Third Brigade, a security software company led by former Entrust Technologies executives, is opening its arms to managed service providers. During the MSP Alliance conference in San Jose, Third Brigade announced that it has expanded its partner program to support service providers. I’ve got to admit: Third Brigade wasn’t on my radar until I spotted them at the conference. But they’ve got my attention now. Here’s why.

Instead of trying to solve security issues in a vacuum, Third Brigade is lining up partnerships with companies such as Trend Micro and NetIQ. Trend Micro, for instance, has licensed Third Brigade’s firewall and deep packet inspection technology, along with its ongoing security update service, and plans to integrate the security components into the OfficeScan endpoint security platform.

And on the vertical market front, Third Brigade is building alliances with health care providers such as The New Jersey Hospital Association and the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium.

In theory, those moves will allow Third Brigade to go deep into health care and to go broad with the Trend Micro alliance. I suspect Third Brigade is also working on alliances with MSP platform providers, but I need to touch base with a few more sources to see where those efforts stand.