As part of an ongoing effort to create a managed detection and response (MDR) service, CRITICALSTART has appointed Dwayne Myers to be its vice president of channels and alliances.
The immediate goal is to increase the number of resellers of the company’s namesake MDR service, which Myers says is designed to augment anti-virus (AV) software deployed on endpoints.
The CRITICALSTART MDR service incorporates cybersecurity products from vendors such as Carbon Black, Chronicle, Cylance, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk. Myers, who previously employed by Palo Alto Networks, reports directly to CRITICALSTART CEO Rob Davis. Myers first became acquainted with CRITICALSTART during his tenure at Palo Alto Networks. Before Palo Alto Networks, Myers also worked at Cisco and NEC Americas.
CRITICALSTART claims its MDR business grew by more than 300% last year while maintaining a 99% customer retention rate. In the wake of signing a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro, the goal now is to increase awareness of the company’s service among both customers and traditional resellers of cybersecurity products, says Myers.
The biggest challenge CRITICALSTART and its partners face is most customers still don’t invest in cybersecurity beyond acquiring AV software and a firewall. Customers then typically leave it to the vendors to deliver updates to those platforms versus proactively managing their cybersecurity environment by leveraging advanced Big Data analytics platforms.
“The biggest competitor is doing nothing,” says Myers.
As the number and seriousness of the cybersecurity threats organizations face continue to increase, there’s no doubt interest in managed security services is on the rise. The issue channel partners face is determining to what degree they might want to invest in building those services versus reselling a service provided by a managed security service provider (MSSP) that has already made that investment. Given the cost of building a managed security service in terms of both the capital required and staffing, reselling existing managed services is likely to be the more practical approach for most channel partners.
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