The Gately Report: Cybersecurity Goes Big at CP Expo/MSP Summit
Cybersecurity is the top area of focus for MSPs in terms of their customers' needs.
Hilary Gadda, Coro Cybersecurity‘s new head of national channel management, was on hand in the expo hall and said it was “amazing” to see cybersecurity so prominent at the event.
“I was over at the MSP Summit probably four times when it was open and it was the ‘thunderdome,'” she said. “It was so loud and there were so many conversations going on. It has really taken hold. It has exploded in there. People kept coming back in because thought of something else [they] needed to ask. People are excited to talk about it. We’re prepared to talk to them about it. And we’ve actually had fun working with our brethren, our competition. We’ve had some sparring fun, so that’s been great.”
More partners than ever are looking at cybersecurity as true incremental revenue, Gadda said.
“There have been very natural conversations of how they can grow their business and keep it simple,” she said. “I think cybersecurity can be scary because we can overcomplicate it. You can really [simplify] it and make people feel comfortable to have those conversations with their customers. So we’ve walked away with a lot of folks that were nervous but are now [saying], ‘Let’s get going.'”
Tony Pietrocola, AgileBlue‘s president, said cybersecurity is super hot right now in the channel. AgileBlue provides automated security operations center (SOC).
“I think the big trend we’ve heard while we’re at this show is mobility, connectivity and telecommunications [are] pretty mature at this point,” he said. “A lot of these folks are trying to get into cybersecurity and they don’t necessarily understand cybersecurity. But they know they need to add it to their business. So they’re looking to partner with folks like us.”
AgileBlue works with numerous partner types, including MSPs, MSSPs and digital transformation companies.
“Our automated SOC is detecting cyber threats 24/7, using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) that we’ve developed, before there’s a breach, Pietrocola said. “We’re not so crazy to say we can stop every cyberattack in the world, but what we know we can do is move fast and also mitigate risk to really make sure our customers can hopefully sleep better at night — but if there is a cyber event, it’s minimal and that’s the key.”
Stellar Cyber was among MSP Summit hall exhibitors. Jeff Hill, director of service providers for Stellar Cyber East Coast, said his company provides MSPs and MSSPs with an open extended detection and response (XDR) experience under a single license in a next-generation security operations platform.
“When you look at the security environment, especially walking around in this facility, it’s complex,” he said. “Security organizations want to be profitable, and the more they have to procure products and solutions that are coming from multiple organizations, it’s very challenging because they don’t have the capital to do that. Or they’re also challenged with employee retention or identifying those resources to bring on board to help solve those problems. They just don’t have the staff. And so where we focus our time is helping organizations identify how to do that in a very simplistic manner. We have the ability to ingest everything from the entire attack surface and show them in a correlated view what’s actually happening across the entire environment for their customers. That’s going to help them identify potential opportunities.”
Rubrik was in the MSP Summit hall detailing its Assured Data Protection. Ashley Oare is a channel sales executive for Assured Data Protection from Rubrik.
“Assured Data Protection was built around Rubrik as an MSP,” she said. “We’re their oldest and largest MSP so we can add on managed services by protecting the backup on premises and managing that solution for customers, and we can add a second site target. So if they don’t have a second data center to replicate data to, we have a multitenant Rubrik instance in Ashburn, Virginia, and they’re able to have that second copy off of their network.”
A lot of people are really scared about ransomware, and Rubrik is great against ransomware, Oare said.
“We partner in the channel just like Rubrik does, so we can partner with anyone, ” she said.
Vade is a channel-focused company that specializes in email security. We spoke with Michael Posey, channel sales engineer at Vade, in the MSP Summit hall.
“What we offer partners is the ability to have a solution that can layer effectively with Microsoft’s products to allow MSPs to have a single point of glass for remediation and overview of their clients’ messaging, and to provide a really holistic cybersecurity approach on how they protect their clients and their data,” he said.
MSPs struggle with time on tools and visibility to all of their clients, Posey said.
“This provides a really good platform for MSPs to build their business around because it makes their techs more efficient in what they do, and they honestly don’t have to have a Ph.D. in our product in order to use it or manage it,” he said. “So it makes it super easy.”
D3 Security, a security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) vendor, talked to MSPs and other partners in the MSP Summit hall.
“Our main focus is bringing in the orchestration, the automation for our MSP partners and helping them scale their businesses,” said Jarrett Cummings, enterprise account executive at D3 Security. “Some of the key differentiators for our platform is our event pipeline, which is really focused on automating the tier one, removing those false positives up to 85-90% and allowing those teams to work on more high-fidelity alerts, and in turn freeing up that time and space for them.”
One of the key pain points for MSPs is the amount of alerts coming through, he said.
“We want to help them scale, we want to help them grow,” Cummings said. “And by bringing in that automation at a strong level, it really helps them increase that analyst-to-customer ratio more profitability for them.”
Trae Robinson, enterprise MSP channel sales and account manager at Malwarebytes, said the company just received $100 million in venture capital funding and is trying to help MSPs. Malwarebytes, which provides endpoint protection, privacy and threat prevention solutions, was an exhibitor in the MSP Summit hall.
