AV outfit Sophos says the channel needs to focus on ransomware, due to the escalating number of cyberattacks exploiting vulnerable home workers and people who are desperate for information about the virus and vaccine.
Kevin Isaac, senior vice-president of EMEA sales at Sophos, said partners need to remain focused on the ransomware threat because customers were coming to the company because the two really large, totally addressable markets are endpoint security and firewalls, and those deal with ransomware.
Sophos has seen the channel promoting its endpoint detection and response (EDR) and managed threat response (MTR) solutions and helping customers to implement a rapid response to attacks. The tools have appealed to managed service providers (MSPs) that are looking to add more security depth to their proposition.
Sophos has been chatting to MSPs over the past 18 months, adding more products and flexibility to meet their needs.
Isaac said it was important to give customers choice because many were still working out how they wanted to “consume” and “digest” technology.
Customers are going to choose whether they want to buy as a service, or they want to buy an annual licence, or they want to buy on a three-year licence. That also depends on opex and capex – there’s a lot of different decisions that they make, he said.
Isaac said the current feedback he was getting from partners was twofold: “Number one, how do we partner more closely to deliver outcomes for our customers? It remains top of mind. The second is, how do we help our people through the current crisis?
“Good cybersecurity is not only for large enterprises. The other point I wanted to make is that every single company in the world has been a victim of a cybersecurity attack.
“So that presupposes that nobody is safe. So, how do we create an environment with our partners and our channel and how do we partner with them to help the backbone of our society, which is mid-market small business?”
