MSPAlliance recently had the opportunity to talk with Jacob Thankachen, AVP Sales & Operations with Cyberoam – A Sophos Company, and discuss his views on the company, MSP recruitment, and managed security.
Tell us about Cyberoam
Cyberoam Inc. is a global Network Security appliances company, offering future-ready security solutions to physical and virtual networks in organizations with its Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) and Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances. Cyberoam network security appliances offer multiple security features like stateful inspection firewall, Application Visibility & Control, Web Filtering, VPN, Intrusion Prevention System, Gateway Anti-Virus, Gateway Anti-Spam, Web Application Firewall, Bandwidth Management and Multiple Link Management over these appliances, depending on the need of organizations. The virtual and hardware Cyberoam Central Console appliances offer Centralized Security Management options to organizations, while Cyberoam iView allows intelligent logging and reporting with one-of-their-kind, in-depth reports. Cyberoam is accredited with prestigious global standards and certifications like EAL4+, CheckMark UTM Level 5 Certification, ICSA Labs, IPv6 Gold logo, and is a member of the Virtual Private Network Consortium.
Cyberoam is a very niche brand and also belongs to a niche technology market segment. Being a network security technology company, Cyberoam’s interaction as a brand has largely been confined to the fraternity of network administrators only. However, in recent times, network security market has experienced a lot of evolution and awareness. With this, partners, customers and end users are becoming more aware of their decisions. Also a spate of technologies such as smart mobile devices, BYOD, cloud, virtualization etc has turned network security into a critical business enabler for SMBs as well as large enterprises. With this it has become necessary for Cyberoam to extend its reach and adopt novel means to educate users that consume ‘Cyberoam’ brand.
We saw an opportunity in turning Cyberoam into a socio-techno-economic intervention. We started with Cyberoam Learning initiative and began providing professional training to create industry-ready network security professionals through the network of authorized training partners. This was indeed a grass-root level initiative, which was aimed at spreading awareness and imparting skills using ‘Cyberoam’ as a platform. People who got trained under this initiative will not end up as qualified network security professionals alone. This skilled workforce will also represent Cyberoam, its values and drive more awareness among prospective industry segments. Recently, we felt the need to explore at even deeper grassroots level. That’s where we are collaborating with educators, universities and academic institutions to help them meet industry expectations in bridging skills gap in network security manpower. With this Cyberoam is now reaching young career aspirants and college graduates, who will emerge as another group of brand-ambassadors for Cyberoam by fulfilling industry and government needs for protecting information assets.
Cyberoam Threat Research Labs, our in-house team of vulnerability researchers is another example that is extending the reach and value of Cyberoam and adding more magnitude in its brand message, which is ‘Securing You’. The team conducts vulnerability analysis on the outbreak of various network and application threats on regular basis and also collaborates with other vendors in network security industry ecosystem to develop safeguard measures for new threats and vulnerabilities.
What types of programs do you have for MSPs, VARs, and resellers?
Cyberoam always has been and will always be a channel driven network Security Company. Enabling channel partners to capture new opportunities in emerging trends and markets holds key to our growth objective. Network Security market is poised for a huge change as the industry prepares to provide answers for a slew of emerging IT trends. The idea of network security doesn’t end with defending networks alone. It now extends to enabling businesses for new IT driven models such as virtualization, cloud, BYOD, mobility etc. CIOs and CISOs increasingly yearn to become information enablers and seek solutions that can help make sense of network information and enable governance and compliance for regulatory needs. Cyberoam is committed to provide its partners with cutting-edge products, solutions and industry know-how together with required understanding into customer challenges and pain areas. We want our partners to grow beyond product sale and achieve higher revenue and growth with service and subscription based growth models.
For MSSP partners, Cyberoam puts it money where its mouth is. Cyberoam sees MSSPs and MSPs as key partners and is committed to enable innovations that map to the needs of the dynamic managed security services market, thereby able to positively impact MSSP partners’ competitive business advantage. Using Cyberoam’s ecosystem of extensive network security solutions, cost-effective cloud-based management infrastructure, industry leading know-how, robust customer support and other resources, MSSPs can manage customer networks effectively and deliver compelling business value with least hassle and investment.
