Recently MSPAlliance had the opportunity to speak with Paul Lipman, CEO of Total Defense, and get his views and comments on a variety of topics including the state of the managed security market, how MSPs are dealing with cyber threats, and much more.
Who is Total Defense?
Total Defense is a global leader in malware detection and anti-crimeware solutions. Tens of thousands of businesses across a wide spectrum of industries have deployed the Company’s solutions, including some of the most sophisticated buyers of security technology worldwide, and millions of consumers worldwide use Total Defense’s products.
Total Defense’s solutions include the industry’s first complete cloud security platform, providing fully integrated Endpoint, Web and Email security through a single Web-based management console with a single set of enforceable security policies. The Company also offers a broad portfolio of leading security products for the consumer market. Total Defense is a former business of CA Technologies, one of the largest software companies in the world, and has operations in New York, California, Europe, Israel and Asia.
How do cloud and managed service providers play into your overall channel strategy?
Total Defenses flag ship product is Total Defense for Business, a cloud based security platform offering Email, Web and Endpoint security all fully integrated into a single console. This solution is architected from the ground up to be fully multi-tenanted and support a multi-tiered sales strategy. As such the product supports both reseller accounts who are able to self-provision and fully support their own customers, as well as distributor accounts who are able to setup their own reseller accounts in addition to customer accounts. Both the reseller and distributor accounts also provide the ability for a partner to upload their own imagery and configurations to fully white-label the service and make it their own.
With this support, Total Defense for Business is perfectly positioned to allow cloud and managed service providers to resell and market the Total Defense for Business platform as their own Email, Web and Endpoint security solutions.
This year Total Defense is embarking on a strategic sales program to target and focus on these types of partners, already 30% of the end customers using the platform have purchased it through one of our MSP partners. Total Defense sees this business as an ideal opportunity to grow their user base by supporting and enabling these partners who are in essence an extension of our own sales team.
What types of managed service providers are more ideal for your partner programs?
Total Defense for Business is designed to be as simple as possible and yet deliver the security capabilities that the vast majority of customers are looking for. Because of this, MSP partners do not need to be deeply technical. The ideal partner is a security player and one who are looking to expand their range of services to cover Email, Web and Endpoint with value added sales and support processes.
What is your position on managing the end point, particularly when BYOD seems to be creating a lot of discussion between customers and their managed service providers?
The Endpoint security service is essentially the Endpoint management server that used to be on-premise now running in the cloud with a local agent, the Mobile Application Client installed on all the Endpoints to be managed. The Mobile Application Client currently supports Windows & MAC platforms. The Web security service that integrates Web filtering, DLP and Malware scanning 100% in the cloud is able to support more than just Windows & MAC, you are able to use PAC files which can be configured on just about any device and then that device will be filtered. For BYOD, where you do not want to make any changes to any devices, you can do firewall forwarding to forward, for example all the traffic from your guest Wi-Fi network to the Web security service for scanning.
What are the main cyber threats you see facing managed service providers and their customers?
In terms of cyber threats facing MSP partners they do need to be very careful to protect their customer databases and service authentication details, because an MSP holds credentials to potentially bypass security for a number of organizations they could be targeted by an attacker who is trying to infiltrate one of their customers. They also need to ensure their websites and external facing applications are rock solid, the impact of reputation damage from even a minor security event at a security MSP could not be measured. You only have to look to the Dutch Certificate Authority who were hacked, they ended up going out of business within 3 months of the incident.
MSP customers are open to all the same cyber-attacks that any typical customer will be, however they do have an advantage in that instead of relying on in-house expertise, they have the backing of their MSP and their security experts to protect them.
How can Managed Service Providers best protect their customers in the coming months and years?
The Internet threat landscape today is becoming a battlefield of mass and targeted attacks. Organizations are rapidly becoming overwhelmed by not only the volume of attacks but also the complexity. MSPs have a fantastic opportunity to become the trusted security advisor to their customers to ensure they are being protected from the latest attacks. In this way they also become a key part of their customer’s business which increases customer loyalty if done correctly.