SonicWall CEO rallies partners to fend off non-standard ports threat

SonicWall has urged its reseller base to start selling its complete portfolio and to switch on the functions to protect against attacks coming through non-standard ports.

The security specialist's CEO Bill Conner told partners at its PEAK18 channel event that the threat landscape was evolving and it had charted explosive growth in malware coming via non-standard ports.

In the first eight months of this year SonicWall prevented 7.7bn malware attacks, which was a 70% increase on the same period last year. The average customer had faced 18,500 attacks so far in 2018.

But it was the growth in attacks through non-standard ports, up by almost 25%, which concerned Conner.

"That is becoming the big vector and [the growth in attacks] has been rapid," he said "You better have deep packet inspection turned on for non-standard ports."

He added that most of its rivals still concentrated their defences against standard port-80 attacks and were leaving many users open to risk.

"You better understand the security landscape and where the stuff is getting through, what are the threats, how is it getting in and what are your core competencies" said Conner.

The vendor has a leading position in the SME market but has set its sights on carving out more market share in the enterprise space.

"We are back to one or two globally in SME and have been around number five in enterprise. We are looking at our five position and are leaning into it," he added "We are going after the enterprise full square."

Part of those efforts include rolling out a direct touch team but the assembled partners were told that the vendor's 100% channel commitment was not in doubt.

"You will see us, especially in the UK market and the Germany market, having direct touch capability but that is to augment not supplant," he said.

He added that enterprise customers, which might not have been SonicWall users in the past, expected to have the vendor lead the conversation and give the roadmap and vision and it would be bringing its partners into those opportunities.

The firm has sold into enterprise in the past with the channel but this is a coordinated effort to drive sales in that market, with verticals that the firm has decided to focus on initially including retail, education and government.

"That is a feature of SonicWall now, that there are two lines of business: SME and enterprise. They have different motions in terms of sales, services and we have reorganised to deliver that service," he added.