CrowdStrike’s New Version For SMBs: 5 Things To Know

The updated version of Falcon Go features a refreshed user interface that simplifies the endpoint security tool, CrowdStrike Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard tells CRN.

CrowdStrike announced Wednesday that it’s launching a refreshed version of its SMB-focused endpoint security tool, Falcon Go. The move comes as the cybersecurity giant continues its aggressive push to bring its widely used enterprise technology down to smaller customers.

Plagued by ransomware and data breaches, SMBs are simply not being protected by endpoint security tools from Microsoft and “legacy” antivirus vendors, according to CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz.

[Related: Analysis: CrowdStrike’s Next Big Opportunity Is More About IT Than Security]

CrowdStrike’s promise, Kurtz told CRN recently, is to offer smaller businesses “something better” — the same core technology that has enabled substantial improvement in preventing ransomware in the enterprise but simplified for SMB use.

What follows are five key things to know about CrowdStrike’s new version of Falcon Go for SMBs.

SMB Push

A more-affordable version of CrowdStrike’s Falcon security platform, Falcon Go originally launched in mid-2022 and is available to businesses with as few as five endpoints, the company said.

Falcon Go provides the core capabilities needed to boost threat visibility and prevention for SMBs, according to CrowdStrike.

The product is a key element of CrowdStrike’s SMB push, which has also seen the company doubling down on efforts with reseller and MSP partners that serve smaller organizations.

The early results from the foray into SMB have been positive, according to CrowdStrike executives. CrowdStrike now has “many thousands of SMB customers,” Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard said in an interview with CRN.

Simplified User Interface

What CrowdStrike has done in the latest release of Falcon Go, Bernard said, is “rethink the user experience — really catered for the ‘S’ of the SMB.”

“The challenge for our UX team was, ‘Make everything doable within one click,’” he said.

This is an important move because Falcon Go had inherited some elements of the enterprise version of Falcon, which unneeded — and in fact a drawback — for SMBs, according to Bernard. “There was a lot of granularity in the controls,” he said.

With the new Falcon Go release, however, everything from installation to policy settings has been dramatically simplified with the needs of small businesses and service providers in mind, Bernard said.

“SMBs need simple. Falcon Go [offers] policy settings with one click, installation with one click,” he said. Ultimately, the new release of Falcon Go for SMBs “shows our commitment to that segment of the market,” Bernard said.

Flexibility For Usage

Bernard noted that customers do have options when it comes to the console they choose to use.

The new release of Falcon Go, he said, “really is a revolutionary departure from the regular CrowdStrike console.”

But in the event that it’s too much of a departure from the previous version for some users, they aren’t stuck with the new interface, according to Bernard.

“Customers can still get back to the regular CrowdStrike console if they want,” he said. “However, this is the de facto [option].”

Partner Opportunities

CrowdStrike’s new release of Falcon Go should prove appealing for all types of channel partners that serve smaller customers, according to Bernard.

For MSPs that manage security on behalf of SMBs, the simplified interface in Falcon Go should make life even easier, he said.

Meanwhile, for reseller partners of CrowdStrike, the improved user experience in the new version should constitute a major selling point when presenting the tool to prospective SMB customers, Bernard said.

“We want them saying, ‘I want that SKU on my line card,’” he said. Falcon Go is the rare SMB-tailored security tool “that actually works, that’s easy and that fits within the budget envelope,” Bernard said.

Pax8 Partnership

A major partnership with cloud-focused distributor Pax8 is poised to help bring CrowdStrike even deeper into the SMB market, with the help of Pax8’s massive base of MSPs. The distributor serves more than 29,000 partners, and has worked closely this year with CrowdStrike to address obstacles around licensing and billing in order to bring the vendor’s tools to MSPs, executives have said.

CrowdStrike is currently in private beta with numerous MSPs through Pax8, and formally launches on the Pax8 marketplace “very soon,” he said.

“We’re already seeing a great uptake in the closed beta,” Bernard said. “The results are progressing even ahead of schedule.”