Partner content: 'VARs and MSPs need to scale quickly to meet pent up demand' - Q&A with ESET cybersecurity expert
CRN will be hosting a brand-new virtual event called MSP Transform on 23 June.
Joined by familiar faces across the UK IT channel , CRN will be uncovering the market forces that are set to shape the industry as it looks to win the Covid recovery and take advantage of post-pandemic opportunities.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE EVENT AND FOR MORE INFO ON SPEAKER AND AGENDA DETAILS
In anticipation for MSP Transform's launch next month, CRN caught up with event sponsor ESET to find out the big opportunities for its partners over the next 12 months.
What is the biggest challenge that your partners will face this year, and how have you helped them combat these?
Over the last 12 months, the economic downturn has seen many companies downscaling and many more closing their doors permanently. In attempting to survive the onslaught of the pandemic, businesses have tightened their belt on spending. In many instances, operational value and efficacy has become of secondary priority to licence acquisition costs resulting in commoditisation. It is imperative that MSPs and VARs redress this balance to respond to the security and operational challenges posed as businesses migrate back to the office environment.
With the economy set to rebound at the highest rate since WWII and as we recover from the last year of catastrophic disruption, some of the biggest challenges are going to be around how quickly VARs and MSPs can scale to meet this demand. ESET solutions help reduce the costs associated with managing customers. We achieve this by being able to reduce the resources needed to support end-user accounts. The result; our partners are able to increase profits whilst improving clients' cybersecurity posture. We call this The ESET Advantage.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for your partners over the next 12-18 months?
We see two significant opportunities for our partners, both short term and long term.
We've consolidated our products into bundle formats, which are designed to offer end-users better value; greater security; ease of manageability and reporting for Managed Security Service Providers.
The second is adopting a cloud-first approach that has many advantages for both Enterprise and Managed Services clients including removing on-premise hardware; guaranteed up-time; and many more benefits, which are highlighted below:
What one technology trend will shape the IT channel the most over the next 12-18 months?
Service providers who fail to acknowledge the need protect against emerging and zero-day threats, as part of their value proposition, will be left behind. Realistically, this can only be achieved using machine learning. Algorithms used in supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning allows for big data to be analysed to produce predictable behaviours of malicious code. Examples from our industry include:
- Early detection of malicious network activity to limit damage created by cyber threats, thereby reducing cost typically associated with exposed vulnerabilities which lead to security breaches
- Limiting and reducing false-positive detection rates to become more productive by lowering costs related to handling and escalating these false-positive alerts.
What is your advice to partners to grow their business with you this year?
Focus on technology that is as ‘invisible' as possible to both you and your clients. Noisy, difficult to use tech which is expensive to manage and deploy may impact on your ability to meet your clients' SLAs and irritate your clients' end-users thereby threatening client retention too. ESET has been helping the reseller community for the last 34 years to build a solid and reputable business around our cybersecurity solutions. With over a 110 million users worldwide with exponential growth in our Enterprise and MSP business which substantiates our value proposition focusing on people, process and technology. We have proven migration plans to help partners become more profitable more quickly and we'd be delighted to discuss how we can help you.
Pierre Louw is a cyber security professional with more than 10 years' experience in enterprise security & infrastructure sales. Currently, Louw is the Head of MSP at ESET UK. Pierre is a Computer Science graduate and in his final year Master of Science (MSc) Computer Science degree.