The CrowdStrike software update that caused a worldwide IT outage on Windows PCs grabbed everyone’s attention on Friday, and experts will continue to dissect the incident in the weeks ahead. But when you’re taking a break from rebooting your customers’ PCs, here’s some channel news you may want to catch up on from Cork, Hatz AI, DNSFilter, and more.
Featured Interview
Cork’s New CEO On His Appointment, Cork 2.0, And New DataStream Partnership
It was a busy week for cyber warranty company Cork. The startup appointed Dan Candee as CEO, replacing founding CEO Carlson Choi, who is staying on as chief product and technology officer. The company also rolled out v2.0 of its platform and announced a partnership with DataStream.
This is Candee’s first run at CEO. Previously, he was chief business officer at Todyl, and has held executive positions at AWS and Dell. He tells MSP Success that he’s excited to join the team at Cork. “I think my track record of being able to put partners in the front and center of everything that we’re doing and to listen intently and to understand what they’re saying, and more importantly to understand what partners’ clients are trying to solve for, what challenges they’re facing, and then to figure out how to solve that with love, respect, performance, as quickly as possible, is something that allows Carlson [Choi] to focus on the area of his expertise and allows me to focus on providing even more value for our partners.”
One of his first orders of business was forming a partner advisory council. “I’m bringing together our most influential partners to make sure that their voice is influencing our product roadmap, our go to market, and that they have a direct line to my leadership team and I to inform us where we can be doing even better,” Candee says.
Also in the near term, he says, Cork will be “investing in our platform and in Cork 2.0 to deliver even better insights from all of the signals that we ingest through our partnerships.”
Expect to see more of Cork too. “As a community-first, partner-first organization, we’re going to spend more time in the field,” Candee says. “And so we’ll be making some investments around some of the events that we’re going to and some of the communities that we’re involved in.”
Regarding the new partnership with DataStream, Candee says it will enable MSPs to get “near-instant insurance quotes and insights into what will be helpful for a particular MSP’s client.” He says Cork will be talking about additional partnerships with other insurance companies and cyber insurance brokers “in the very near future.”
Meanwhile, Candee points to the enhancements in Cork 2.0, including improved business email compromise and compliance reporting capabilities, plus a simplified pricing model “so that MSPs can leverage our end user-based pricing. Our goal is to for Cork to be a revenue center for MSPs.”
Products
DNSFilter Debuts New Query Log and Product Roadmap At Virtual Conference
DNSFilter, a DNS security solution provider, announced their all-new Query Log during their virtual conference, dnsUnfiltered: Securing Your Shores. This addition to the DNSFilter dashboard will allow users to search for data easier and customize their page view. The Query Log is currently in beta and will be launching by the end of July 2024. They also announced two new integrations with Microsoft Sentinel and Azure Monitor. These integrations come with an automatic data export feature, allowing you to export all of your DNSFilter logs to a SEM or other tool.
As far as upcoming releases, DNSFilter said users should look forward to improvements to the relay configuration process, with deployments being more streamlined going forward. They are also launching an advanced filtering system, which will allow not just for blocking and approving entire websites, but for specific pages of those websites. For example, instead of blocking Reddit entirely, you could block pages like r/funny, but allow industry-specific pages like r/msp. The advanced filtering system is currently in private beta.
Hatz AI Unveils Adel, An AI Phone Agent
Hatz AI revealed a new AI phone agent. The startup company is developing a platform that helps MSPs build an AI-as-a-Service business with AI applications and agents, vector storage, and custom LLMs.
Designed to handle incoming calls to a help desk, Adel is customizable, intelligent AI that includes pre-built temples, orchestration, 40+ human-like voices, and 10+ LLMs to choose from. Hatz AI CEO Jimmy Hatzell wrote in a LinkedIn post: “It will only get faster, smarter, and more capable as time goes on.”
Hatzell also announced that JP Kehoe has joined Hatz AI as head of global sales. He was previously vice president of global XDR sales at Barracuda, and prior to that was senior sales director at SKOUT until it was purchased by Barracuda.
Druva Announces Data Security Capabilities to Accelerate Incident Response
Data security vendor Druva announced a new threat hunting capabilities for indicators of compromise (IOCs) that allow customers to more quickly understand the gestation, timeline, and impact of threats throughout their data environment. Druva also empowers IT and security teams with contextual data insights throughout incident response workflows to understand, remediate, and recover from critical incidents. The Druva Data Security Cloud is a fully managed SaaS solution offering air-gapped and immutable data protection across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments.
In addition, Druva announced expanded global availability of Managed Data Detection and Response (Managed DDR) for backup environments. This includes 24x7x365 monitoring of backups for early threat detection, expert analysis by Druva incident response to provide data insights for anomalous behavior, pre-built response runbooks and automatic lockdown of backups to safeguard data, and expedited support and expert assistance to customer IR teams during cyber recovery.
NETSCOUT Expands IT Observability For The Digital Edge
NETSCOUT, a provider of performance management, cybersecurity, and DDoS attack protection solutions, introduced its new suite of Business Edge Observability products, including the nGenius Edge Sensor and Remote InfiniStreamNG solutions to deliver IT observability for remote locations at the digital edge.
According to the company, NETSCOUT Business Edge Observability offerings combine the power of the company’s patented Adaptive Services Intelligence (ASI) technology with synthetic testing and automatic decryption together to deliver comprehensive visibility that scales to any essential business edge. For remote sites, nGenius Edge Sensors and Remote InfiniStreamNGs become the eyes and ears of an IT team, reducing the time to troubleshoot and resolve issues.
Alliances and Partnerships
Barracuda Incents Customers To Buy Through AWS Marketplace
Barracuda Networks, a provider of cloud-first security solutions, has signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services to simplify licensing, procurement, and deployment for resellers and MSPs. It includes significant investments in marketing development funds, proof of concept funding, and independent software vendor (ISV) workload migration funding. The SCA also enables Barracuda to help resellers and MSPs accelerate their customers’ migration to the cloud, according to Barracuda.
Barracuda’s application security, network security, email security, and data protection solutions are already available within AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from ISVs that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS.
“Creating new incentives for customers to choose Barracuda offerings in AWS Marketplace aligns with our strategy of simplifying the process of accessing and deploying cloud-based security solutions,” said Nicole Napiltonia, VP of global alliances at Barracuda, in a press statement. “We are empowering customers to accelerate their digital transformation initiatives by protecting their data and applications so they can leverage the scalability and flexibility of the cloud.”
Staff writer Sarah Jordan contributed reporting to this roundup.
