SentinelOne VP: BlackBerry purchasing Cylance has been good for us

Cybersecurity vendor claims to have taken EDR to the next level with 'active' approach

Next-gen security player SentinelOne has benefited from BlackBerry's surprise acquisition of Cylance, according to VP Jared Phipps.

Former smartphone giant BlackBerry acquired end-point security vendor Cylance in November last year for $1.4bn (£1.1bn) - valuating the firm lower than many had expected.

Phipps (pictured) told CRN the acquisition has unsettled some buyers.

"That was a bit puzzling," he said.

"BlackBerry purchasing Cylance has not been a good thing for Cylance itself, maybe they had a long-term vision, but the short term has been a lot of outreach from companies saying ‘I don't understand that, can we take a look at you'."

SentinelOne has also benefited from a personnel perspective, on-boarding former Cylance global channel boss Tim Mackie earlier this month.

Phipps said that SentinelOne has taken a more measured approach with its international expansion than some of its competitors have.

The vendor currently has a team of five in the UK and operates a 100 per cent channel model worldwide.

He said SentinelOne is about to take its new end-point detection and response solution to the market, acknowledging that the vendor has potentially been quiet from a PR perspective while it has been developing the product.

Phipps claims that the vendor's ActiveEDR solution takes EDR a step further by proactively addressing issues rather than providing end users with a mountain of data - which he claims is what other solutions on the market do.

He also said it allows users to take action immediately.

"EDR is like closed-circuit television in a jewellery store - you can watch it over and over again, but it's after the event," he said. "We wanted to move it into real time.

"If you think of a security guard at a door, once they walk by him they're free. You have your camera but that probably won't help you in real time.

"What we're doing is, as you walk past the security guard, he clones himself and walks everywhere with you. Every action you do, there is always someone right there with you."

Phipps said that SentinelOne is the first vendor to use the term ‘active' when it comes to EDR, claiming that there are others in the passive space - the likes of Carbon Black, Crowdstrike and Cybereason - but none with the same proactive capabilities.

"It will be very interesting to see how the market reacts to it," he said.

"I'm hoping that other people catch on to active EDR because that is not just what SentinelOne needs, but what the market needs."

SentinelOne's UK channel director Peter Carfrae said that the vendor currently works with 10 UK partners, ranging from systems integrators to boutique cybersecurity firms.

He explained that he would be willing to work with more partners, provided they are interested in more than purely selling product.

"I don't want a channel of 100 partners today," he said. "I think that by executing with a smaller number [we are] providing value.

"If I'm sitting with a partner and I ask them what they want, and the first thing they say is leads, that is a bit of a turn-off. We are interested in how we can build a partnership together.

"We have turned away some partners. We have no issue with them wanting to sell SentinelOne, but it terms of proactivity we have some marketing campaigns with Exclusive Networks and we want to work with the ones where we can get the biggest bang for our buck."