Emerging Tech Hub: Duo Security doubles MSP efforts

Vendor hunts for UK partners to deliver two-factor authentication solution

Authentication vendor Duo Security is on the hunt for managed services providers after launching its MSP programme in the UK.

Founded in 2010, Duo's offering centres around its multifactor authentication capabilities, as well as other trusted access and security tools.

The vendor has been backed financially by the venture capital arms of the likes of Google and has raised $119m (£88m) to date, giving it a valuation of over $1bn.

Duo hit annual recurring revenue of $73m in 2016, marking the fourth consecutive year that the vendor has doubled recurring revenue year on year.

EMEA partner manager Fiona Doak said the Duo approach is a game changer for the authentication space.

"It's a pure multifactor authentication system, through to trusting users and their devices, and then also the applications that those users should or should not have access to," she said.

"In a nutshell, that's how Duo is helping organisations and why it is attractive for partners today.

"Duo has also turned the traditional message of authentication on its head and taken that into the software-as-a-service model, which has got customers thinking differently about how they approach authentication generally."

Duo currently has 25 staff in the UK, operating in London, and has a single-tier channel model.

The new MSP programme will run alongside Duo's existing cloud services programme, which currently has six active partners in the UK.

Duo has had relationships with some of these partners for a number of years, but Doak said the vendor's real hunt for partners has just started.

"We have been on an active trail to start identifying key partners we'd like to work with and that have an interest in working with us," she said. "We currently have six partners on the software-as-a-service side, and on the MSP side there are many more.

"We had partners before I came along [in September] but we haven't really had any focus around driving the partners and finding new ones, so the point of me coming on is the expertise I have in building programmes and partner communities.

"We want to offer a bespoke programme for our partners and allow them to feel very inclusive and to have a more fluid relationship in terms of how they take Duo to market, without having to go through an arduous and sometimes confining partner programme."

Doak said Duo's focus is predominately on recruiting partners that have "security in their DNA", but said that partners with a broader focus will likely find Duo appealing because of its go-to-market strategy.

Robert Pooley, director at Duo partner Saepio, said the solution is a notable improvement on previous versions of two-factor authentication technology.

"In the past some of the challenges around two-factor authentication have been that people have to have tokens on their keyrings, slightly cumbersome applications on their phones, or text messages that are not highly reliable," he said. "The reason we partner with Duo is it is a bit more of a disruptive player and integrates nicely with the big use cases - Azure and Office 365.

"It's a really user-friendly, easy-to-deploy solution that is quite modern in the way it looks. All the other vendors say that they are as well, but I've worked with them and know they take a lot of setting up and updating."

Pooley said that a combination of Duo and Microsoft's own two-factor authentication technology provides a cheaper and more effective alternative to more expensive options from other vendors.

"It's a bit more of a reliable and commercial solution to what Microsoft offers; that's what the alternative is now, in my opinion," he explained. "Why would you spend a fortune with Gemalto, SafeNet or RSA, when Microsoft is offering it pretty effectively to cover their core applications?

"Saepio's strategy is that if you have Microsoft 2FA in your licensing, get an engineer in to help set that up for the bulk of your users, but for your power users and senior execs who are accessing more sensitive data, use Duo because it does cleverer stuff around trusted access and integrity checking."