Alert Logic Courts SMB Partners For On-Demand IPS

This month, Alert Logic launched its first partner program, called Vanguard, which includes sales and technical training, deal registration, technical support and revenue-based discounts, said Chris Smith, vice president of marketing at the Houston-based security vendor.

Designed to help companies bolster network security, Alert Logic's on-demand intrusion prevention and vulnerability assessment service is delivered via a subscription model. The service makes sense for SMBs because it frees resources that might otherwise be tied up with the false positives that typically occur with an intrusion-prevention system (IPS), said Larry Dannemiller, president of BSSI, a Houston security integrator.

"The ROI [of Alert Logic's solution] is especially compelling to companies in the SMB space," Dannemiller

In particular, Alert Logic is positioning its service as an affordable way for customers to protect themselves against the rising number of "brute force" attacks on SMBs, in which attackers launch multiple, simultaneous threats at a target until one of them defeats the security systems in place. The cost and complexity of IPSes have prevented SMBs from adopting the technology, Smith said.

Alert Logic's offering consists of an appliance that communicates to its data center and monitors traffic on a customer's network, as well as a hosted service in the cloud and threat analysis by the vendor's team of security researchers.

"We actually have visualization into the threats on the hundreds of customer networks that we monitor. So we can see trends such as brute force attacks operating in real time," Smith said.

Pricing for Alert Logic's hosted service starts at $1,000 per month.