EfficientIP gives partners chance to show and tell over DNS

EfficientIP has decided to help partners unlock customer orders by providing them with a free version of its latest product.

The DDI security and automation specialist announced in January that it would give its channel free access to its DNS-based Data Exfiltration Application, with the expectation that it will give the chance for more user walkthroughs of the technology, allowing firms to conduct their own “ethical hack” to identify vulnerabilities.

Partners have started using the tool in the past few weeks to help identify areas across networks where customers are at risk, as well as demonstrate the potential threats as a moment to invest in more threat response tools.

Ronan David, chief of strategy at EfficientIP, said that customers still needed to be guided through their options and there was some confusion in the market.

“The idea is to simplify the process to open conversation with customers, or prospects, around confidentiality and protection. You have so many companies claiming that they have a solution.

“We wanted to be bring tangible points into the conversation, not just a marketing message but a technical message and proof of what we are saying. What we are seeing is that the DNS security today is not taken seriously enough,” he said.

He added that there was still a need for vendors and partners to educate users about the technology and their options, and many struggled to get a full understanding of what was happening across the security landscape.

“A lot of the security market is very complex. You have so many threats and the technical environment has evolved quite rapidly in the past few years, with the adoption of cloud the attack surface is much broader. It’s difficult to to perfectly understand all the different specificities behind a protocol like DNS, and organisations think that with standout security solutions – like next-generation firewall – they are fully protected, which is not the case,” said David.

“We are developing a partnership with resellers and we are here to help them. They are at the very heart of our strategy and we want to make the both of us very successful. So it’s better to have partners that can engage much more easily a conversation based on fact, with a prospect and with customers, to help turn a prospect into customers,” he added.

He said that the company’s focus was on providing the channel with the proof that they could put in front of customers as that is the best way of swaying buying behaviour, adding that this thought would be one of its key considerations with future initiatives.

“We want our marketing strategy, our communication strategy and our sales approach to be demo-ing and putting tangible [proof] at the centre of the conversation,” he said. “The important thing [looking at] how the product is supporting the use case for our customer. How can we help them, for instance, to put in place quick wins? [How can we help bring about] quality to network alternation and simplify the application and infrastructure lifecycle management?”