Cyber Security Startup AttackIQ Launches Partner Program With Guaranteed Margins

Cyber security startup AttackIQ is debuting its first-ever partner program, pledging guaranteed margins for all opportunities and to transact 100 percent of its business through the channel.

The San Diego-based continuous security validation vendor said the Accelerate Channel Partner Program could nearly double the margins solution providers see from AttackIQ, according to Dan Sibille, vice president of global alliances and channels. AttackIQ hopes to double its partner base from 20 solution providers globally today to 40 by the end of 2019, Sibille said.

"The partner community will find value in the products," Sibille told CRN.

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AttackIQ will present solution providers with three different margin structures based on what role they played in landing new business, Sibille said. Partner-transacted business (where AttackIQ generated the lead) will be eligible for 10 points of margin, partner-influenced business can receive 20 points of margin, while business the partner registers itself will be eligible for 30 points of margin, he said.

The current quarter will have more partner-transacted business, but Sibille expects the majority of sales going forward to fall into the partner-influenced or partner-registered buckets. AttackIQ launched deal registration in the fourth quarter of 2018, and Sibille said he was astounded by the sheer number of registrations the company received in the initial 30-day period.

AttackIQ also plans to offer additional market development fund (MDF) incentives for authorized partners that register and close opportunities, according to Sibille. Once a registered opportunity is approved and closed, Sibille said the partner will receive an incremental acceleration in its MDF equivalent to 3 percent of the net deal value.

From a training and enablement standpoint, Sibille said AttackIQ is in the early phases of building out a vision around how to enable channel sales and technical contacts within resellers. The company already has a fairly well-formed training platform for service providers, which Sibille said AttackIQ delivers in a unique yet accessible manner.

Although the Accelerate program is only a single tier, Sibille said it has separate tracks for security consultants, resellers and service providers. As far as security consultants are concerned, Sibille said AttackIQ is focused on smaller players that serve as trusted advisers to their customers around which product to purchase but tend not to get into the nitty-gritty around actually implementing offerings.

As for resellers, Sibille said AttackIQ has a mix of regional, boutique, national and global players in that portion of the program. And on the service provider side of the operation, Sibille said AttackIQ works with a handful of very recognizable telecom and cloud service partners on a region-by-region exclusive situation.

Solution providers benefit from knowing that all of AttackIQ's deals go through the channel since they don't have to worry about the company taking opportunities generated by its own lead generation engine direct, according to Bill Strub, president and CEO of Saint Paul, Minn.-based NaviLogic.

And the guaranteed margins being offered by AttackIQ as part of the program are better than just about anyone else that NaviLogic works with, Strub said. NaviLogic has been an AttackIQ partner for roughly a year, Strub said, and has several new opportunities in the pipeline for 2019.

"They want to make sure partners are rewarded for finding the opportunities and going out and evangelizing AttackIQ," Strub told CRN. "It's a very lucrative program from a reseller's perspective."