“I think some of the main pain points for MSPs today is having an ecosystem of too many apps not using tools that play well with each other, and not having the integrations they need to have a fluid workflow,” he said. “We have integrations in place, and depending on your business model, whether you pay annually or monthly, whether you’re a reseller, whether you’re a part of any other partnerships or other MSP programs, we really give you the best pricing we can. And so far it’s just pricing, easy to use and go-to-market strategy. It just really makes sense for the customers. I’m just blown away by the stats we had last year, a record-breaking year. Our retention rate was [approximately] 95%. People love it and they stay once they figure out how to get it going.”
Adlumin, a security operations platform, and managed detection and response (MDR) provider, was in the MSP Summit hall. Michael Whittier, channel manager at Adlumin, said its platform was built for channel partners and MSPs.
“We’re a platform that’s pulling in all the security telemetry from all security devices, desktop servers, VPNs, firewalls and Active Directory,” he said. “We pull all that in and then we manage that all from a single platform that the partner has access to and can manage, or if they want us to manage their platform with 24/7/365 monitoring. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re looking for partners. We also have multitenant views so partners can go in, they can see all their customers from one stack, and then see how we’re responding and interacting with all those security events from all their customers.”
Adlumin is one of the fastest-growing companies in cybersecurity, Whittier said.
“We were No. 170 on the Inc. 5000,” he said. “We’ve been on the Inc. 5000 for the last couple of years as well. We’re more than doubling our business every single year.”
Syxsense, a unified security and endpoint management platform, was an exhibitor in the MSP Summit hall. Gene Kim, director of MSP and MSSP at Syxsense, said his company is focused on addressing MSP and MSSPs’ pain points.
“I think it is a matter of scale for them in terms of delivering more and more services specifically around the patching area, and vulnerability identification and remediation,” he said. “Lots of MSPs and MSSPs are outsourcing. They have partners for their SOCs, but they’re still delivering the baseline security services that every one of their customers want. And the ability to scale that portion of their business has been very difficult because a tool like ours has not existed. So nothing else in the market today does what we do in terms of vulnerability scanning and remediation, and having this workflow engine built in behind it.”
Exclusive Networks, a distribution partner focused on cybersecurity, was an exhibitor in the MSP Summit hall. Tom Miller, regional sales manager at Exclusive Networks, said the company was there to connect with MSPs.
“We want to cast a wider net into that market,” he said. “The value that we bring to them in distribution is we can be an extension of their sales team, meaning that they can leverage our engineers versus theirs. A lot of MSPs are smaller. It’s a two-to-three-guys-and-a-dog-type shop. They don’t have to invest in that infrastructure or those technical resources so they can rely on our bench to help them grow their business from a cybersecurity and technical perspective.”
There are more than 250,000 unfilled security jobs in the United States alone, Miller said.
“So we can help reseller partners connect those dots,” he said. “We’re not all things to all people, but we absolutely can understand their business need and help deliver a business outcome. We’ve been growing year over year well north of 25%. So certainly growth would be a No. 1 goal. But really, it would also be value in helping the partner community.”
Exclusive Networks, a distribution partner focused on cybersecurity, was an exhibitor in the MSP Summit hall. Tom Miller, regional sales manager at Exclusive Networks, said the company was there to connect with MSPs.
“We want to cast a wider net into that market,” he said. “The value that we bring to them in distribution is we can be an extension of their sales team, meaning that they can leverage our engineers versus theirs. A lot of MSPs are smaller. It’s a two-to-three-guys-and-a-dog-type shop. They don’t have to invest in that infrastructure or those technical resources so they can rely on our bench to help them grow their business from a cybersecurity and technical perspective.”
There are more than 250,000 unfilled security jobs in the United States alone, Miller said.
“So we can help reseller partners connect those dots,” he said. “We’re not all things to all people, but we absolutely can understand their business need and help deliver a business outcome. We’ve been growing year over year well north of 25%. So certainly growth would be a No. 1 goal. But really, it would also be value in helping the partner community.”
Cybersecurity was more prominent than ever at last week’s massive Channel Partners Conference and Expo and MSP Summit in Las Vegas.
The 8,000 attendee mark shattered another record for the event. And plenty of cybersecurity providers were on hand to showcase how their solutions can help MSPs and other channel partners.
What’s Behind Focus on Cyber at MSP Summit, CP Expo
Kelly Danziger, general manager and vice president of channel at Informa Tech, said it’s no surprise cybersecurity is now such a big part of the MSP Summit and CP Expo.
“If you take a look at the MSP 501 Quarterly Survey, the last quarterly survey we did, 42% of the MSPs said this is the top area of focus that they have based upon the needs of their customers,” she said. “And then we also look at the Channel Futures Technology Advisor 101 and we look at the surveys that were happening over there, and that came up 25%. So this is an area of focus that’s impacting the entire channel.”
Customers need to be met where they are, Danziger said.
“And they need that information, that knowledge and the resources on cyber, ” she said. “That’s why we are doubling down on providing the content and the resources to help our customers.”
Right off the bat, Danny Jenkins, CEO of MSP Summit title sponsor ThreatLocker, took the main stage to discuss the reasons for endpoint security and how MSPs can adopt it for their customers to give themselves an operational advantage.
See our slideshow above for more cybersecurity coverage from MSP Summit and CP Expo.
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