Global cybersecurity vendor ESET may be “the best product you’ve never heard of,” says Nathan Ware, CEO/CTO at Rain Networks, a value-added distributor specializing in a cybersecurity lineup with white-glove training, configuration, and integration. Ware says Rain Networks is ESET’s largest MSP distributor globally.
At last week’s ESET World conference in Las Vegas, the vendor made it clear that being what Ware calls “the best kept secret in the industry” is about to change. ESET is coupling its new MDR for MSPs offering, announced at the conference, with an increased focus on messaging to the MSP community.
Slovakia-based ESET has been in the MSP segment since around 2012, but Cameron Tousley, director of MSP Channels for ESET North America, acknowledges it’s not necessarily a “household name” for U.S. MSPs.
With the rollout of MDR for MSPs, he says the “timing is right” to spread the word. “It really comes down to the evolution of our solution set. So you can go to bat with a couple core products, but if you start getting your XDR intact and then you have an MDR service and you have the AI advisor tool. … “That, paired with our RMM and PSA integrations, I think it’s just good timing for us. We’ve done all the hard work upfront and now we’re going to go out to the market.”
He adds, “We’re going out to as many of the bigger shows and smaller shows and getting involved with community events and things like that so that way we can get the brand out there and get not only to the smaller [MSPs], but the medium and the larger ones as well.”
Ware says, “With what ESET has now, they have a more palatable financial model that I think is going to allow their EDR service to take off [with MSPs] because now the small guy will have the help he needs.”
So if ESET is unfamiliar to your MSP business, here are three things you may not know about the vendor.
1. Focusing on Cost Effectiveness
Jakub Debski, chief product officer, says ESET strives to develop solutions that are cost-effective for service delivery. “So we are investing a lot into preemptive security, into proactive security that will stop the breaches before they happen or interrupt the breaches during the kill chain. And from this perspective, we have a set of solutions and technologies that assure automated detection and response.”
In addition, he says, the new Ransomware Remediation solution, also announced at the conference, “automates recovery of files. Basically, the moment the ransomware attack is detected, we are recovering the files. So the MSP doesn’t have to do anything and spend time on reverting the situation to the previous state.”
For Craig Terrell, partner and CIO at ProStratus, an MSP headquartered in Springfield, Ohio, the flexible pricing of the new MDR is key for maintaining profitability. ProStratus has been using ESET solutions for the past five years or so, including endpoint protection and the PROTECT Elite XDR (extended detection and response). With ESET MDR for MSPs, “you can use the MDR on a monthly basis now and as little as one endpoint, which allows us to integrate it into our contracts,” Terrell says. “Because right now we have one- to three-year contracts for all of our customers. So to bring something new in cuts revenue. This allows us then to gradually roll that out as we renew customer contracts and then as we bring new customers on. So eventually we’ll have everybody running MDR.”
The effectiveness of ESET’s threat intelligence also lowers total cost of ownership, Tousley says. “We have 11 centers stationed around the world and in many cases, some hot areas, where we’re tracking all these threat actor groups. The data that’s coming in is poured into our products. The efficacy is amazing out of that, which makes the overall effectiveness and total cost of ownership second to none.”
2. Expanding Integrations with the Tools MSPs Use
Travis Woods, CEO at Fort Point IT, an MSP in San Francisco, is excited about the MDR offering but would like to see ESET grow its integrations. The ability to integrate ESET with their PSA “allows for automation, and then fewer screens our techs have to address.”
Debski says ESET currently integrates with ConnectWise and is the vendor is expanding their portfolio of out-of-the- box integrations. In addition he says, “We are rebuilding our XDR platform. We aim to make it an open XDR platform that will allow out-of-the-box integrations not only for ingestion of data from different security sources, but also to do two-way integration with a third-party environment. Which means that the RRM tools definitely are on our list to follow.”
An early version of the open XDR platform will be available to limited partners toward the end of the year, and then Debski expects it to be generally available in 2026.
Tousley adds that developers are working on integration with ConnectWise’s Asio platform for the RMM and PSA, and “we actually just integrated into their Security360 offering. For Kaseya, we just released a new plugin for them as well, and that’s on the RMM and PSA side. Atera, we brought that one online probably a year and a half ago. And then SuperOps is a newer vendor that we just partnered up with not too long ago as well. So a lot of people don’t understand how many integrations we have out there, and we continue to expand on that.”
3. Focusing on Partner Success
Tousley stresses that ESET is focused on its MSP partners’ success. “ESET is filled with people who really care about being there,” he says. “They want to help and be good advisors to their MSPs and help them grow. And I think that says a lot. We don’t just hire a million sales reps to just sell them every widget we have. We’re trying to carefully curate solutions for MSPs that can go and grow with us.”
Their partner program includes discounts, marketing resources, a free automated marketing platform, and an MDF program. They also offer marketing as a service, for a fee.
“ESET has been a great partner with us and they’ve helped us on almost every aspect, not only technology, but even in marketing,” Terrell says. “It helps us reach more customers. And then again, with pricing that they’re doing now specifically for MSPs, it allows us to provide the best kind of support we need to be able to provide so I can sleep at night making sure that my customers’ data, their reputation, all of that is secure.”
Ware adds, “ESET has always been very partner dedicated.”
Check What’s Under the Hood
For MSPs who aren’t current partners, Tousley asks them to think about, “How well does your product work? What’s actually under the hood? Because for MSPs, especially the ones that have had solutions in place for a long time, I would challenge them to look and come have a conversation with us about why we’re different.”
