How Flashpoint plans to expand its partner community and triple its customer base in Europe

New VP of EMEA tells CRN about his ambitious growth plans

Business intelligence risk (BRI) vendor Flashpoint plans to make some "major inroads" with customers in Europe, according to EMEA VP Ian Schenkel.

Schenkel held a similar position at ThreatConnect before joining Flashpoint just under a month ago and has ambitions to triple Flashpoint's customer base in Europe, as well as grow its partner community.

"From where we are today, and the momentum that's been built, that's going to be something that's easily achievable," he told CRN.

"I think we'll start to see more of an uptake of threat intelligence and more of an understanding of what is able to be done for each organisation and we'll start to sort of build it up from there.

"Building the customer base here, building the reseller base and building out our go-to-market strategy are my primary objectives."

Some of Flashpoint's competitors in the threat intelligence space include Recorded Future, Intel 471 and Digital Shadows, though Schenkel is keen to emphasise that each vendor operates its own niche in the space, with Flashpoint focused on the dark web.

"It came from a need to help companies understand the sort of the risks of what's out on the dark web, and what's happening out in the wider world and give them a heads-up on any degree of alerts," he explained.

"Our founders have been in intelligence for some time and felt there was a need for commercial public sector organisations to have something more formal than just the tidbits that they could pick up themselves.

"Having something that would be delivered on real-time basis that people can easily digest so they can see what's coming down the pipeline, and be able to be reactive or proactive, depending on what type of information they're receiving."

The BRI vendor currently has 150 employees worldwide with Schenkel's EMEA team numbering seven.

It covers eight categories of cybersecurity, including cybercrime, the threat landscape and credentials, as well as some of the more "traditional stuff" like malware.

The UK isof Europe when it comes to BRI, he said, though it is still behind the US in terms of full maturity of the market.

"I think the one of the biggest things is just enabling companies and organisations to know that these features are available, that they can actually have much more insight into what's going on in the threat landscape, into what's going on with threat actors and what they're the targeting," he stated.

"A big part of my day-to-day stuff in EMEA is really just enabling people to understand the art of the possible because threat intelligence is not that well known just yet, but it will be it will definitely grow.

"So we're building up our reseller network now to make sure that we can get this out to a wider future, and very much looking to bring on more partners and to build out their community ecosystem."