The Gately Report: New Sophos CEO Focused On Helping Midmarket, Smaller Businesses

New Sophos CEO Joe Levy said partners are playing a critical role in the vendor’s efforts to help midmarket and smaller organizations, and the hybridization of products and services.

Levy was serving as president and acting CEO since February, when Kris Hagerman stepped down from the position. The company then named him CEO in May.

The new Sophos CEO has been with the vendor since 2015 and started as chief technology officer.

Levy will be a keynote speaker at next month's MSP Summit in Atlanta.

“I have fundamentally believed for the 30-plus years that I've been doing cybersecurity that there is just an overinvestment of dollars and attention in the enterprise segment of the market,” he said. “Most cybersecurity startups build products for enterprise buyers, and most of the mature businesses that exist in the product space or in the services space tend to be optimized for serving the larger customers. And very, very few organizations, either on the product or the service side, are designed uniquely to serve that underserved segment of the market, the midmarket and SMB in particular.”

New Sophos CEO Has 'Keen Interest' in Midmarket, SMB

While working with a Utah-based VAR in the 1990s, Levy developed a keen interest in midmarket and smaller businesses.

Related:Register Now for The MSP Summit, Sept. 16-19, Atlanta

“The other lesson that I learned while I was doing this is that there needs to be a hybridization of products and services,” he said. “You can't just design a set of technologies, throw them over a fence and hope for good outcomes based on that. The past decade in particular has taught us rather acutely that cybersecurity is an interactive sport and that we have to have continuous engagement with the technologies to ensure that they're doing for us what we expect them to do. Large enterprises are generally better equipped to be able to do that, meaning that they have the staffing, the talent and the budgets to be able to provide 24/7 security operations centers. The vast majority of SMBs, even into the midmarket, generally lack that kind of resourcing, and this just aligns with the well-understood concept of a cybersecurity skills shortage that exists globally today, but it's most acutely felt by that segment of the market.”

Vendors should be providing a combination of both products and services to ensure not just the deployment of the technology, but effective operation of that technology, Levy said.

“So that's fundamentally what drives me and what we've been focusing on and will continue to focus on as a company,” he said.

Related:Joe Levy Gets Official Appointment as Sophos CEO

Scroll through our slideshow above for more from Levy and more cybersecurity news.