Cloud says it has 'come of age' with Check Point deal

VAD says it will treat world's largest pure-play security vendor the same as a start-up

Check Point has appointed Cloud Distribution as its fifth UK distributor to help it build channel momentum around its mobile security offering.

Although Cloud will have access to Check Point's full portfolio - alongside incumbents Wick Hill, Westcon Security, Arrow and Avnet - the relationship will focus on evangelising three of Check Point's next-generation products.

These are its Mobile Threat Prevention (MTP) and Capsule mobile security offering and SandBlast, its zero-day protection solution which competes with the likes of FireEye and Damballa.

Talking to CRN, Cloud Distribution director Adam Davidson (pictured, alongside his fellow Cloud directors) said his firm will treat security giant Check Point no differently from the start-up vendors Cloud has made its name making the market for down the years.

"It shows that Cloud Distribution has come of age that there are significant vendors in the market that want to use our partner enablement tools and ability to go out and create a market for them," he said.

"This is about re-invigorating existing Check Point partners but also recruiting new partners. We need to make partners and end users are aware these products exist. Check Point almost has a start-up team for each of them, so we will work with them like we do our existing vendors. We are very excited by the opportunity and it will help take us to the next level of our growth."

Check Point struck up a dialogue with Cloud following its recent acquisition of Lacoon, for which Cloud was a distributor. Lacoon has since been rebranded as MTP and - despite the recent admission by Intel Security that the mobile security market has not grown as fast as it anticipated - Davidson said MTP and Capsule represent a potent sales opportunity for partners.

Davidson cited research from analyst ESG claiming that 47 per cent of organisations have experienced security breaches as a result of a compromised mobile device.

"It's one of the easiest ways for attackers to infiltrate an organisation and we see this market as rapidly growing," Davidson says. "We do already have business and revenues coming through for this technology."

Cloud Distribution will slot Check Point into its mobile security portfolio alongside existing vendors Aerohive, Cisco Meraki, OpenDNS, Netskope and Blackberry.

Besides the appointment of Avnet in July, Check Point hasn't made a change or addition to its UK distribution line-up for the best part of a decade but Michael Wakefield, head of channel sales UK and Ireland at Check Point, claimed the time was right to bring in a specialist with a mobile security pedigree.

"The distributors we have been working with for ten years have all done a very good job for us on enterprise network security," Wakefield said.

"But, through both acquisitions and our own R&D engine, we have moved more into the mobile security space and we just felt we needed extra impetus there. Cloud Distribution have a track record of taking new products to market and the fact they work in the mobile security space made them attractive."

Shane Taylor, managing director of Mobliciti, said Check Point had timed its mobile security assault well because end-users are finally taking threats in this space seriously.

"We were one of the first partners to launch Lacoon in the UK and had some really good wins within some large law firms," he said. "But generally the view has been ‘what's the threat?' - especially on iOS, which has always been deemed a secure platform. But recently we've had some major publicised threats on iOS and we're starting to see a change in the conversations we are having with customers.

"We aren't a traditional Check Point reseller - we have been thrown together with the Lacoon acquisition. But we are really excited to work with them to take this to our enterprise customers. It's good timing."

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman of Wick Hill, was sanguine about the addition of another distributor to the fold.

"Check Point have a broad portfolio and the different distributors contribute in different areas," he said. "We have comparatively little overlap with the others and Cloud's focus is Capsule, which they were involved with Lacoon prior to its acquisition. So where we are I don't perceive any issues."