Cyber-Ark boss slates mid-size security resellers

New EMEA VP Nick Lowe claims Cyber-Ark offers ambitious resellers the highest service-attach rates in the industry

Cyber-Ark's new EMEA boss has hit out at mid-size security integrators for becoming too reliant on a small handful of big but low-margin vendors.

Nick Lowe, who joined the privileged identity management (PIM) vendor from Check Point in September, wants the channel to generate 100 per cent of Cyber-Ark's sales by next year, up from the current 75 per cent.

Lowe said Cyber-Ark is more interested in recruiting large systems integrators and tiny boutique resellers than the mainstream network security resellers he typically worked with at Check Point.

Existing UK Cyber-Ark partners include Brookcourt Solutions, Chameleon, HP, Deloitte and IBM.

"I think the mid-size resellers are struggling to sell beyond the big-figure portfolio they've got as they've made portfolio commitments," Lowe (pictured) said.

"By all means, go for revenue and choose the Websenses, Check Points, Junipers and Symantecs, but don't expect to be up there in terms of the service-attach rates. I wouldn't say Integralis would be my first choice of partner. It did a lot of good stuff for Check Point, but I wonder if that classic network security partner is able to understand and deliver this technology."

Lowe claimed that Cyber-Ark offers resellers the highest service-attach rates in the industry, with license sales representing just one-fifth of a typical $1m project.

"I would argue today that Cyber-Ark represents the best return on margin of any security technology around," said Lowe. "We are only just moving away from early sales, where we were highly involved in delivery and specification of the product, towards a partnering model."

Lowe claimed PIM is the fastest-growing part of the security software market, with Cyber-Ark itself experiencing compound annual growth of more than 50 per cent over the past six years. He asserted that Cyber-Ark is beating competitors such as Leiberman Software and e-DMZ to the majority of the larger rollouts that have recently emerged in the banking, telecoms and government markets.

"If you look at Stuxnet, Aurora and RSA, they all used privileged identities to get that information. What Cyber-Ark does is protect these accounts," he said.

Enterprises have traditionally blown 80 per cent of their security budgets on network and gateway security, but Lowe said this would fall as end users spend rising sums on content security and privileged identity security.

"When I was at Check Point I was utterly convinced that security was moving in these two directions and then the opportunity with Cyber-Ark came up," he said.