SonicWall this week announced it has revamped its channel program for managed security service providers (MSSPs) as part of an effort to provide additional support to one of the fastest-growing segments of the channel.
The three-tier SonicWall First program has been enhanced to provide more flexible pricing options along with additional premier technical support, access to MSSP field sales and technical specialists, increased access to co-marketing funds and specialization training and assessments for sales and technical staff.
Collectively, these capabilities will make it easier for SonicWall MSSP partners to compete in a highly competitive segment of the IT security market in a way that also makes the costs the partners might incur more predictable, says Luca Taglioretti, vice president for global MSSP and carrier sales.
“One of the main points of the program is to have predictable costs,” says Taglioretti.
The MSSP market is evolving because as more security services are delivered via the cloud the number of partners that can describe themselves as an MSSP is increasing. Many of those MSSPs, however, may only be reselling a service provided by a vendor. SonicWall wants to provide more support to MSSPs that are building a service from the ground up that requires a significant investment on the part of the partner, says Taglioretti. One of the primary requirements for participating in the SonicWall program is that each MSSP needs to have its own security or network operations center.
SonicWall to achieve that goal is now making available both monthly and annual licensing models and providing access to Secure Mobile Access (SMA), a gateway that provides end customers a virtual private network (VPN). Demand for more robust approaches to delivering VPN services is expected to increase in the wake of a COVID-19 pandemic that has required more end users to work from home.
It’s not clear to what degree the COVID-19 pandemic may drive more organizations to contract MSSPs versus continuing to employ internal IT teams to secure their IT environments. Before the crisis demand for managed security services was rising because many organizations could not afford to hire and retain their own cybersecurity staff. With no sign of cybersecurity attacks abating any time soon, many more organizations may soon find they have no alternative than to rely on MSSPs for expertise they can’t do without.
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