Malwarebytes Launches Partner Tools, New Breach-Remediation Solution For Business

Continuing its push from the consumer market into the business space, Malwarebytes announced on Wednesday that it had launched new partner tools as well as a new breach remediation solution aimed at the business market.

New tools for partners from the Santa Clara, Calif.-based anti-malware company include its first partner portal, which Vice President of Worldwide Channel Sales Roger Cobb said will serve as a "one stop shop" for partner enablement and sales. The portal includes an easy-to-use interface, training, certifications, marketing and sales enablement tools, software downloads and deal registration.

"We've made it very easy and seamless for them to transact with us in this portal," Cobb said. "This is a game changer."

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The company also added certifications and a full training program for resellers to use. The training is only required for gold- and platinum-level partners, but is available as an option to partners at other levels.

Cobb said 600 partners have been beta testing the new portal and have already registered millions of dollars in deals, each of which will earn an extra 10 percent margin for partners. Partners can access and stay up to date with training through the company's new portal, he said.

Comware has been an official Malwarebytes partner for about a year. In that time, the Southlake, Texas-based security VAR has watched the vendor make a lot of new investments in its channel, CEO Charles Carlson said. These recent rollouts, in particular, will make it easier for Comware to do business with Malwarebytes, he said.

"We've watched the channel program grow from nonexistent to the point where it is today, where they’ve made significant progress," Carlson said. "We're seeing a bunch of positive momentum towards channel … We've seen that responsiveness and professionalism and the tools have made significant strides in that time frame. I think they're on right path."

Malwarebytes also rolled out a new technology offering for the business market, called the Malwarebytes Breach Remediation Platform. Cobb said traditional remediation solutions are like a fire extinguisher, with responders rushing after each incident individually, a method he said is "reactive, manual, slow and costly."

Instead, Cobb said the new Malwarebytes platform is like installing a sprinkler system, providing a cloud-based way to scan a company's entire environment and remove malware. The platform integrates with existing vendor solutions, such as a SIEM, firewall, antivirus and more, to gain additional intelligence and help partners leverage existing solutions for remediation efforts.

For partners, that means being able to add an additional layer of security on top of existing solutions, Cobb said. He said partners are also able to use the solution to meet compliance and regulatory standards around endpoint security solutions that can remove malware. Cobb said he has also seen partners wrapping the platform into a professional services or audit or malware removal services.

Clay Gollier, director of professional services, said the new solutions will give Comware flexibility in its offerings, particularly to customers that have been impacted by a breach. For others, Gollier said the partner can now offer a solution that will help automate a response in the unfortunate event of a breach.

"We can be much more consultative with our customers," Gollier said, instead of just creating rules and policies. "We can actually have their existing systems be part of the solution."

Other vendors are also starting to adopt this platform-based approach for security. What sets Malwarebytes apart in this regard is that it can remediate the solution without re-imaging the user's machine, Cobb said. He also highlighted that the solution is agent-less and is quicker to identify, block and remediate a threat than the competition.

The launches come as Malwarebytes, an established consumer anti-malware vendor, continues its concerted push into the business marketplace. The company landed $50 million in Series B funding in January, funds CEO Marcin Kleczynski said would help the vendor, among other things, invest in its growing channel business. In 2014, the company did about a third of its business through the channel. This year, it did about half of its business with partners, he said.

The new solution is part of that push, Cobb said, offering tools to enable the channel and a new solution that appeals to reseller partners of all size.

"We've seen extreme success, not only with these very small reseller partners, but also with our largest enterprise customers and enterprise-focused resellers as well," Cobb said.