Cork 2.0 Launches As Partner Base Doubles Each Month: Exclusive

‘Cork 2.0 is about making further investments for the MSP to help all of our collective SMB clients be more successful,’ says Dan Candee, Cork’s new CEO. ‘We’re taking an MSP-first approach to adding value, helping them make sense of their stack and their risk profile to provide the right integrations, insight and introductions around cybersecurity insurance.’

Cork Protection has introduced Cork 2.0 with new features and partnerships as the cyber warranty startup has seen its partner base double every month since launching in 2023.

Along with Cork 2.0, the Boston-based company has appointed former Amazon Web Services executive Dan Candee as CEO. Previous CEO Carlson Choi has transitioned to the role of chief product and technology officer.

“Cork 2.0 is about making further investments for the MSP to help all of our collective SMB clients be more successful,” Candee told CRN in an exclusive interview. “We’re helping MSPs simplify all the cybersecurity posture, activity and noise that’s happening in the day-to-day. We’re taking an MSP-first approach to adding value, helping them make sense of their stack and their risk profile to provide the right integrations, insight and introductions around cybersecurity insurance.”

The product, Choi said, has matured well beyond just a pure cyber warranty product.

“It’s now evolved to a security platform,” he said. “Our partners have said, ‘Your platform does a great job as a security blanket that wraps around my whole stack. It helps me identify gaps and opportunities.’ Some of the new features go deeper into that.”

“Cork 1.0 is a great success platform from where we stand,” he added. “Now we got to get 2.0 and I want it to be faster and quicker for what the partner needs. That’s why we made this change. You’re going to see me mostly focusing on getting this company to accelerate faster.”

Cork 2.0 introduces advanced features to boost its cyber intelligence and smart cyber warranty offerings. By leveraging Cork 2.0, MSPs can enhance their security offerings and create new revenue streams, promoting both protection and profitability.

Through its security monitoring platform, Cork is currently managing more than 250,000 endpoints, with millions of compliance events checked daily and hundreds detected and mitigated, according to the company.

With the launch of Cork 2.0, Cork is extending the capabilities of its cyber intelligence and smart cyber warranty offerings with new features designed to help MSPs protect their clients from evolving threats while growing their business and driving profitability through new revenue streams.

New features include business email compromise compliance reporting and endpoint-based pricing designed to help MSPs increase their margins and overall profitability when using the Cork platform.

Cork has also partnered with DataStream Cyber Insurance to deliver end-to-end cyber warranty and cyber insurance protection to MSPs and the businesses they serve. MSPs can now use Cork’s cyber intelligence and active loss prevention platform to underwrite DataStream’s cyber insurance offering, providing comprehensive coverage and risk analysis tools for first-party and third-party losses, including breaches, ransomware, cybercrime and cyberterrorism.

“At the click of a button, MSPs utilizing Cork can immediately receive accurate quote ranges for cyber insurance policies based on DataStream’s vast data and AI models,” Max Henderson, co-founder, chief data officer and head of technology at DataStream, told CRN via email. “By leveraging Cork’s existing warranty coverage, which is only accessible to highly secure firms, DataStream can assist MSP clients in securing reduced premiums on insurance products exceeding $1 million in coverage.”

Candee said Cork is investing in three other initiatives over the next 12 months to further understand how Cork can better help MSPs.

“We are launching our Partner Advisory Council so that we’re really listening and working more closely with those partners that have been key in the development of our solution in our team,” he said. “The second is accelerating the number of integrations that we have with vendors. And third, it’s collaborating more with the insurance companies, insurance brokers and putting the partner in the center of that ecosystem. We’re providing simple outputs to the partners so that they can leverage us and our ecosystem as efficiently as possible.”

Jason Makevich, founder and CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based MSP Greenlight Information Services, said Cork 2.0 addresses the elephant in the room as the long-awaited answer for a question that most MSP and MSSPs have: “How will my client actually continue operations post-breach?” he said.

“Most providers are looking at technology solutions that would facilitate restoring technical operations, but cyber events translate to the balance sheet in a very real way that requires financial solutions,” he told CRN. “Many firms would not have the working capital to survive until their cyber liability policy can complete their investigations and pay out their claim. Cork’s unique offering provides that lifeline, and this has revolutionized our value proposition. Since adding Cork to our stack, we have had a noticeable uptick in our close rate and happier clients.”