Ex-Sourcefire execs place bets on ThreatQuotient as it launches in channel

Threat intelligence vendor targeting 'market-making' security VARs after emerging from stealth mode

Threat intelligence platform vendor ThreatQuotient has launched in the UK channel with ex-Sourcefire employees at the helm.

ThreatQuotient was launched in March 2013 and came out of stealth mode in 2014. The company hired former Sourcefire senior vice president John Czupak as CEO in October 2015.

Founder and CTO Ryan Trost told CRN: "We did a seed round of funding last year and one of our investors was the ex-CFO of Sourcefire. He introduced us to John and he just stood above the rest.

"He has a huge reputation in the industry for being a straight shooter, for calling it as he sees it. We ultimately decided it would be great for him to take over."

The idea for the company's product ThreatQ was thought up by Trost and co-founder Wayne Chiang when they were working at General Dynamics, where their team supported and defended the company from any foreign intelligence targeting the firm's intellectual property.

Trost explained: "We identified we were getting threat intelligence from many sources, but there wasn't a good central depository to place everything. So there was a big gap in the market and we started to build the product. It was huge; it really solved a lot of issues and streamlined a lot of the processes."

The vendor launched its first partner programme globally four weeks ago, and it currently has fewer than 10 partners. But Anthony Perridge, regional director for the UK - another former Sourcefire employee - said that he wants the number of partners to stay low for the near future.

"We don't want to be over-distributed. For the next 12 months if we could get close to 10 partners we would be happy," he explained.

Perridge was EMEA sales and channel director at Sourcefire for six years so claims he is well placed to navigate the channel for ThreatQuotient.

"The interesting thing with ThreatQuotient is that it is at its very early days, not just with the company but with the market as well. Less than five per cent of businesses have threat intelligence platforms today," he said.

"As a result, there isn't any traction in the channel, but Gartner predicted that 50 per cent of businesses will have threat intelligence platforms by 2018 so we are actually set for exponential growth."

The vendor has a "two-pronged" plan to build its channel, said Perridge (pictured). The first part of the plan is to talk to a lot of the top companies in the UK personally, and then in parallel it will be working with "market-making, security-savvy" partners.

100 per cent of the business will be done through the channel, with ThreatQuotient's sales team passing on all leads to appropriate partners.

As well as there being no direct sales conflict, Perridge claims that the channel programme is extremely rich in deal registration.

"It worked really well for Sourcefire and Cisco [which acquired Sourcefire in 2013) so we are applying that same incentive for the partners who are proactive," he said. "They will have a huge advantage on any partners that show up at the procurement department saying they need quotes. The last thing you want is for guys who have committed and invested to then lose the deal."