e92plus strengthens cybersecurity portfolio with three major signings
by Colin Brown
The UK channel for cybersecurity is one of the most dynamic and competitive, which highlights the success for e92plus in seeing its most successful year ever in 2022, with record revenues. The continued disruption and acquisitive nature of distribution has seen the distributor emerge as the largest independent cybersecurity VAD, and with continued investment in technical, marketing and automation services, it’s being recognised by major vendors as the best partner with whom to build a channel community.
The partnership with Check Point leverages the reputation of e92plus in building partner channels, especially in the SMB market. The announcement builds on the existing relationship, covering their innovative CloudGuard offering and their Harmony endpoint, mobile and gateway technologies, to now encompass their Quantum firewalls – a product set that Check Point has an outstanding reputation for (including being recognised as a leader in the Magic Quadrant by Gartner for 23 consecutive years). In particular, the focus on the SMB market sees e92plus driving partner recruitment and enablement alongside providing training and professional services in an area of huge opportunity for partners, especially with small business struggling with the job market skills gap, and budgets under pressure.
Martin Rutterford, Channel Director for Check Point UK & Ireland said: “We understand that the threat landscape is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate, and this has left SMBs more vulnerable to cybersecurity threats than ever before. As such, we want to ensure that our solutions are available to all, regardless of headcount as businesses continue to defend against cyberattacks. Having a pre-existing relationship with e92plus, we have been impressed with their ability to support our partners. Looking ahead, we know they have the expertise to maintain their impressive work to date with a new set of solutions and build our presence within this space.”
The partnership with Proofpoint, a leading cybersecurity and compliance company, will help further expand their partner business across the UK. Through the partnership, e92plus will distribute Proofpoint Essentials, its exclusively-built information security solution for small- or medium-sized enterprises The dedicated Cloud and MSP team at Proofpoint will work with e92msp, the dedicated division for managed services, to help shape a community of partners that build on Proofpoint’s solutions with their own expertise and services – whether they are pure-play CSP and MSP/MSSPs, or VARs looking to build a cybersecurity managed service practice.
“Proofpoint’s breadth of solutions is constantly expanding - and will continue to innovate - to match the needs of our partners’ customers to help them address the threat landscape in 2023 and beyond,” said Rick Yates, Director, Cloud and MSP, EMEA at Proofpoint. “Proofpoint Cloud and MSP has seen significant expansion in its partner base across EMEA in the last 12 months and we are excited to partner with e92plus to enhance our value-added distribution options for MSPs in Europe, allowing them to offer innovative cybersecurity solutions to customers. e92plus has developed a meaningful MSP presence over the last few years and I’m confident our partnership will be beneficial to the community”.
Picus Security, the pioneer of Breach & Attack Simulation, has seen huge success internationally – with customers like Vodafone, ING and Turkish Airlines – and is now looking to accelerate its growth further with commercial and enterprise customers in the UK with e92plus. The proliferation of cyber threats and rapid expansion of the attack surface has security teams needing to improve their effectiveness at measuring and reducing their exposure to cyber risk. The Picus Complete Security Validation Platform allows e92plus’ partners to help customers validate and enhance the efficacy of their existing cyber security tools and the efficiency of their teams by continuously running attack simulations and by recommending product-specific mitigations to enhance threat prevention and detection capabilities. The platform integrates with an extensive range of technologies, including solutions from Check Point Software and Proofpoint. .
“e92plus has an outstanding reputation in the UK for championing emerging technology and is the ideal partner for Picus as we drive the adoption of an automated approach to security validation” explains Sarah Goodchild, Senior Director, Channel Sales EMEA at Picus. “With the global Breach and Attack Simulation market set to see global revenues rise to more than $700M by 2026, there is a huge opportunity for the channel to leverage The Picus Platform to demonstrate the ROI of their customers’ existing and future cyber security investments and drive real business value. By working together closely, Picus and e92plus will ensure that partners can take full advantage of this opportunity.”
For e92plus, this represents a huge validation of their strategy of investment in cybersecurity services and expertise, and becoming the leader in that market. It’s a channel strategy that supports partners whether they are looking to grow hardware, subscriptions or managed services, through online marketplaces, cloud or on-premise, or if they’re simply starting on the cybersecurity and need a trusted partner.
For Mukesh Gupta, the three signings demonstrate the potential for e92plus. “We’ve always enjoyed a reputation for market building, and in a competitive channel landscape it’s fantastic to celebrate a record year by signing vendors that include both established market leaders and new, disruptive technologies. We’re seeing a lot of change in the channel as partners seek new opportunities in both services and technology, but the bottom line is the need to provide simplified, effective protection that customers can trust, and ensure they’re delivering the very best, demonstrable ROI at a time when budgets are under huge strain. These new partnerships deliver that, and we’re hugely excited by what 2023 will bring”.
The cybersecurity market is forecast to grow by over 13%, making it one of the strongest performing sectors in the technology market, according to the latest Canalys research, with continually rising threat levels, an evolving threat landscape and the continued immediate financial and operational damage caused by ransomware.