Distributors adding security depth

With security topping the list of concerns for customers, those in distribution are continuing to bolster their portfolios with vendor relationships that offer increased protection for users.

There has been a significant increase in attacks on workers forced to work from home during the pandemic and the traditional threat hotspots of Black Friday and Christmas are also on the horizon.

Cloud Distribution has signed cloud security player Censornet to gain access to the firm’s cloud platform that provides email security, web security, cloud access security broker and multifactor authentication solutions.

“We’ve had multiple conversations with our partners where they have outlined the difficulties that organisations are currently facing in securing not only an office workforce, but a remote workforce too. Our new partnership with Censornet will solve precisely that issue by offering a consolidated cloud solution,” said Adam Davison, sales and marketing director for Cloud Distribution.         

Ed Macnair, CEO at Censornet, said the past few months had changed the landscape. He echoed the views of many around the expectation that flexible working was going to be a permanent legacy of the coronavirus.

“With the rapidly changing security landscape, and home working seemingly here to stay, this partnership will help organisations alleviate these security pressures through one consolidated cloud solution. Together with Cloud Distribution, we will continue to expand our UK Partner network, ensuring we are offering robust cloud security solutions with our approach that takes user organisations beyond events and alerts, and into 24/7 automated attack prevention,” he said.             

Other distributors have also taken steps to add depth to their portfolios. Last month, e92plus also moved to bolster its offerings with the signing of web security player Source Defense.

The distie is responding to the threats around e-commerce and arming resellers with tools to help customers that have been forced to sell online during the pandemic. The shift online has come as threats have spiked and the criminal activity around online transactions has increased.

“As more businesses look to transact business online, bad actors are exploiting client-side vulnerabilities that aren’t protected by traditional solutions like web application firewalls,” said Sam Murdoch, managing director at e92cloud. “By partnering with Source Defense, we can help our partners provide security for their customers that will increasingly be a key part of brand reputation for organisations selling online.”

For Source Defense, the appointment of e92cloud was an opportunity to support its expansion beyond its home US market and give it access to the UK channel.

“With our current growth and success in the US and growing interest and need in EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa], we are excited to have e92cloud as our value-added distributor in the UK as it has a proven track record in bringing emerging and innovative technologies to market,” said Source Defense CEO Dan Dinnar.

Westcon has also been busy extending its relationships with security vendors, signing up breach and attack simulation player AttackIQ.

Carl Wright, chief commercial officer at Attack IQ, said the damage of breaches continued to worsen.

“In 2021, cyber damage on the global economy is expected to reach $6tn – more than the GDP of Germany and the UK combined. Lacking tangible data and insights about the effectiveness of security programs, business leaders struggle to make smart decisions about the security of their companies, which is where a BAS [breach and attack simulation] platform focused on optimising security has a key role to play,” he said.

Westcon has been given the rights to distribute the products across EMEA and Asia-Pacific regions, and Daniel Hurel, vice-president of Westcon EMEA for cyber security and next-gen solutions, said it had been looking to bolster the portfolio of services it could put in front of partners.

“AttackIQ is a great addition to our next-generation solutions go-to-market strategy and complements extremely well our detection and response offerings. Businesses in the digital age need reliable tools to measure and manage cybersecurity effectiveness,” he said.

“Given that research firm Markets & Markets predicts a compound annual growth rate of 40.2% from 2019 to 2024 for BAS, we expect this solution to be an exciting opportunity for Westcon partners to help companies improve their security posture against threat actors,” he added.