eSentire hunts UK resellers as it launches Cork SOC

New entrant claims traditional MSSP model "wholly ineffective" at blocking new, unseen attacks such as Heartbleed

Ambitious managed threat protection player eSentire is hunting for UK and European resellers as it gears up to launch a secure operations centre in Cork.

Fresh from bagging $14m in series C funding, the Canada-based firm, which sees itself as a disrupter to the traditional MSSP model, plans to hire 100 staff in Ireland's second city by 2020 as part of its plans to crack the European market. The Cork SOC, its first in Europe, will open in November, with 15 staff.

Talking to CRN, CTO Mark McArdle said eSentire's offering lends itself to the channel, which it expects to generate 50 per cent of sales as it moves into Europe. Current partners include Boston-based IT services outfit Eze Castle, which sells to hedge funds.

"We see an awful lot of integrators and VARs that have that client relationships but don't have the capabilities to deliver a managed security threat management offering and we are completely complementary to those types of organisation," McArdle said.

eSentire's sweet spot is midmarket enterprises that lack the resource to invest in their own 24x7 SOC to defend against new vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed and Shellshock.

"We do things quite differently from traditional MSSPs," McArdle explained.

"We're not just doing device management and log analysis, which does an effective job of blocking yesterday's attacks but is wholly ineffective at dealing with new, unseen threats. We do threat management by deploying sensors into the client's networks that are watching for new threats."

eSentire tends to do "very well" in head-to-head proof of concepts with the recognised market leader in the MSSP space, Dell SecureWorks, McArdle said.

The Ontario-based firm is just the latest addition to Cork's growing IT security cluster, which already houses McAfee, Trend Micro and FireEye.

"We opened a UK office last year and it became important to us in our growth to expand our SOC coverage to have a site in the EU," said McArdle.

"We evaluated different countries and decided to invest in Ireland, driven primarily by the fact we need key talent. The academic institutions in Cork are attractive to us and similar to the ones we work with in Canada, and it has a population of people that are passionate about IT security."