Sophos Ltd., the U.K.-based security vendor, has added the Intercept X endpoint protection solution it released in September to its MSP Connect partner program.
Introduced in May, MSP Connect permits qualified partners to buy Sophos products through monthly recurring fees, just as they bill customers. Sophos otherwise requires partners to purchase licenses via upfront payments.
“The focus is to align the way we sell products and services to MSPs with the way MSPs sell products and services to their customers,” notes Scott Barlow, vice president for global MSP at Sophos. MSP Connect members can buy Intercept X and other Sophos products on a term basis as well if they prefer to forego the monthly payment scheme.
Intercept X is a multi-faceted endpoint security solution with built-in safeguards against ransomware, advanced exploits, and spyware, as well as root cause analysis functionality that identifies why successful breaches occurred, lists compromised files, and proposes incident response measures.
Until now, Intercept X was the only remaining Sophos product not available through MSP Connect, which already supports other recently launched solutions including SafeGuard Encryption 8, an “always-on” disk encryption solution, and Sophos Wireless, a cloud-managed Wi-Fi security solution with associated Sophos-made wireless access points. Both of those systems debuted in July.
Sophos’s is in the midst of an ongoing effort to build a comprehensive suite of security products integrated with one another by the Heartbeat technology the vendor introduced late last year. SafeGuard Encryption, for example, automatically removes encryption keys from devices that Intercept X has identified as compromised. The Sophos Endpoint and XG Firewall solutions coordinate activities in a similar manner.
“We’ll continue to add more heartbeats between the different products,” Barlow says, adding that by enabling its solutions to work together collaboratively Sophos arms MSPs and other partners to sell more security software and get discounted, margin-boosting pricing as a result.
“The more you cross-sell and upsell, the lower your price is going to be in aggregate, and now the more profitable you’re going to be,” he states.
The addition of Intercept X to MSP Connect is the latest in what Barlow calls a continuing series of enhancements to that program.
“There’s a lot of changes that we’ve made just to streamline and automate the MSP’s experience in selling and supporting the customer,” he says. “It’s going very strong.”
