Economic Uncertainty: Keeper Security, Sumo Logic, More Detail Impact
Economic uncertainty is providing big opportunities for MSPs in cybersecurity.
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Keeper Security‘s Marcia Dempster said one thing everyone can agree on is amid economic uncertainty, cyberattacks are more prevalent than ever and they don’t quit.
“Advanced persistent threats (APTs) are a real thing,” she said. “In my world, 82% of data breaches occur due to weak credentials. So that’s whether your server is swapping credentials or whether that’s people in the office sharing passwords or writing down their passwords. It’s all bad. So with the bad guys getting better and better at what they do, we’re keeping up with it. We’re trying to get ahead of it. And thankfully from a business perspective, it’s working out well for my company because we’re trying to protect users and protect our credentials, and protect how they’re connecting to their servers. But how fast can we go? It’s still kind of a scary spot. But at least I think everyone in this room can take some pride in being confident that we’re doing the best we can to make sure that businesses and enterprises, and small businesses and just regular people keep their stuff safe.”
ThreatBlockr‘s George Just said his company has actually grown through the “economic weirdness.”
“The one key thing that we hit on early that has benefited us is instead of focusing on the tactics like artificial intelligence (AI) or focusing on the new hash of the signature of an attack vector, we’ve stayed focused on the cybercriminal,” he said. “So we’re in the business of just stopping cybercriminals from getting into networks. That’s really all we do. And the one thing true about 99.99% of cybercriminals is they were a cybercriminal yesterday. So that’s a speed that’s not increasing, We’re not minting a million new cybercriminals a day. And so if you can figure out who they are and where they’re coming from, you have a little bit of an edge. And that is what’s economical about what we’re doing and why. It is because we can cover all that space without a huge lift on dollars because it’s not people intensive. We have a system and we don’t have a lot of companies in our space.”
Open Systems‘ Tim Roddy said the “economic thing really hasn’t hit yet.”
“We’re officially not in a recession,” he said. “Inflation is rearing its head, depending on what you’re buying. We had a huge disruption that was self-inflicted, shutting the economy down, screwed up the supply chains and all that. It’s for the most part resolved itself. And you’ve got world issues going on. We always do. But we haven’t actually hit a really true rough spot yet, and we don’t know if we will and we’re trying hard not to. A lot of these banks have been the ones that are not very well diversified. And the bank examiners and the Federal Reserve primarily are supposed to be looking at this stuff. And they’ve missed it on at least three occasions now. So we haven’t really hit it yet. That’s the part that worries me.”
Sectigo‘s Jennifer Binet said one thing she’s noticed amid economic uncertainty is the procurement process has slowed down a little.
“In the past, we were able to project a certain amount of time that a deal would close,” she said. “And now we’re expecting, we forecast, we commit and then all of a sudden they come back and they’re like hey, guess what, we put in a new level of inspection. So we’ve definitely hit that. We’ve still been able to grow. The one thing we’ve been very fortunate with is consolidation. We are a platform that allows customers to consolidate so we’ve been able to show through our team a lot of the return on investment. Customers still do want that. They are still asking for it. I see it coming back now because they still want to do consolidation, but the procurement has been a little slower. And my channel partners, because they have such a strong relationship with that end customer, they’re able to navigate some of the procurement hurdles that we have had if we’re dealing with it from a pure end customer perspective. So we’ve been really fortunate by leveraging those partners that they can navigate through that choppiness for us.”
Sumo Logic‘s Timm Hoyt said channel partners and MSPs are equally challenged and perplexed by what’s happening.
“So we’ve been spending time listening to them so we understand what they’re saying about their customers and then trying to help those partners understand where we can help with tools consolidation and how our pricing helps customers do more with less,” he said. “Those partners are human like all of us and and they’re facing a reduction in forces. They’re facing the customer saying my budget is slashed, what am I going to go do, and I’ve got supply chain challenges still sitting with my networking gear, etc. So we’re honing in on some of the core tenants of SaaS. The MSP market is super evolving for us as the end user is trying to figure out how do I still protect, how do I still run my business yet I can’t own the license or I’ve had to reduce my staff by 15% to 20%. And so I think like in any situation, there’s winners and losers. And I think the MSP community has a great chance to come out big time winners.”
Dempster said you have to lean on MSPs because they’re the ones recommending every solution.
“They’re saying OK, we can put this in a single pane of glass, you need this, we’ll put it in a stack, we’ll make it accessible to you, and it’s going to check off all of these boxes that might be a requirement for them to get cyber insurance, which is a bigger thing, too,” she said. “That’s how you get in there because you don’t have the relationship that they do. But they’re facing the same challenges. No one is immune from what’s going on.”
Amid economic uncertainty, Sectigo is trying to figure out a new disruptive pricing model, Binet said.
“What’s something that will allow these customers, especially in the uncertainty that we’re in, to feel more comfortable with what it is that we’re providing?” she said. “So I’ve committed that I will have something by the end of this quarter. So now I’m really committed. But we’re looking at really changing up traditional licensing models in our particular industry and really making it a bit more advantageous for these customers to be able to take advantage of what we have.”
Amid economic uncertainty, Sectigo is trying to figure out a new disruptive pricing model, Binet said.
“What’s something that will allow these customers, especially in the uncertainty that we’re in, to feel more comfortable with what it is that we’re providing?” she said. “So I’ve committed that I will have something by the end of this quarter. So now I’m really committed. But we’re looking at really changing up traditional licensing models in our particular industry and really making it a bit more advantageous for these customers to be able to take advantage of what we have.”
Economic uncertainty is having a big impact on the channel, and cybersecurity is no exception.
A cybersecurity roundtable during this month’s MSP Summit and Channel Partners Conference & Expo addressed the issue of economic uncertainty and its impact on their companies and partners. They also agreed economic uncertainty is providing big opportunities for MSPs in cybersecurity.
Roundtable participants included:
Marcia Dempster, Keeper Security‘s senior director of channel sales.
George Just, ThreatBlockr‘s chief revenue officer.
Tim Roddy, Open Systems‘ vice president of marketing.
Jennifer Binet, Sectigo‘s senior vice president of enterprise sales.
Timm Hoyt, Sumo Logic‘s senior vice president of worldwide partners and alliances.
Keeper Security’s Marcia Dempster
ThreatBlockr’s George Just
Open Systems’ Tim Roddy
Sectigo’s Jennifer Binet
Sumo Logic’s Timm Hoyt
Just said whenever there’s pressure, even if it’s self inflicted or a worry and not real, businesses start to look for more efficiencies and more answers.
“And we found that working with channel partners, things tend to accelerate for us,” he said. “You’re selling into an environment where they’ve sold customers a whole host of things over the years. They’ve already built all those relationships. They know what the budget is and where budgets can be moved, and all of that stuff. So the channel partners are just an absolutely essential piece of this. And we’ve seen a huge uptake, especially on the MSP side.”
Scroll through our slideshow above for more from the roundtable on economic uncertainty.
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