Less is Sometimes More in Cybersecurity
The latest news from Barracuda and WatchGuard shows how leading security vendors are adapting to demand among MSPs for fewer vendor security solutions without fewer layers of protection.
As I say fairly regularly here, MSPs want fewer interfaces, vendor relationships, and partner programs to juggle these days. Yet when it comes to cybersecurity, they don’t want fewer layers of protection for their customers, even at a time of slowing growth.
Which is to say less is more for a lot of things in cyber these days, but more for less remains a winner too, as two recent announcements I’m finally getting around to discussing illustrate.
The first, from Barracuda, doesn’t appear to have much to do with less of anything at first glance given that it involves adding more functionality (in the form of a bulk email remediation feature) and integrations (in the form of connections to six leading PSA platforms from ConnectWise, Kaseya, HaloPSA, and Syncro) to its BarracudaONE platform.
But the whole point of BarracudaONE since its introduction earlier this year has been to consolidate more of the tools MSPs use to secure clients in one place, something Barracuda has prioritized in direct response to partner feedback.
“What we started hearing pretty routinely was that the challenges for an MSP being able to manage the plethora of tools they had were killing them when it came to efficiency, and it was hurting the effectiveness of the tools,” says Brian Downey (pictured), the vendor’s vice president of product management.
Future additions both to BarracudaONE and the Barracuda portfolio, he continues, include new risk assessment functionality.
“You’ll see us focusing more on being able to ensure MSPs have simple visibility into that security posture and using different lenses to be able to understand, based on what they care about, what their biggest risks might be, and then helping provide the guidance to how they can start mitigating those risks,” he says.
Third-party integrations beyond PSA solutions are on the roadmap too, according to Downey. “Whether those are Barracuda-branded tools or third-party tools, we want to have an open ecosystem where people can plug into BarracudaONE and get a holistic picture of their overall security environment.”
That effort is part of a larger effort at Barracuda to treat MSPs as “customer zero,” meaning the primary focus versus an afterthought, according to Michelle Hodges, the company’s senior vice president of global channels.
“Many other vendors create a product and then create the MSP version,” she says. “We are creating and building products purpose-built for that audience.”
Merging those tools into BarracudaONE, moreover, isn’t the only example of less being more in Barracuda’s view either. “We’re combining at every level of the business, not just in go-to-market,” Hodges says. “It’s being done in product and marketing and everywhere to be sure that we’re treating our partners as holistic entities as they service their customers.”
The next big manifestation of that campaign, she adds, will be in partner programs. “We’re combining our two programs and two routes to market,” Hodges says, which will result in a single program for both resellers and MSPs .
Less money for more functionality works too
WatchGuard’s latest news is arguably a case of less is more too, as in more functionality for less money.
The vendor’s recently introduced Endpoint Security Prime solution combines its next-generation antivirus and EDR products with vulnerability management, web filtering, anti-phishing, and other attack surface reduction tools at a price low enough to prevent MSPs from entrusting endpoint protection to antivirus alone.
“Our goal here was to raise the floor, if you will, on endpoint protection,” says Michelle Welch (pictured), WatchGuard’s CMO and SVP of business strategy. “It should never be price prohibitive for you to make the best decision for your business.”
Prime is designed to conserve labor as well as money, Welch adds. “When you’re looking at the MSP and what they’re able to afford, cost isn’t just what they’re paying for it and what they’re able to sell it for. It’s how much time they have to spend managing and monitoring it.” Prime’s AI functionality reduces the “noise” EDR solutions often introduce.
“Our self-learning agents continuously analyze behavior across the endpoint to detect anomalies, investigate the suspicious activity, and then respond automatically,” Welch says, allowing MSPs to provide enhanced security without additional headcount.
Prime is a new addition to the WatchGuard portfolio that sits in between the company’s EPP next-gen antivirus product and its EPDR solution, which combines antivirus with EDR. Unlike Prime, EPDR includes a zero-trust file attestation feature. An advanced edition of EPDR adds SecOps functionality as well.
“People who have and manage their own SOC and are fully staffed there and want to be more involved in that process can set custom rules, custom notifications, and custom configurations,” explains Welch, who expects Prime to eventually be the company’s most popular offering.
“This is the flagship product in the endpoint security portfolio,” she says.
Officially in an early access release at present, Prime is currently available to all WatchGuard partners in North America.
“The intent is for it to be generally available for the rest of the world in Q1 of next year,” Welch says.