Cyren in partner recruitment mode

Security player Cyren is growing its channel base to support its ambitions to grow its reputation in the commercial market.

The email protection specialist has seen the demand for protection tools and services explode during the coronavirus pandemic and that development has coincided with a recognition that it can do more with partners.

Matt Halsey,  senior director sales, EMEA and APAC at Cyren, said the firm had been the power behind a lot of OEM offerings, but it was now stepping out of the shadows to promote its technology in its own right.

“The channel is becoming more important and will become more and more important as time goes on and this IT security or cyber security marketplace is not getting smaller any time soon,” he said. “So I think the channel, and vendors’ ability to work with channel, is more and more important, and some of the tactics we are taking to make ourselves attractive to the reseller market are as important.”

As a result, the firm has been in recruitment mode, looking for partners that could tap into the increasing demand for hosted email protection, particularly Microsoft Office 365.

“We have about 20 partners signed up in the UK currently, ranging from a one-man band up to some of the largest enterprise resellers,” said Halsey. “We are in that kind of next phase where we’re helping them identify customers. I believe that we can’t just have a good product – we’ve got to be able to be easy to work with the channel, so that’s clear about how you look after them and the margin they make.”

Cyren profiles users to share details with the channel on where prospects are with the email protection journey, and then alerts resellers to the best way to approach those users.

“In the last eight months, we’ve had a big drive in terms of partner recruitment and partner knowledge, and we’ve done a number of webinars about educating them in this detection and response [approach],” said Halsey.

“We are able to educate these customers and the partners and when they finally get the light bulb going on, we’re here to help them support them.”

Earlier this month, Cyren signed up MSP player Fluid Networks as part of that channel expansion effort.

Halsey said cyber criminals were keeping the pressure on the IT security market and customers, with high-profile ransomware attacks hitting the headlines almost daily.

He said the email protection world was still stuck focusing too much on detection and although that was important, they needed to be proactive identifying threats before they hit email inboxes and cause problems.

“The quicker you can do it, the quicker you reduce the risk of being compromised,” he added. “Reducing what we call a ‘medium time to remediation’ is where we really are moving the mark.”