How this threat protection startup plans to take on Microsoft

Alsid's VP of sales for northern EMEA opens up to CRN on his plan to grow in the UK in spite of the turbulence caused by the pandemic and why partners should ot forget about Active Directory security as an opportunity

Cybersecurity startup Alsid is determined to continue its international expansion in a bid to take on its bigger rivals, such as Microsoft, according to its VP of sales for northern EMEA Nash Kapoor.

Alsid specialises in protecting Active Directory, which is the application that sits at the heart of most Windows operating systems. It was established in 2016 and raised €13m in its Series A funding round last year, which it has invested in its platform as well as expanding its reach outside of its home country.

It has since inked a pan-European agreement with Exclusive Networks and set up operations in the Nordics, Benelux, the US and the UK, with the Dach region next on the list, Kapoor said.

It counts Microsoft ATA, Stealthbits and Varonis Systems among its competitors in the market, though all "come from a different angle" to Alsid in the realm of active directory protection, he added.

The current market turbulence created by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will see some slowdown for the startup, Kapoor said, but he envisions it resuming its growth plans in its third and fourth quarters for this year.

"I would say there'll be a bit of a slowdown in the second quarter that we're in today, because the first thing that everybody has to do his work from home so they want to make them secure," he told CRN.

"I think we will see a pickup in the third quarter because as you've got more people working remotely, it means that there are more endpoints that could be breached or hacked and that's when people will start to look at Active Directory to make sure they have the visibility to see that they haven't left any backdoors or any misconfigurations that can be exploited.

"It's all about visibility, and I think in the third and fourth quarters we'll start to see a bit of a push again."

Kapoor - who started in his role in September and who has previously held roles at Dell and Symantec - said he had a clear strategy of recruiting partners.

"My strategy was very clear; it was to have a sales engine, to go out to the end users, create the opportunity, take it to the channel and bring the channel in," he explained.

"The reason for doing that is then the channel will start bringing opportunities to us as well because they'll see that we're bringing opportunities to them."

He is currently seeking out reseller partners in the UK and said that most resellers fit his brief, due to the ubiquity of Active Directory.

"Our partners could be a very small niche partner with only five employees or it could be the likes of Computacenter," he stated.

"We have to be a company that partners want to work with and find it easy to work with and who also understand that we're a software house and that's what we want to stay as one. We are 100 per cent channel-focused. We don't want to deliver services; we give our channel partners a lot of scope to help the end user and provide their services on top of the Alsid platform.

"If you think about all the companies out there, everybody uses Active Directory - I don't know a company I've been to in the last 20 years that doesn't have it. It's here to stay."