Next-generation cybersecurity vendor Sophos, has announced accelerated worldwide growth of managed service provider (MSP) Connect, its award-winning programme to help MSPs increase customer management efficiencies, unlock new business opportunities and boost revenue.
According to the vendor, the growth is fueled by increased demand for Sophos’ next-generation cybersecurity solutions and services that protect against ransomware and other cyberthreats.
Sophos stated that its MSP Connect achieved 67% year-over-year billings growth in the first quarter fiscal year 2022, ending June 30, 2021 and 55% year-over-year billings growth in fiscal year 2021, ending March 31, 2021, through MSP Connect Flex, Sophos’ flexible monthly billing programme. The company said MSP Connect now supports more than 16,500 global and regional MSPs worldwide, a 54% increase since April 1, 2020, the start of Sophos’ fiscal year 2021.
“The world experienced a necessary shift to remote working this past year, requiring businesses to rely heavily on the cloud. MSPs have been on the frontlines since day one, helping organisations secure hybrid workforces with remote employees – a critical role considering changing attacker tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) that increasingly involve remote access services such as remote desktop protocol (RDP),” said Scott Barlow, Vice President, Global MSP and Cloud Alliances, Sophos. “MSP Connect makes it easier than ever for MSPs to secure diverse customer environments with one comprehensive cybersecurity portfolio that’s simple to deploy and manage.”
New to the MSP Connect portfolio is Sophos XDR, the industry’s extended detection and response (XDR) solution that synchronises native endpoint, server, firewall and email security. Sophos Intercept X with XDR and other pillar products – including Sophos Firewall and Sophos Cloud Security – share threat intelligence in real time for co-ordinated and automated response to threats as part of the Sophos adaptive cybersecurity ecosystem, a new open security architecture for protection. Built on a cloud-based data lake with the industry’s richest data set, the ecosystem continuously improves based on the collective input of Sophos solutions and services, partners, customers, developers and other security industry vendors.
MSPs further benefit with Sophos Managed Threat Response (MTR), a fully-managed threat hunting, detection and response service that provides a dedicated 24/7 security team to rapidly identify and neutralise sophisticated and complex threats. The customisable offering provides tremendous growth opportunities for partners, and is one of the industry’s most widely used managed detection and response services, now with more than 5,000 customers.
“We’re seeing unprecedented demand for integrated security solutions and services that better protect customers and enable partners to expand their business,” said Barlow. “Sophos is constantly innovating and we’re arming MSPs with the multilayered security needed for protection, visibility and compliance of on-premises and public cloud environments. Sophos’ new managed cloud security bundle, for example, provides everything MSPs need to extend their cybersecurity expertise to the public cloud.”
MSPs manage Sophos solutions and services in the cloud-based Sophos Central platform, where they can oversee all customer installations – both on-premises and in the public cloud, respond to alerts, and track licenses and upcoming renewal dates via a single, intuitive interface.
What channel partners say
“A customer recently became the target of what could have resulted in a devastating breach, but we were able to quickly stop the attack thanks to the Sophos Rapid Response team, which provided critical support in an extremely challenging situation. We’ve now made it a requirement for all ITConnexx customers to implement Sophos MTR, so that neither us nor our clients find ourselves in a similar situation again,” said Brian O’Shaughnessy, CEO, ITConnexx. “The innovation behind Sophos XDR is another game changer in how we’re able to protect our customers from today’s most sophisticated threats with an all-encompassing holistic view of their environments.”
“The cybersecurity threat landscape is extremely volatile and one of the biggest challenges we face as an MSP is in finding industry-best vendors that not only help differentiate our business, but more importantly ensure our customers are protected from the most advanced and never-before-seen threats,” said Bob Coppedge, CEO, Simplex-IT. “Sophos solutions and services provide the industry’s best protection, bar none. The enablement and education further provided through MSP Connect helps us create the bridge we need to communicate with executives – especially those who don’t always understand the intricacies of cybersecurity.”