Sophos opts for Arrow Electronics as first UK distributor

Sophos has signed up Arrow Electronics as its first UK distributor as the security supplier looks to widen its customer reach and get its products in front of more customers.

The decision to appoint Arrow and give the distie full access to its business portfolio should mean that more SME-facing resellers get to sell the products, and it marks a first for Sophos as it looks to extend its partner reach with a move into the two-tier channel model.

“This is an exciting time for Sophos as we begin working alongside our first UK distributor,” said Jonathan Bartholomew, vice president of sales Northern Europe at Sophos.

“This step will allow us to develop even stronger growth relationships. Arrow has an established reputation as a global supply chain partner, helping businesses to harness the power of complex and innovative technologies. As such, they can now expand our reach to MSPs and resellers, arming them with our innovative portfolio of next-generation products and threat response services that offer organisations of all sizes better protection against fast-changing cyber attacks," he added.

Arrow will be adding Sophos into its cloud marketplace offerings with automated ordering options and will support the vendor with its marketing efforts.

The distributor has a proven track record with Sophos, handling the vendor in Australia for example, and will be looking to replicate that experience in the UK.

“New hybrid work environments are increasingly a target for sophisticated cyber criminals. The costs associated with a breach can be huge, and organisations need to protect themselves from constantly evolving threats,” said Dan Waters, UK country manager for Arrow’s enterprise computing business.

“Adding Sophos to our portfolio will give our channel partners access to a broad range of security products and services that are trusted by over 500,000 businesses across the world," he added.

Sophos has been tracking the rise of those threats that Waters pointed to, with the firm recently sharing research that indicated that IT teams were facing an increasing workload to protect data and many (70%) had been working on developing their skills to deal with the emerging threats.

More than half of those customers surveyed (54%) felt that their IT teams lacked the expertise to deal with increasingly complex attacks, which underlined a potential opportunity for the channel as 64% expected their outsourced teams to grow over the next five years.

“Around the world, 2020 was an unprecedented year for IT teams,” said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at Sophos. “IT professionals played a vital role in helping organisations to keep going despite the restrictions and limitations necessitated by Covid-19.

“As a growing number of countries are able to start planning for life beyond pandemic restrictions, we have an excellent opportunity to implement new IT and security policies, adopt more secure modern tools to manage employees and operations beyond the IT perimeter, build expert teams that blend in-house and outsourced talent, and introduce security platforms that combine intelligent automation with human threat hunting expertise,” he added.