Acronis to offer not-for-resale cybersecurity scheme amid rise in targeted attacks against the channel

Vendor’s VP of Northern Europe opens up to CRN about how its new #CyberFit partner programme helps protect partners against cyberattacks

Acronis is giving its partners access to its own cybersecurity offerings in the wake of an increase in cyberattacks against channel firms.

VP of Acronis' northern European business, Ronan McCurtin, told CRN that, as part of Acronis' efforts to help MSPs shore up their vulnerabilities against cybercriminals, there is a not-for-resale (NFR) element to the new #CyberFit programme that allows them to use Acronis' offerings to protect themselves, McCurtin said.

The offering comes amid a spike in data breaches and cyber incidences involving channel companies. Over the course of 2020, partners including Sopra Steria, Econocom, Cognizant and Exclusive Networks have reported cyber incidents as threat actors continue to home in on IT services firms.

"We have enough challenges in the world today; we don't want to be paying our money over to thieves to get our data back, that's not what we're about, we're about protecting people against that world," he stated.

"As part of our partner programme we have an NFR part so they can actually use our technology to protect themselves and their own data and their own endpoints within their infrastructure and that's part of the partner programme.

"We didn't have an NFR programme before this and now they can actually use our technology to protect their own environment and protect their customers' environment."

The new #CyberFit programme is the "first of its kind" and was developed to cater to its own growing cloud business, as well as the increasing number of cloud specialist partners, McCurtin added.

"Over the last 17 years we've developed as an organisation. We moved into cloud about six years ago and are really focused on cloud-based solutions going forward," he explained.

"Last year in my Northern Europe region, we achieved around 50 to 60 per cent year-on-year growth, so it's absolutely fantastic focusing on the cloud side of the business.

"But we never really had a programme in place for our service providers in that area so this new programme is providing them with support and materials that we can actually assist them in their growth and ultimately rewarding them for their expertise, commitment and growth with Acronis."

The #CyberFit programme offers partners financial incentives, marketing and sales assets, account management, improved technical support and sales and technical training.

McCurtin added that developing deeper relationships with customers is a priority for the vendor this year and that he sees partners as instrumental in this effort.

"It's really key to us that we focus on the end user in 2021, we've seen that with Covid with everybody working from home it's more important than ever to understand the requirements around what service providers and end users require this year," he elaborated.

"So this new programme is providing sales enablement, account management and enhanced technical support to our partners going forward and, hopefully, giving them the ammunition to reach out to their end users."