CrowdStrike, HCLTech Team Up On Enterprise Cybersecurity

“We clearly saw a lot of synergy between our ways of thinking,” HCLTech executive Amit Jain said.

Cybersecurity vendor CrowdStrike and global systems integrator HCLTech have inked a new strategic partnership that will have CrowdStrike’s Falcon XDR platform powering the GSI’s managed detection and response offerings.

For India-based HCLTech, the partnership means a stable, easy-to-use platform to bring more cybersecurity capabilities to customers and leverage artificial intelligence (AI), Amit Jain (pictured), the GSI’s executive vice president and global head of cybersecurity, told CRN in an interview.

“We clearly saw a lot of synergy between our ways of thinking and ways of looking at the challenges our customers are facing in the market,” Jain said. “The amount of noise and nuisance that cyber attacks are creating and the advancement of many of those attacks, which typically makes it very difficult for many of the tools today to detect.”

CrowdStrike, HCLTech Partner Up

For Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike – a member of CRN’s 2024 Security 100 – partners like HCLTech help the vendor grow the customer base with large enterprises and make security part of a larger digital transformation conversation, said Daniel Bernard, Crowdstrike’s chief business officer.

“In today's world, cybersecurity isn't a nice to have – it's a need to have,” Bernard said in an interview with CRN. “It's not an afterthought. It's a mainline thought. It's not a backroom discussion, it's a boardroom discussion. These guys are already in the boardroom. They're already working with the executive teams on broader technology transformation projects. They're able to seamlessly work cyber into the discussion. So when they're doing a broader cloud transformation for a client, they're in the driver's seat not only on the cloud strategy, but also on the technology strategy of how to secure that cloud.”

CrowdStrike customers also like to work with solution providers to make sure products are stood up properly and work with the existing environment, Bernard said. The shortage of cybersecurity professionals also encourages end users to work with solution providers.

“What you find is more and more and more large enterprises realizing that their competitive advantage is in the business that they're in, not necessarily cybersecurity, not necessarily technology,” Bernard said. “So it becomes very attractive for these large enterprises to go to HCLTech and say, ‘Hey, folks. We need your help. We need to grow our business from here to here. … Can you make sure that our technology is in alignment with our strategy?”

Even as other vendors continue to harden the initial security of applications and products, gaps always remain, he said. To that point, Bernard’s boss, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz, is frequently publicly critical of the largest productivity applications provider Microsoft – another HCLTech strategic partner.

“Just because you want to build and secure by design doesn't mean that doors don't fly off planes when they take off,” Bernard said. “It doesn't mean that cyberattacks don't happen. It doesn't mean that code bases aren't exfiltrated.”

HCLTech – whose partners include IBM, Oracle, Intel, SAP and Verizon Business – was a CrowdStrike user before the partnership, Jain said. Many HCLTech customers also use the technology.

“We've seen the technology firsthand and are really happy to see the outcomes that it can deliver for our customers,” he said.

CrowdStrike’s training resources were another factor for the partnership. Jain said other vendors could do with a more “360-degree” mindset around partnership so that solution providers are quickly equipped to address customer needs around new technology.

“What we like about CrowdStrike having that mindset, that approach toward – not just selling the technology part – but also making sure that it is successful, we deliver outcomes, we create stickiness with our customers and we really stay as a long-term player,” he said.