Fostering channel partnerships with reputable value-added resellers (VARs) has become an important component of most cybersecurity companies' go-to-market strategies. Challenged by what seems like historic levels of market saturation and the continued emergence of new and potentially disruptive technologies, many InfoSec product and service providers have come to depend on the channel not just to expedite sales and sustain revenue, but also to aggressively protect against competitors seeking to make a dent in their mindshare and market share.
For VARs, the ascendance of cybersecurity tools and technologies into their IT portfolio serves as an invaluable revenue stream because of security’s importance to businesses of all sizes, especially the enterprise and middle market. In fact, by 2019, Gartner forecasts that enterprise spending on security outsourcing services will compromise 75 percent of total spending on security software and hardware products – which is even more great news for the channel.

Today, however, the challenge for most VARs is to cut through all of the cybersecurity vendor ‘noise’ to determine which companies provide the most value to both their business and their client’s needs. Since most cyberattacks continue to begin with a malicious message, it should come as no surprise that email security and phishing mitigation frequently top that ever-growing necessities list. But with numerous anti-phishing options spanning secure email gateways to phishing awareness training and advanced phishing threat prevention and protection, among others, VARs have their work cut out for them to understand the nuisances of each technology, and what makes one approach more valuable to them than the others.

Bringing Better Email Phishing Threat Protection to the Channel

Resellers offer great value to customers by reducing risk against increasingly complex threats. But as phishing threats, in particular, become more complex, it’s time for many of them to step up their phishing mitigation portfolio beyond the status quo and move to more automated and intelligent solutions that can not only increase effectiveness but also reduce the workload. Automated advanced phishing threat protection can benefit the channel in several ways:

1. Improve on Inefficiencies of SEG and Phishing Awareness Training

Secure email gateways (SEGs) and phishing awareness training remain critical tools in the fight against phishing and malware.

As increasingly-sophisticated phishing attacks, such as BEC, become more difficult to detect, even by trained security personnel. Thus there is an urgent need for the channel to provide customers with technology that not only strives to prevent intrusion but can also help users after an attack has passed through the secure email gateway.

A mailbox-level anti-phishing solution offers an additional layer of protection by analyzing account information and understanding users’ communication habits. This delivers an enhanced level of phishing protection to detect attacks faster, alert users, and remediate threats as quickly as possible. Machine learning scores sender reputation enabling a baseline for what “normal communications” with a user should look like. It can then compare correspondence and incoming messages with multiple data points to identify and learn from anomalies.

2. It Takes a Load off the Security Team

Customers now have many tools on the market to enhance their email security. The best of these use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for better phishing detection. This not only improves security but can significantly reduce the workloads of IT and security teams. According to a survey by Fidelis Cybersecurity, less than one in five organizations has a dedicated threat-hunting team, and only half of those could handle more than eight investigations per day.

Security teams need all the help they can get and must look beyond human intelligence to additional aids that protect the integrity of their corporate information. Automation can improve efficiency by flagging and analyzing the growing number of investigations, and by filtering out false positives. An automated phishing detection and mitigation system reduces response time, identifies threats, and can classify and remediate them with one click. It also delivers better metrics and intelligence with real-time insight into the strategies employed by the latest threats. Pushing these duties to an innovative solution not only increases security but also enables security teams to focus more on policy and prevention.

3. It Offers a Solution, Not a Tool

The goal of security isn’t solely to bring tools to the table, it is to offer solutions. resellers ultimately need to ensure that solutions work for the organization, and that calls for listening to customers, understanding the channels, the issues and how they are impacting the organization.
Whereas basic tools simply offer information and basic applications, automated and advanced phishing threat prevention and protection solutions can help solve the challenges that customers face. This ultimately helps the channel discuss solutions with their customers and offer an overall picture and architecture of solving the challenges that are now inherent to email security. Automated advanced phishing threat protection defends against today’s and tomorrow’s threats with a system that continually learns and makes the entire organization more security conscious and aware.

4. Separate You from Your Competitors

AAs the channel is sometimes slow to move to some of the more advanced technologies, those that are fast will gain the upper hand and competitive advantage. Merely having these conversations will automatically distinguish you from many of your competitors. It demonstrates that you have a pulse on the latest threats and an insight into how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning can improve security posture and phishing detection, without adding more burden to them.

This is especially important as Business Email Compromise attacks are on the rise. These attacks grew to record levels in 2017, according to the FBI, and can cost victimized organizations an average of $25,000 to $75,000. Trend Micro believes that business email compromise attacks will surpass $9 billion in 2018. An analysis of 160 billion emails sent to 2,400 companies last year found that 89 percent of those companies were targeted with at least one attack.

Overall, an automated advanced phishing threat detection platform benefits the channel by bringing a new level of security in an insecure world. IRONSCALES automated email phishing response solution provides analysis and remediates threats in real-time. It leverages machine learning and puts security at the mailbox level to better enable a system to understand users’ communication habits and identify nefarious emails.
IRONSCALES offers highly competitive margins, 90-day jump-start margins, deal protection with a unique recurring revenue model, and a quick payout. We also offer pre-qualified leads from events, SEO, press, marketing training and no barriers to entry. Learn more about our partnership programs.