AT&T Cybersecurity Spin-Off LevelBlue Launches New Program To Transform Partners Into MSSPs: Exclusive

LevelBlue, one of the largest cybersecurity startups at its launch, according to the company, is introducing a new partner program to empower more solution providers to become MSSPs, the company’s president, Sundhar Annamalai, tells CRN exclusively.

Nearly a year after launching, cybersecurity spin-off LevelBlue is rolling out a new partner program for MSSPs, or those on the journey toward becoming an MSSP, the company told CRN exclusively.

AT&T Cybersecurity in May broke off LevelBlue as a standalone managed cybersecurity services business. Now, the provider is ready to launch its new portal, security services, and marketing and partner enablement materials for new and existing partners, Sundhar Annamalai, president of LevelBlue, told CRN.

LevelBlue today offers global managed security services, cybersecurity consulting, threat intelligence and security operations center (SOC) support. The company offers a suite of easy to integrate, scalable security services in a flexible consumption-based model for managed and unmanaged cybersecurity services, the company said.

The new program will arm MSPs with the resources they need to become MSSPs, said Annamalai (pictured above).

“We have a partner program where you can just take this on and you already have all of the resources on your side. MSPs are already doing IT services and managed network security, and so instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, our partner program is a way for them to accelerate their ability to deliver security for their embedded base of customers,” he said.

The new LevelBlue partner program, launched on Monday, includes its full portfolio of services, including LevelBlue USM Anywhere, the company’s security monitoring offering for premises-based, cloud, or hybrid environments, LevelBlue Managed Threat Detection and Response, LevelBlue Managed Vulnerability Scanning, LevelBlue Penetration Testing Service and LevelBlue Incident Response Retainer.

“The announcement is a continuation of the separation and running a standalone cybersecurity business from AT&T [and] standing up a new partner program under the LevelBlue umbrella centered around our USM Anywhere platform,” Annamalai said.

Technology partnerships are also an important way that LevelBlue is approaching the market. As such, the company today offers email security powered by Check Point and managed endpoint security powered by SentinelOne, both of which are now available through partners.

“It’s not going to stop there,” he said. “We’re making technology investments in our underlying platforms and technology [and] we continue to expect to bring new services and capabilities into the partner program. The offerings we had were narrower before. Now, this launch [lets us] expand those offerings to MSPs as well as MSSPs … We want to offer our security tools, services, expertise to other MSSPs that are growing themselves.”

LevelBlue’s new program has three tiers, and existing partners will roll into one of the three tiers, Annamalai said. LevelBlue will also offer in-depth training and dedicated support for partners, according to the Plano, Texas-based company.

The aim of the program is to offer a simplified approach to cybersecurity with scalable services from both LevelBlue, as well as third-party security players, Annamalai said.

“There’s many existing security players in the space. Cisco is going from networking into security. They’re going to need players like us to help manage that those environments, particularly when they’re multi-vendor environments,” he said.

Being a “tech-enabled MSSP” itself, LevelBlue wants to package up its services for partners to offer their clients, Annamalai said.

“The space is so large that we can’t meet where our customers are all the time geographically, regionally, [or] vertically, and so we work with partners that use our technology and services to deliver cybersecurity … that’s the agenda,” he said.

Dallas-based AT&T in May 2024 revealed that it had entered into a joint venture with private equity firm WillJam Ventures to officially launch LevelBlue. LevelBlue at its launch was one of the largest startups in the cybersecurity industry to date with tens of thousands of customers and hundreds of partners coming over from AT&T, LevelBlue’s chairman and CEO, Bob McCullen, told CRN last year.