Sophos Boosts Managed Security Services With PSA, RMM Integrations

Managed security services have been the number one ask for customers, and global channel chief Kendra Krause said Sophos has responded by making it the company’s top investment priority.

Sophos has integrated with Professional Services Automation (PSA) and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) vendors to give partners one place to manage their security platform.

“The more that they can have that seamless integration all into one platform to be able to work from, the most cost effective they are and the more efficient they are in managing their customers,” said Kendra Krause, senior vice president of global channels and sales operations.

The Abingdon, U.K.-based platform security vendor has set up APIs to work with ConnectWise, Autotask, Kaseya, NinjaRMM, Liongard, BrightGauge and Syncro in the PSA and RMM space, according to Krause. Sophos has begun work on integrations with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors such as Splunk, Rapid7 and FireEye to simplify the management process, Krause said.

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MSPs tend to focus on managing their customers in a cost-effective manner, and Krause said having more intelligent interactions across different technologies can save partners money by minimizing the frequency with which they have to go between different platforms. Being able to address remote management and billing, automation and provisioning in the same place is a win for partners, she said.

Managed security services have been the number one ask for customers, and Krause said Sophos has responded by making it the company’s top investment priority from both an offerings and platform perspective. Sophos in October unveiled a managed threat response service that integrates with the company's protection capabilities to ensure security teams are dealing with the most important alerts.

An increase in the complexity and type of threats – as well as where these threats are attacking – has driven solution provider demand for managed security services, according to Krause. Adding to their interest is the fact that many of these emerging threats are targeting MSPs themselves, Krause said.

“MSPs across the world have been looking at how to increase their own security and how to make sure that they have the best security rather than just the least expensive security,” Krause said.

Sophos also makes it easy for an MSP to manage their customer’s entire security environment by having a single management platform across all their products, including endpoint and firewall, according to Krause. As a result, Krause said partners and customers don’t have to go to different spots to manage different aspects of their security deployments.

“We are seeing more and more customers and partners moving to managed services,” Krause said. “It was happening overall in general regardless of coronavirus, but that’s definitely having an impact on it.”

Meanwhile, Krause said Sophos’ new managed threat response offering has made it possible for MSPs to either get into or expand their existing managed security services. And for traditional resellers, Krause said managed threat response is a service they’re now able to offer to customers without having to invest in personnel, a Network Operations Center (NOC) or a Security Operations Center (SOC).

For instance, Krause said Sophos partners regularly set customers up with the company’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and managed threat response tools. And very often within 24 hours, Krause said Sophos’ managed threat response team has identified a threat within the customer’s network that they didn’t even know about.

By reacting quickly, Krause said Sophos and its partners can find the source of the threat and neutralize it before it gets much more serious or impacts the customer’s data.

“It is amazing the complexity and the sophistication of threats out there,” Krause said. “Any step that weaves information together to help our partners is greatly, greatly appreciated by our customers.”