Dive Brief:
- SonicWall expanded its subscription-based firewall platform to virtualized environments with an eye on managed service providers and managed security service providers. The eighth generation of its NSv XS platform is designed to secure small and midsize businesses and branch locations, the company said in the Tuesday announcement.
- The offering comes in three sizes, bundling firewall protection with up to $200,000 in cyber insurance, cloud management capabilities and SonicSentry NOC team co-management services for after-hours support designed to help partners expand their security practices.
- The key addition is cloud-based protection, according to SonicWall CPO Chandro Prasad. “NSv XS extends our Gen 8 platform into the cloud and hypervisor environments for the first time, closing the inspection gap that perimeter-only security leaves behind,” he said in the release. “It gives partners everything they need to build a managed virtual firewall practice without adding complexity or cost.”
Dive Insight:
SonicWall’s platform upgrade follows an increasingly familiar industry strategy, as vendors target MSPs and MSSPs serving midmarket businesses with bundled, SaaS-based security offerings.
Palo Alto Networks, one of the largest players in the market, unveiled the AI-enhanced Idra identity security management platform Tuesday. The new offering integrates with the CyberArk identity security platform which Palo Alto Networks acquired for an estimated $25 billion earlier this year.
Security platform provider Proofpoint created a dedicated MSP business unit on Wednesday, expanding its channel focus in North America to include Microsoft ecosystem protection for MSPs. The company shored up its MSP profile through a partnership with the cloud-based Pax8 marketplace, the company said in the announcement.
“Having Proofpoint’s MSP Platform in the Pax8 Marketplace gives our partners access to one of the most comprehensive Microsoft 365 security platforms available to MSPs,” Oguo Atuanya, corporate VP of vendor experience at Pax8,” said in the announcement.
WatchGuard Technologies, which serves more than 1,700 MSPs and security services resellers, added an army of cybersecurity agents to its insights hub last week to help its partners automate detection and response processes.
Streamlining security operations is the holy grail in an industry beset with complexity, according to security platform provider Versa. The company identified what it calls a cybersecurity “complexity tax” through a survey of 525 senior IT security decision-makers. More than one-third of respondents linked gaps between security and networking teams to a recent breach. Nearly three-quarters said they’d seen a critical project delayed or derailed by integration hurdles.
SonicWall’s platform push was underscored in March by changes in its SecureFirst partner program to incentivize service providers to sell more than just firewall protection. The vendor swapped individual technical certifications for company-accreditations to encourage partners to offer broad platform capabilities.
"The updates we made to SecureFirst were built around one idea: removing the friction that slows partners down,” SonicWall CRO Patrick O’Donnell told Channel Dive Tuesday via email. “Role-based accreditations, firm-level specializations, subscription-driven revenue models — all of it is designed to help partners scale without adding headcount or complexity.”
