MXI Offers Portable Stealthy Security

Company:

Headquarters: Montreal

Technology Sector: Security

Key Product: Stealth M500

Year Founded: 2001

Number of Channel Partners: 25 in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: It's a great time to be in the managed portable security solutions business, which is branching out from a focus on government to the enterprise, healthcare and financial sectors.

The Lowdown: MXI Security claims to be the No. 1 seller of portable security products in the U.S. government space, even though it's up against goliaths such as SanDisk. MXI works with more than 150 global government agencies, about half of those in the U.S. And while it might not be a towering presence in the portable security market -- yet -- MXI has partnerships with boldfaced names such as McAfee and RSA.

Its flagship product is the Stealth M500, a secure USB flash drive that can store encrypted data in increments of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32 GB for up to 10 users. The M500 is powered by a Bluefly processor and has AES 256-bit encryption. The USB devices can also carry multiple RSA SecureID soft tokens and can be managed with McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator.

Part of the reason for its success in going up against the giants in the market is its small size, said Mike Coyle, director of North American sales for MXI.

"We can give resellers and end-users more personal attention, and they won't get lost," Coyle said.

Although the company's reseller program is small with just 25 partners in the U.S. and Canada, MXI says it takes the channel seriously.

"We are 100 percent channel with no direct business, and one distributor," said Coyle, referencing the company's partnership with Envoy Data, a distributor specializing in security and PC storage products. "We're looking to expand, but our strategy is to carry more proactive resellers who are interested in and can achieve the knowledge level we're looking for in the security market," Coyle said.

Outside of the government space, MXI's meat-and-potatoes market, the company sees healthcare and the finance sectors as growth areas in light of ever-tightening compliance rules.

But MXI also has an eye on the enterprise as employees increasingly work from home or take their laptops on the road.

Coyle said that MXI is in the middle of making changes to its reseller program, which it will announce in the next few months, and that part of the revamp will include adding more enterprise-focused resellers to its roster.