Dive Brief:

• Arctic Wolf announced the launch of Aurora MDR Connect, a managed detection and response offering geared toward managed service providers, on Tuesday. After technical validation and training, partners can access a streamlined version of Arctic Wolf’s cybersecurity platform and its agents, which process more than 10 trillion security events each week and conduct more than 200,000 investigations weekly, according to a press release.
• Aurora MDR Connect builds on the cybersecurity company’s flagship MDR offering, aiming to provide faster cybersecurity deployment to partners working with midmarket companies. With the new offering, Arctic Wolf hopes to grow its partner ecosystem and expand its scale, CRO Will May told Channel Dive.
• “The majority of our managed service partners service end customers with less than 100 employees,” he said. “By partnering with MSPs, we’re able to reach that long tail of customers. In our MSP program, we treat the MSP as our customer, and then we support them how we would support a typical customer. But they're the ones that actually take our technology alongside their services and package it up to our customer base.”

Dive Insight:

Arctic Wolf has built its position through high-volume collection of cybersecurity data and its concierge model, which provides organizations with dedicated security experts alongside its MDR services, said Matthew Ball, chief analyst at Omdia, a Channel Dive sister company. 

“Connect is a deliberately lighter package aimed at smaller MSPs who were buying Huntress or Blackpoint instead,” Ball said. “The strategic risk is not technical. It is managing a new partner tier without cannibalizing the existing one or creating conflict between partners potentially chasing the same accounts.”

But Arctic Wolf’s new MSP-focused offering is only the start, according to Robin Ody, research director at Omdia. 

“The reason why Huntress or others do well in MDR is in providing service,” he said. “If Arctic Wolf believes it can automate all the issues, but not provide significant human investment into MSP account management, enablement funding, professional services training, sales and marketing funding, and so on, then it may not see the level of long-term growth it is looking for, but if its channel and program strategy follow its product capability, then it will succeed.”

Arctic Wolf’s partner ecosystem encompasses over 250 integrations with alliance partners and partnerships within the insurance broker and carrier community, according to May. Among the cybersecurity provider’s thousands of partners, most work under its resale, co-managed or managed service partner program. 

Resellers make recommendations and sell the Arctic Wolf platform, co-managed partners jointly deliver software and services and MSPs can now deliver cybersecurity to clients directly through MDR Connect, May said.  

Arctic Wolf’s simplified MDR service lets partners provide managed detection and response more quickly. Standard deployment involves an agent installed on device endpoints and a network sensor that monitors traffic — MDR Connect eliminates the network sensor and captures all necessary security data through the endpoint agents alone.

“It’s a way to deploy much faster and have lighter operational complexity while still managing and driving security operations for smaller customers, especially in the SMB market,” May said. “There's more companies that are embracing remote work and hybrid work, so just being able to have a sensorless deployment allows service providers to be able to scale to their smaller, more nimble customers that may not have traditional office hubs.”

Partners can expect 24x7 detection, analytics and response to cybersecurity incidents, along with customer relationship management and service delivery, on one platform, May added. 

“We are a channel-first business,” he said. “I'd say our MSP partner program has really started to become a fully dedicated vertical just over the past two years. Now it's our fastest growing business unit.”