complexity.”