More than 1,600 MSPs at Pax8 Beyond this week saw demos of the new cloud marketplace and heard from new leadership on the company’s vision. We had a reporter on the ground there, so be sure to check out what you might have missed if you couldn’t make it to Denver. Pax8 wasn’t the only making news though. Here’s what MSP Success rounded up for you.
Products
Compliance Scorecard’s New Risk Register Creates Record of Recommendations
Compliance Scorecard, a governance-as-a-service provider, recently launched new features for its compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) platform:
- Risk Register: Tracks risks with descriptions, mitigation actions, and potential impacts.
- Plan of Action & Milestones (POAM) Management: Provides MSPs with a structured approach to managing and mitigating identified risks.
- Compliance Control Assessment (CCA) Reports: MSPs can generate detailed compliance reports and simplify the auditing process.
- Risk Register Integration with Assessment Reports: Allows MSPs to directly add ‘At Risk’ items identified during assessments to the Risk Register with a single click.
MSP Success spoke with Tim Golden, CEO of Compliance Scorecard, from the expo hall at Pax8 Beyond this week, to learn how these features would help MSPs improve their customers’ security posture. “One of the core things that we help MSPs do is to have that risk conversation with their customer using our unique scorecards,” says Golden. “A lot of MSPs do assessments, but what do they do with those results after the fact? The risk register creates a record of the recommendations MSPs are making to their clients to keep them secure. It keeps a record of clients turning down things like 2FA. Now, the MSP can show the risk register in the event of the incident and prove that the client was informed. Additionally, the risk register gives the customer the ability to make an informed business decision about identified areas of risk.”
The new features are available now to anyone who uses Compliance Scorecard.
Cork Teams With DataStream To Bring Cyber Insurance And Cyber Warranty Together
Cork is teaming with DataStream to enable MSPs and their SMBs customers to get both cyber insurance and a cyber warranty policy from one platform. Under the new agreement, DataStream will leverage the Cork Platform for cyber insurance policy underwriting, including estimates and quoting.
Paul Guthrie, co-founder and managing director of DataStream, told MSP Success during the Pax8 Beyond conference, “It’s incredibly important that cybersecurity and cyber insurance work in concert, although it’s challenging to actually put them together and make them work seamlessly. But if insurers and underwriters and security can exchange data freely, then you can enable very efficient outcomes.”
When asked about the advantage of having the vendors integrated together for MSPs, Carlson Choi, CEO of Cork, said, “Putting the [cyber warranty and cyber insurance] together is really offering the end client the best financial protection. If and when an incident occurs … there’ll be zero out of pocket for the client at that time.”
Choi also mentioned that Cork is working on an endpoint-based pricing option, so stay tuned for that!
Pia Introduces Usage-Based Pricing; Channel Chief Tim Coach Departs
Pia, an intelligent automation platform for MSPs, is now offering usage-based pricing, enabling partners to only pay for the resources and automations needed.
“Our partners have expressed a need for usage-based pricing to better control costs, and we heard them loud and clear” said Gerwai Todd, CEO of Pia, in a press statement. “The feedback after sharing the news with our current partners has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are now opening this pricing model option to all.”
Pia will continue to offer fixed pricing plans with unlimited usage too. “Whether partners prefer the flexibility of usage-based pricing or the simplicity of fixed pricing, we are committed to ensuring they have the right solution for their businesses,” Todd said.
This announcement comes in the same week Pia’s Channel Chief Tim Coach abruptly departed. Asked for comment, Pia provide this statement from Todd:
“On behalf of the entire company, I want to thank Tim for his service and contributions over the past couple of years. He played a crucial role in laying the groundwork for Pia’s growth and success. We wish Tim all the best in his future endeavors and look forward to seeing where his journey takes him next.
“Looking ahead, we will continue to optimize our go-to-market strategy with a consideration of our overall marketing mix and channels to market. Meanwhile, we will remain focused on delivering value to our partners by streamlining their business operations and maximizing their service desks through AI-led automation.”
