Code42 Goes All-In On Channel With Industry Veteran As New Channel Chief

Faraz Siraj, previously a channel sales leader at Cisco Security and RSA, will transition the insider threat vendor to a 100 percent channel go-to-market strategy

Code42, an innovative security vendor combatting data theft, has decided to exclusively go to market through the channel—and has brought aboard a security channel veteran to lead that effort.

Faraz Siraj, who brings channel-leadership experience from Cisco and RSA Security, will spearhead the new go-to-market strategy as channel chief for the born-in-the-cloud company now focused on insider threats.

“We knew we needed a heavy hitter to run our team,” Code42 CEO Joseph Payne told CRN.

[Related: The 12 Hottest Identity And Data Protection Tools Unveiled At RSA 2020]

Minneapolis, Minn.-based Code42’s flagship product, Incydr, addresses the threat posed by malicious actors inside an organization exfiltrating valuable data.

“This space is actually getting really hot. Our business is exploding,” Payne said, noting a recent Forrester report identified insider threat as a top security concern going into 2021.

Code42’s channel currently accounts for about one-third of its $100 million annual Software-as-a-Service business. But by sometime next year, all that business will go through partners, Payne told CRN.

Going all-in on the indirect model signals a unique commitment to the partners who are crucial to selling security solutions, Payne said.

“The channel has fantastic relationships with the customers today, and customers in security like to buy through the channel,” he told CRN. “By moving all your business to the channel, it makes everybody understand this is your focus, this is what you’re going to do. People are more excited to represent your products.”

Siraj, who has 20 years of experience in security sales, with the past 15 focused exclusively on the partner side, is the right channel chief to implement that strategy, Payne said.

“Insider threat is real,” Siraj, whose title is vice president of channel sales, told CRN. “You see the business growing and the problem getting worse. Someone needs to address it. Code42 is in a great position to address it with our partners.”

A shift to an entirely channel model creates opportunities for more partners to gain mindshare around the insider threat category, he said.

To drive that transformation, Siraj has initiated the process of revamping Code42’s partner program.

“We want to build a world-class channel program that is rewarding for all our partners,” he told CRN.

The new program will focus on boosting partner profitability, as well as encouraging growth by expanding the solution and helping partners stay engaged with current customers, the new channel chief said.

Siraj also wants to enable partners to deliver more services around Code42 technology.

“Every partner I’ve met wants the ability to generate services revenue, and we are going to enable them to do that,” he told CRN.

There’s a lot of opportunity for the channel to help customers stop employees from stealing their data, said Payne.

Old approaches like locking down thumb drives are like trying to use firewalls in the remote work and cloud era, the CEO said.

Instead, Incydr wraps a layer of zero-trust security around platforms like Slack and OneDrive and Box by examining all data and all users transporting data. It also gives visibility into the three most common ways of extracting data from an enterprise: emailing on a personal account, putting it into a cloud storage account, or copying to a thumb drive.

The system also learns employees’ normal work patterns, then flags off-hours activity, when most theft occurs.

“What we’ve learned in this space is all users have important data. Trying to figure out how to classify your data is just a fool’s errand,” Payne said.

Code42’s product is like a video camera at the front door, Payne said, watching all activity and flagging suspicious behavior such as moving a lot of data and creating zip files, especially in the weeks leading up to an employee leaving the company.