Sophos doesn't directly sell cybersecurity services to consumers. It is entirely focused on working through its channel partners. The relationship with these partners is crucial to Sophos, which aims to be the ”Best in Channel”, offering its partners the top cybersecurity product with the best margins and the deepest support.
Marty Ward, vice president of Sophos Technology Group Operations and Communications, outlined the company's channel strategy in a new Inside the Channel video podcast. In it, he discussed how partners can integrate Sophos Incident Response (IR) services into their offerings to deal with current threats and gain insights to prevent future issues.
The IR services offered by Sophos help identify and neutralize active threats quickly. This enables organizations to shift their risk onto third parties like resellers and Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners. “The customers realize they don’t have the [cybersecurity] expertise in house, they might not be able to train or retain them or recruit them…They are leveraging you (the partner) to manage and mitigate their risk by managing their environment for them,” said Ward.
Strategic Growth Initiatives
Sophos offers a service-led and solutions-focused approach critical to supporting the SMB customer segment, and it sees a huge upside in working through the channel to deliver this package. “We love our partners. We love our MSPs. We’re just here to be an extension of your team," Ward said. “We want to provide additional security experts without you having to add headcount."
In the podcast, Ward discusses three ways Sophos partners can provide Managed Detection and Response (MDR) or IR services to SMB customers.
Firstly, partners not currently offering MDR or IR services can opt to resell Sophos services, enabling them to establish a Security Operations Center within their customer base quickly. This approach allows partners to enhance their profit margins by delivering cybersecurity as a service, including 24/7 ransomware protection and breach prevention.
Secondly, Sophos can provide additional expertise for partners already delivering MDR or IR services. By teaming up with Sophos, these partners can extend their service coverage 24/7, despite their own limited availability. "Maybe you want to do your own threat-hunting service,” Ward said. “We will do the back-end threat firefighting, and you can start up a threat-hunting service."
The third choice involves a hybrid approach. A partner can establish their own MDR or IR service using the Sophos XDR unified platform and oversee its management.
Sophos is committed to partnering with the channel and increasing its cybersecurity business, whether the next opportunity lies in helping customers enhance their threat and cyber intelligence, minimizing risks, ensuring top-notch security outcomes, reducing security expenses, or optimizing user productivity. Sophos will be there to secure the best outcome. Learn more and watch the video podcast from Sophos.