Barracuda Networks today announced the Barracuda Cyber Warranty via a partnership with Cork, a startup cyber monitoring and warranty company. MSPs leveraging Barracuda’s full XDR stack will be able to offer the Barracuda Cyber Warranty to their SMB customers. With Cork’s financial protection product embedded in Barracuda’s XDR, the underwriting process is expedited.
If a cyber incident does happen, “we see a warranty as a way to help MSPs and SMBs be protected,” says Neal Bradbury (pictured above), senior vice president, MSP Business at Barracuda. “SMBs really can’t wait six months on average for the cyber insurance company to go and reimburse them, and with a warranty, the kind of reimbursement or the protection is measured in days versus being compensated in months.”
The cyber warranty covers costs related to data recovery, business interruption, and incident response in the event of a ransomware or business email compromise incident.
Bradbury adds, “Partnering with Cork allows us to have a very much tailored solution for the managed service provider market …. at a price point that is affordable for the SMB market.”
A cyber warranty does not preclude the need for cyber insurance, Bradbury acknowledges, but it is complimentary and can provide gap coverage while a business is waiting on a claim. “Really the intent is to get the small-medium business folks right back in the business,” he says.
Cork emerged from stealth mode in May and announced a strategic partnership with Barracuda at that time. In addition to offering a cyber warranty, Cork’s underlying analytics engine collects real-time data on security risk.
“That’s one of the things that makes Cork unique,” Bradbury says. “They are actually integrated with Barracuda and our solution stack so they can get that telemetry real time and be able to assess the risk of that end user based on what we see.”
“We have a unique offering specifically for Barracuda,” says Carlson Choi, CEO of Cork. “Now the key value piece I will also add is the underlying engine, the risk model engine, processing the latest type of attack vector that comes in the MSP space against the SMB. They’re all sharing the same set of information underneath. So we kind of normalize information. So as our engine learns more from other MSP partners, their partners are getting value.”
The Barracuda Cyber Warranty protects the SMB customer’s entire environment, Choi adds, “not just the solutions that they’re buying from Barracuda. As long as they are monitoring the entire environment with the entire XDR solution set, they’re covered.”
With today’s announcement, Barracuda joins a list of cybersecurity providers that are aiming to make coverage in the event of a cyber incident easier and more streamlined for SMBs.
In March, Sophos announced a partnership with cyber insurance provider Cowbell that allows customers running Sophos Intercept X Endpoint Security to opt in to share endpoint health security data, streamlining the cyber insurance process. Also in March, Kaseya announced a partnership with Cysurance for its Kaseya Cyber Insurance Fast Track Program, available to or companies that adopt and implement Kaseya’s IT Complete Security Suite.
Bradbury says partnering with cyber insurance providers is a clear trend and Barracuda is looking into the impact of such a relationship but does not have anything to announce at this time.
“We see the cyber warranty as allowing us to kind of go down this path as a step one and get some learning.”
