2nd Watch Partners With Armor To Offer Expanded Managed Security Service

‘Our multi-cloud managed security service goes beyond best practice recommendations and guidance to include implementation, deployment and full management of security devices along with remediation of identified security issues,’ says Chris Garvey, 2ndWatch’s executive vice president of product.

Strategic service provider 2nd Watch is now offering a new managed security service for customers that is more extensive and more closely integrated with the company’s other managed services than its earlier security offerings.

2nd Watch Thursday unveiled a partnership with cloud cybersecurity vendor Armor, whose Armor Anywhere threat detection and response software serves as the platform for the new service.

“This is a fully managed SOC [Security Operations Center] service that’s tightly integrated with our other public cloud managed services,” said Chris Garvey, 2nd Watch executive vice president of product, in an exclusive interview with CRN. “It’s a pretty compelling offer to bundle cloud managed services and managed SOC through a single vendor.”

[Related: 2nd Watch To Expand Managed Optimization Service Through Deal With Spot By NetApp]

2nd Watch has previously offered managed security services. But Garvey described the new security service extension as “a much higher level of service” both in terms of its capabilities and its integration with other 2nd Watch offerings.

The expanded security orchestration and response service, based on the Armor Anywhere platform, offers 24/7/365 vSOC monitoring to protect data and applications against security vulnerabilities and malware, and provides rapid incident remediation across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud platforms.

The multi-cloud service, with consumption-based pricing, supports log ingestion from more than 200 third-party applications and provides a single point of contact for security management through 2nd Watch.

“Our multi-cloud managed security service goes beyond best practice recommendations and guidance to include implementation, deployment and full management of security devices along with remediation of identified security issues,” Garvey said. The service is now live and is already being used by several 2nd Watch customers, he added.

Garvey said some customers use SOC services from other security providers. While those services can detect security threats, it’s often up to 2nd Watch or another MSP to take the necessary steps—such as reconfiguring cloud systems—to respond to attacks and remediate any damage. That means customers sometimes find themselves “swiveling” between MSPs and security service providers to collect and pass along information in the midst of an attack—leading to delayed responses, Garvey said.

Integrating its new security service with other cloud managed services as 2nd Watch has done “leads to faster remediation times—which can be critical,” Garvey said.

“Every enterprise should make it a priority to integrate security and compliance protections into their cloud infrastructure so as to guard against both intentional and accidental risks,” said Josh Bosquez, Armor’s chief technology officer, in a statement. “Armor Anywhere’s robust workload protection and compliance capabilities, combined with 2nd Watch’s extensive managed cloud services, helps organizations do just that: detect, respond and resolve accidental and intentional threats.”

The new service can also provide customers with SOC capabilities at a much lower cost than if they implemented their own SOC systems, according to Garvey.

In May of this year 2nd Watch launched a DevSecOps strategy service to help customers align their DevOps and security practices by implementing security-as-code processes.

2nd Watch will continue to work with the cybersecurity provider whose service 2nd Watch has offered until now because the two have a number of shared customers, Garvey said. He declined to identify the vendor.

Seattle-based 2nd Watch, No. 134 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, was No. 30 on the CRN 2020 Fast Growth 150 and was a CRN 2020 Triple Crown Award Winner.