Secure customer networks: Offer Next-Generation security to customers with Cyberoam network security solutions (NGFWs/UTMs) available as hardware and virtual.
Centrally manage customers’ network security: Remotely manage customer networks, enforce policies and firmware/security upgrades and do much more, centrally with Cyberoam Central Console (CCC) appliances
Own Security Operations Center (SOC) on the Cloud at zero investment: Manage hundreds of Cyberoam appliances for multiple customers from a single interface, anywhere, anytime with Cyberoam on-Cloud Management Service (CCMS), at zero investment, with a data center and web portal to manage customer appliances
Create your own security services portfolio: Get flexibility to create portfolio of security service offerings and to choose service delivery models as per your customer needs.
Integrate with MSSP business automation tools: Add speed to your security service processes with Cyberoam’s integration with third party business automation tools like ConnectWise.
Help customers display compliance: Enable your customers to meet regulatory needs with one-click compliance reports on HIPAA, SOX, PCI DSS.
Avail and offer excellent customer service: Get a dedicated Support Account Manager with 24×7 availability, get direct access to subject matter expert (SME) and multi-channel support over email, phone and onsite.
What types of MSPs do you typically like to engage?
Cyberoam understands that our partners now have to address very demanding customers and support challenging use cases & requirements where security, compliance and performance needs go hand in hand. Moreover, customers seek long term relevance for their investments. It’s about time our partners get the right skills and portray evolved understanding for the changing times. We are taking them beyond box selling and are committed to transform their business with advanced network security expertise skills, offerings, business models & resources, including world-class customer support & financial incentives for partners’ growth appetite. Training and Certifications, rebates, lucrative incentive schemes, dedicated resource to provide leads to partners, dedicated channel manager to resolve partner issues / grievances and ensure smooth operation of business all together form this agenda.
The market for managed security services is poised for a huge growth. Several noted analyst firms have also cited buoyant future predictions and growth traction for this segment. As Infonetics Research and Gartner observes, more end users and SMB businesses among others are likely to turn to managed security services / MSSPs, as the volume and complexity of threats continues to increase. At this juncture, we are committed to support MSPs, IT service providers and VARs who are desirous of adding security services to their portfolio and seek a capable partner with proven network security know-how, multiple business models, excellent support ecosystem and dedicated customer support. We welcome new partners who wish to break-free by getting rid of traditional business models and eager to embrace a dynamic business change to capture rising opportunities in network security marketplace.
What are some of the areas where MSPs are struggling with cloud and how doe Cyberoam address those issues?
Cloud adoption continues to be a huge phenomenon the world over; however, its adoption by IT solutions providers isn’t that easy. As mentioned earlier, making a shift from yesterday’s traditional business models and legacy IT infrastructure to cloud-based platform requires a lot of know-how and a capable partnership with a sound technology partner. At this stage, we observe inability to fathom operational bottlenecks and lack of domain know-how as key bottlenecks for MSPs in embracing cloud effectively. Moreover, investment in cloud is also another key factor that influences decisions. MSPs need strategic partnerships with technology vendors who can bring end-to-end support to help them monetize investments in cloud or provide ready cloud-based support thereby giving MSPs the head-start they need to compete with confidence.
How are the successful MSPs engaging with Cyberoam in order to bring effective and secure cloud computing to their customers?
We already discussed several aspects in earlier questions. Cyberoam also has a strong roadmap in this direction and a lot of development is underway.
As more countries are wanting to embrace the cloud, but only if it is secure and private, what message do you have for those individuals and organizations about how Cyberoam views cloud privacy and security?
The key challenge is turning ‘disruptive’ into ‘productive’. In the wake of several disruptive trends including cloud, businesses around the world feel caught in a transition which is extremely compelling and questioning their existing IT posture and legacy infrastructure. What they should figure out in the first place is how security ties with cloud or any other IT trend / technology and how business and technology priorities need to be seen at par. Eventually CIOs and CISOs need to justify their investments and moves. Security should be given equal priority, at par with other business and operational gains that may arise from cloud adoption. And it must be noted that security has grown into a really elaborate expression. Network security encompasses many aspects primarily including compliance, responsiveness, visibility, situational awareness, user-based reporting and flexibility.