'7 Minutes' with Vectra AI VP of North America Channels Jessica Couto

Vectra AI is taking on and winning deals over Darktrace, ExtraHop and other cybersecurity vendors.

The eight-year-old company is a network threat detection and response (NDR) platform provider. It’s based in San Jose, California.

Vectra’s Jessica Couto

This month, Vectra AI unveiled strategic integrations with Microsoft‘s core security technologies. The company’s Cognito platform uses artificial intelligence to help identify attacks coming over the network and cloud.

Last summer, Vectra AI got $100 million in a Series E funding round. In all, the company has raised more than $200 million.

Jessica Couto is vice president of North America channels at Vectra AI. She specializes in taking cybersecurity startups to the channel community.

In a Q&A with Channel Partners, Couto talks about what differentiates her company from competitors and what it has to offer the channel.

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

Jessica Couto: Customers regularly tell us that our Cognito NDR platform reduces their security workload and accelerates the detection and response to hidden threats that have defeated or bypassed their defensive controls. Against a background of the regular breaches hitting the news, we consistently hear how our high-fidelity, low-noise detection alerts enable security incidents to be identified and responded to quickly before they become high-severity, damaging events. Ease of use and integration, along with high praise for our award-winning customer care and support, see industry leading customer satisfaction and renewal rates for Vectra in the growing NDR market.

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

JC:  Vectra’s global channel program is focused on value creation for the partner and has differing elements tailored to fit varying business models. We provide a blend of face-to-face and online sales and technical training, along with certifications to all of our partners. There are co-marketing tools, campaigns and a funding program available along with a range of business development tools including demo platforms, deal registration, sales enablement updates and technical communities.

We work directly with our channel partners, and their customers and prospects to ensure evaluations are successful and deployments deliver on the security value that Vectra Cognito has demonstrated. Vectra value-added distributors may then overlay additional commercial services and support to ensure all parts of the Vectra value chain work easily and efficiency for our partners. We’ll work with prospective partners to build a joint plan and once both sides are happy and committed, we’ll resource and execute it together for mutual success.

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

JC: One-hundred percent of Vectra’s sales are through our partners. We have 85 partners in the America’s region and they earn an average margin of 22%; [it’s] often higher when they wrap around their services and integration skills.

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

JC: We win the overwhelming majority of competitive sales motions we compete in. Like any expanding market, there are alternatives. However, when we come across vendors such as …

… Darktrace or ExtraHop, we invariably win through a combination of differentiated technology that does what it promises, combined with our security practitioner expertise and, of course, channel partner relationship. 

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

JC: You’ll see us add even more innovation around the use of AI in threat detection and response, especially in the cloud so that we stay ahead of emerging attacker tactics, techniques and procedures. We’re also relentlessly creating more and more direct integrations with other security vendors’ tools so that we reduce technical integration risk and enable faster, smarter ways to automate security process workflows for our customers.

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

JC:  As organizations increasingly adopt hybrid cloud models, we need to break down the silos of traditional on-premises and cloud security tools and working processes. For example, we just announced integration with Microsoft Sentinel and Defender, which complements existing endpoint and security information and event management (SIEM) integrations that allow us to have pan-organization visibility. In some market sectors, in particular medium-size enterprise, we’re seeing rapid growth in consuming NDR as a service. It’s here our growing roster of MSSP partners are taking advantage of the NDR opportunity. And we’ll continue to deliver capabilities which make it easy and profitable to deliver services based upon Cognito NDR.

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

JC: Vectra is heavily invested in and with our partners to help customers reduce the risk of breach, improve the efficiency of their security operations, better manage compliance risks and secure their cloud initiatives. For security and cloud resellers, NDR is a high-growth, profitable market opportunity, and partnering with Vectra will enable growth and build long-term value for you and for your customers.