GuardiCore looks to crack UK datacentre security market
GuardiCore offers a platform for datacentre security
Cybersecurity vendor GuardiCore is on the hunt for partners as it looks to expand its UK presence.
Founded in Israel in 2013, GuardiCore offers a security platform focused on providing security in the datacentre.
The vendor arrived in the UK last July - soon after appointing ex Check Point, Algosec and SecureWorks director Paul Clark as its northern Europe director - but is kicking on with its UK plans this year.
Speaking to CRN Clark said that GuardiCore is unique in its focus on datacentre security.
"When I look at other vendors in this space I think we're the only ones that talk about datacentre security specifically," he said. "Other people talk about honey potting, and this and that, but I think on our website we're the only ones that talk about datacentre security - it's a fundamental difference."
How it works
GuardiCore offers a datacentre security platform built around five key areas - deception and prevention, response and remediation, analytics, flow virtualisation and micro-segmentation.
Clark said that the vendor's deception technology is what stands it apart from others in the market, calling it GuardiCore's "secret sauce".
To explain how the solution worked Clark compared it loosely to honey potting, but said that the technology is "patented and very, very clever".
"The term people use is 'honey pot' and there are a lot of people that use honey pots," he explained. "The thing with a honey pot is it's a bit like a mouse trap. You have to make it look attractive, you have to leave a breadcrumb trail and you have leave a big bit of cheese on there, but there are only so many you can put out there and they are effectively decoys.
"What Guardicore does is with every single connection that is dropped we interrupt it and we will route them live to a honey pot that we spin up there and then.
"We call it a deception engine because it's an identical replica of the machine they're expecting to get into. We spin these things up live, they're in the cloud, they look exactly like the environment people are expected to land in, and they can carry out the work they need to do."
Channel strategy
GuardiCore has signed up Securicom as its sole UK distributor and is currently working with a handful of partners in the UK.
Clark explained that even he has been surprised by the range of partners interested in working with GuardiCore, having already signed up a number of consultancy firms and a large telco set to follow.
"Interestingly I didn't, for all my experience, see the dynamic that we could cover," he said.
"We have a large telco that is a client that wants to be a partner, and we've got smaller consultancy-led organisations at the other end where you have three or four commercial people and that's it.
"I started to talk to a lot of partners because everyone is interested in what we do, but we've sort of settled on a few organisations. The majority of the leads come from three or four partners, but we do get some inbound stuff that will be transactional."
Clark explained that there is a small degree of transactional business occuring at the moment, if an end user wants to use a particular channel partner, but said the main focus is on creating a small group of core partners.
"There will be transactional business but I'm a fan of the channel so I'm making my bed with four or five partners that I'm going to hold close and not [let them] step on each other's toes," he said.
What the analysts say
Megabuyte analyst Indraneel Arampatta said that the rise in cloud uptake is creating greater demand for cloud security and by extension datacentre security.
He expects datacentre security and SIEM vendors to become increasingly in demand, which has been reflected by increasing investment in the market.
"It could be a sign that datacentre security is becoming more of a focus for certain companies, especially because of the rise in hosting providers," he said. "In terms of datacentres a lot of customers now, from the vendors we speak to, are expecting a certain level of cybersecurity. They expect a level of security to be included in the contract so the datacentre providers and hosting providers themselves are taking much more interest.
"We're seeing a lot of interest from the private equity community and the funding markets as well.
"You had in the UK players like Sophos [which acquired Barricade] and Mimecast [which acquired iSheriff] who did some acquisitions but you're seeing quite a lot of funding rounds and it's down to a lot of companies having cyber security solutions, but what they don't have is the data to figure out where the attacks are coming from or how best to detect them."