Arctic Wolf Reveals MDR Enhancements, Bundles, and Partner Program Updates
Cybersecurity vendor Arctic Wolf made three major announcements at Partner Jam, a weeklong summit for its global channel, alliance, and insurance partner communities.
Enhanced identity threat and response capabilities. The new MDR capabilities enable immediate action against threats in identity infrastructure, leveraging response actions to quickly disable impacted user accounts, revoking access to potentially sensitive information or systems, and reducing risk for organizations.
In addition, the MDR now integrates with Microsoft Defender for Identity and has expanded the existing Okta integration with Okta Impossible Travel Detection.
Security operations bundles and increased warranty. Arctic Wolf’s new Security Operations Bundles provide the full suite of technology, security expertise, and risk transfer options, including MDR and Concierge optionality. All bundles will also include Arctic Wolf Cyber Resilience Assessment (CRA), a recently announced risk assessment tool. In addition, Arctic Wolf has increased its Security Operations Warranty up to $1.5 million, available with qualifying bundle subscriptions.
Partner program enhancements. Key enhancements to the program include: a new channel rebate program for eligible partners, with additional growth incentives; Managed Security Awareness Plus partner benefit expansion for eligible partners featuring content compliance access and email threat level reporting; Incident Response specialization expansion for eligible partners, including complimentary IR JumpStart Retainer, IR playbook, and preference profiles; and Access to Pack Rewards program expanded to sales and technical reps across all North America partner tiers.
Partner Programs
Securonix Expands Partner Program With New Pricing Structure, MDF, And More
Securonix, a SIEM platform provider, has expanded its partner program. Now called Elevate, the program includes new tiered pricing based on program levels, enhanced enablement and market development funds (MDF)s, and training. In addition, Securonix is moving to a standardized consumption model for its Unified Defense SIEM, based on gigabytes per day.
Other new features include new AI-Reinforced capabilities (Securonix EON) to address expanded customer use cases, new certification, a referral model for agents and affiliates, OEM technology licensing for technology partners, and co-branded partner marketing.
People
Barracuda names Geoff Waters Chief Revenue Officer
Barracuda Networks appointed Geoff Waters to chief revenue officer. Waters will lead worldwide sales and partnerships, helping Barracuda accelerate growth in markets around the world.
Most recently, Watrs was president of Americas Sales at Check Point Software, where he managed the line of business across Canada, the United States, and Latin America. Prior to that, he was SVP of global channel sales at VMware where he spent 13 years building and leading go-to-market teams for several of VMware’s managed services and cloud businesses.
Distribution
SPECTRA Cyber Resilience Warranties Now Available Through Ingram Micro
Bermuda-based Cyber warranty provider SPECTRA is now offering its new Certification and Cyber Resilience Warranties to Ingram Micro channel partners in the U.S.
Members of Ingram Micro’s SMB and Trust X Alliance communities have a first-to-market opportunity with SPECTRA to become certified and offer Cyber Resilience Warranties covering up to $1 million per customer. The Certification of Resilience for MSPs is backed by a 100% cash warranty for end-customers in the event of a qualifying cyber incident such as ransomware, distributed denial of service, and business email compromise.
By The Numbers
New Research From Bitdefender: Cybersecurity Professionals Call AI A Threat
Bitdefender’s just released 2024 Cybersecurity Assessment Report finds almost all (96%) respondents surveyed consider GenAI a threat to cybersecurity, with more than a third (36%) stating its use for manipulating or the creation of deceptive content (deepfakes) is a significant threat. Not daunted though, 74% believe colleagues in their department could spot a deep fake.
The research also finds that data breaches continue to increase. More than half of all respondents (57%) experienced a data breach or data leak in the last 12 months, up 6% from the previous year.
No surprise, then, that security professionals have a heavy load, with 70% of respondents working weekends because of security concerns their company faces. Given that, this should also not be surprising: 64% of respondents say they will be looking for a new job in the next 12 months, up 25% from last year.
Finally, respondents say the top challenges of managing cloud environments are identity access management (39%) and compliance (38%). And just 44.6% say they conduct regular audits and assessments of their cloud infrastructure.
MSP Success staff writer Sarah Jordan contributed reporting to this roundup.
