Exclusive Networks Adds Bitglass to Line Card

Exclusive Networks, the global value-added distributor for cybersecurity and cloud solutions, on Wednesday announced a U.S. and Canadian partnership with Bitglass, the cloud access security broker (CASB) vendor. 

A CASB is a policy enforcement point that delivers data and threat protection in the cloud, on any device, anywhere. 

As part of Exclusive’s strategy, Bitglass fits in around cloud migration, according to Tim Kubiak, vice president of sales North American at Exclusive Networks.

Exclusive Networks’ Tim Kubiak

“Depending on which statistics you use, about 20% of what can be moved to the cloud has moved to the cloud, meaning that 80% of applications and data are still in a place to go there. And part of that has to do with the security around it,” he told Channel Futures. 

In Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers, published a year ago, Bitglass falls into the leader category for CASB, alongside vendors McAfee, Netskope, and Symantec. 

Bitglass’ zero-day CASB balances cloud agility, security and user experience, and agentless zero-day controls for any device, according to the vendor. 

Other Bitglass features include: data loss prevention (DLP) and contextual access control; user and entity behavior analytics; zero-day shadow IT discovery; single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication; and an agentless architecture that the company says is easily deployed and secures personal and mobile devices. 

While Bitglass CASB joins a couple of other CASB vendor products offered to partners through Exclusive Networks – vendors such as Fortinet and Netskope (whose product Exclusive Networks offers only in Europe) – it doesn’t overlap with them; in fact, Bitglass CASB targets midmarket companies and smaller. 

“That’s where I see Bitglass as having a unique place in the market,” said Kubiak. “It’s easier to deploy [and] easier to manage than other more complex products.” 

In terms of the distributor’s portfolio, Kubiak sees CASB as a growing area and Bitglass as a disruptor in the space.

“As there are more things ready and able to move to the cloud, the discussion of what you can do to secure them, how scalable is that solution, how easy is it to deploy that solution — that’s where Bitglass checks the boxes,” he said. 

Kubiak sees Bitglass as a fit for Exclusive Networks resellers set as a complementary offer as well as a way for the distributor to attract net-new partners as the company expands geographically, adds new partners, plus cybersecurity and cloud products. Exclusive Networks also is focused on helping to scale the Bitglass channel. 

Exclusive Networks this year built a dedicated SMB sales organization for customers and vendors in a new Miami location.  

Today, the majority of Exclusive Networks partners are VARs, but the distributor is actively working on recruiting MSPs and MSSPs.

“I’m … having conversations with MSPs who are not in the security space now and building a program on helping them evolve their businesses,” said Kubiak. “If you’re a network and switching MSP and you want to get into the security space, no one has built a good road map that I’ve seen.” 

This is an effort that Exclusive Networks will be working on over the next six months.