‘Learn More’ About Your Customers’ Environments

David Nuti, head of channel and alliances for North America at Open Systems (Open Systems offers managed detection and response as well as SASE’ thus, its threat protection resides on endpoints, alongside remote users and sites, and on clouds and cloud applications):

“It’s always a good time to ask your customers if they have any concerns or plans for threat protection that you can address on their behalf. Try to learn more about their environment, specifically where applications are and where the users who access them reside. The vast majority of answers around a responsible security strategy and posture lie within a conversation about applications.

There are also business indicators that will lead to a threat protection conversation and opportunity. These include a growing remote workforce; increased use of cloud applications; digital transformation; network expansion; or a new acquisition. Leveraging platforms from solution providers that have management and security at the foundation is a hot topic for 2021.

The unification of the security operation center and the network operations center – recognizing that network monitoring is a critical element to an effective security posture – is also a major trend.

Other hot trends this year include cloud-native security, like Microsoft Azure Sentinel or articulated within the Gartner SASE framework, which will provide the scaling and flexibility businesses need to keep up with constantly changing security requirements; cybersecurity vendor consolidation for customers that want to reduce the number of security providers, consolidate technologies, lower costs and streamline operations; and the rise of managed detection and response.”