Cyberpion, an Israel-based ecosystem security provider, has launched its first partner program for cybersecurity providers.

The program fosters close collaboration, and allows partners to gain profitable subscription and services revenue. Cyberpion will use a strategy of identifying and presenting vulnerabilities of potential customers to help close new business opportunities.

Using Cyberpion’s platform, partners identify vulnerabilities in customers’ hyperconnected IT infrastructures before they are exploited by attackers. They also provide continuous security risk assessment and timely alerts as part of their ongoing practice.

Ran Nahmias is Cyberpion’s co-founder and chief business officer.

Cyberpion’s Ran Nahmias

“Ideal partners have a strong security practice, and an aptitude and interest in emerging technologies,” he said. “Regional partners tend to have the critical mass in security technology understanding and relationships with larger enterprise customers. Partners that offer risk assessment and remediation services are also great prospects as the Cyperpion platform provides an opportunity for partners to grow their practice into the ecosystem security space.”

Enterprise Security Gap

The program fills a gap within enterprises’ security needs, Nahmias said.

“There are two groups of products that compete with Cyberpion: third-party risk scoring and attack surface management solutions,” he said. “Risk-scoring solutions tend to be a semimanual process at the time of onboarding a vendor. Their scoring assessments are based partly on volunteered information and partly on discovered assets of only first-degree connections. Attack surface management solutions use automation and bots to discover and assess the organization from the internet in.”

Cyberpion worked closely with partner organizations help them understand the data being provided, Nahmias said. It also helped them understand the benefits it will provide for the customer and partner.

“As we expand the partner program, this process will be codified into formal training to ensure the integrity of the process at scale,” he said.

Channel Vet to Lead Program

Cyberpion has appointed channel veteran Tracy Hickox to lead its ecosystem security channel sales initiative. He is building a dedicated team to implement this in 2021. Hickox has held leadership roles at Cisco and HP Networking, and most recently at Check Point Software Technologies.

“Empowering our channel partners with the ability to provide their customers with full and uninterrupted visibility of known and unknown assets and their connections throughout their hyperconnected online ecosystem creates a unique and compelling offering,” he said.

Cyberpion’s ecosystem risk discovery program is the key customer acquisition driver for partners, Nahmias said.

“The program is designed to help partners have meaningful conversations and give potential customers unique insights into how to secure their IT infrastructure with a tailored solution,” he said. “Most partners have significant and deep relationships with a few key customers (more in the case of the larger nationals/globals). They are very interested in selling as many different products as they can to these significant customers, and typically have adviser-type relationships. This is the customer pool we are after.”

AccessIT Group is Cyberpion’s first partner within the new program.

“Cyberpion’s ecosystem risk discovery program gives us a playbook to follow for discovering and correcting immediate threats as well as providing ongoing protection,” said Joe Luciano, its CEO. “It really helps accelerate the awareness of our customers to this growing risk and will help create new opportunities for us to grow our business.”