The Exabeam Partner Program now includes a formal practice for MSSPs and managed detection and response (MDR) providers.

The enhanced Exabeam partner program provides structure and support for multiple MSSP and MDR provider business models. Exabeam’s managed service practice contributed 12% of the company’s overall business revenue in 2019.

The program includes custom, flexible pricing models, and training and accreditation. It also offers dedicated account and technical management teams, customized go-to-market and support.

Managed service partners can expand their offerings whether they resell, manage or host Exabeam deployments for their customers.

Ted Plumis is Exabeam‘s vice president of channels, business and corporate development. He said Exabeam wants to expand its MSSP and MDR provider program.

Exabeam’s Ted Plumis

“At Exabeam, we have always prided ourselves on being easy to work with. And that, combined with our 100% partner-focused sales model, has been critical in allowing us to maintain our hyper growth in sales,” he said. “This enhancement to our partner program continues our history of providing partners with a program that is rich in benefits while focusing the requirements around activities that will drive mutual success (enablement, marketing and business planning) and not put an undue burden on our partners.”

Partner Feedback Important

Partner feedback was useful while updating the program, Plumis said.

“We took feedback from existing and prospective partners as part of the process for building out our programs, and we continue to take feedback from these partners in regards to product features and functionality that are relevant for service providers,” he said. “Last week we wrapped up a quarterly feedback survey that included over 50 respondents from 20 countries. And we will continue to leverage our service providers that are part of the Exabeam Partner Advisory Council when developing new programs and products.”

MSSPs and MDR partners use the Exabeam Security Management Platform (SMP) to help customers lower operational costs. They also increase the productivity of security operations center (SOC) analysts associated with providing detection and response capabilities.

Exabeam SMP is offered in the cloud or on premises. It provides a data lake, behavioral analytics, case management, security orchestration and incident response automation. And it reduces time to investigate and contain threats by 51%, the company said.

Its analytics feature uses data science to identify employees’ behavioral patterns and abnormalities that may be indicative of security threats.

These providers can also use the Exabeam SaaS Cloud platform. It reduces security information and event management (SIEM) deployment, maintenance and operational overhead. It also delivers Exabeam SMP as a hosted cloud service.

Solving SOC Issues

“With deeper knowledge of the Exabeam SMP and Exabeam SaaS Cloud, garnered from the training programs and increased support, our partners will be able to provide customers with the right SIEM technology to solve their greatest issues in the SOC,” Plumis said. “For most, these have consistently included understaffed security teams, excessive alerts and lack of efficiency. Now, due to COVID-19, companies’ digital transformation has been accelerated unexpectedly, and many security teams have been supporting sudden cloud transitions.”

Exabeam has brought more than 30 MSSPs to its partner program since its founding in 2013. The program spans 17 countries in North America, Latin America, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Australia.

“At CyZen, we pride ourselves on delivering thoughtful and practical guidance that brings our customers peace of mind when it comes to securing their organization from cyber threats,” said Jake Lehmann, CyZen’s managing director. “By partnering with Exabeam and leveraging the Exabeam SaaS Cloud Essential offering, we are able to deliver on our mission while providing a cost effective solution for our customers.”