Emerging Tech Hub: Vectra hunts partners for 'avant-garde' threat detection platform
Security vendor claims to have seen revenue jump 294 per cent in Q3
Security vendor Vectra is hunting for channel partners in the UK after trebling its revenue in Q3, according to head of EMEA marketing Matt Walmsley.
Vectra claimed to have seen its revenue jump 294 per cent in the third quarter of this year, which Walmsley said is being driven by a need for enterprises to address the "detection gap" allowing cybercriminals to all too easily breach networks.
The Vectra Cognito platform uses AI to detect threats that go unnoticed in a network, often for months on end, Walmsley explained.
"We're trying to automate the real-time detection of cyber-attacks," he said.
"You might ask ‘isn't that what every security vendor does?' but we're focusing on the attacks that either circumvent or defeat the perimeter defences, so the things that get inside an organisation. They're the things that lead to the big public breaches.
"The way organisations traditionally look for those threats is through highly skilled security analysts that do manual threat hunting. They're typically very good people and very capable, but the job is just too big."
He added that, while these security analysts are more than capable, they cannot hope to keep up with the growing level of threats, coupled with the increasing number of devices being added to networks.
Vectra's platform, he said, could be referred to as a "security analyst in software".
In the UK Vectra is looking to add to its partner base of around 10, but Walmsley stressed that the solution won't be for everyone, explaining that a high-level of technical knowhow is needed.
"We're completely indirect but that doesn't mean we just sit behind a channel," he said. "We have nine or 10 people in the UK and we have teams that will go out and co-sell with the channel.
"If you're a channel partner with us we'll train you, give you access to not-for-resell equipment and we'll co-market with you, but this is avant-garde technology. It's not for every reseller and because it's AI it takes a level of education, so we do that with partners."
Adam Davison, director at Vectra's UK distributor Cloud Distribution, said that interest in Vectra's technology has grown rapidly over the course of 2017.
"If you look at 2016 Vectra heavily invested in the UK market evangelising the AI threat-hunting space" he said.
"After significant investment in the UK sales and technical teams, along with local marketing resource, Vectra is now seen as a leader in the AI security space, by automating tedious labour-intensive threat hunting.
"Without a shadow of a doubt they're getting noticed in the enterprise space and are engaged in many active proof of concepts, and we've also closed a significant number of high-value deals with large and medium enterprises."