ConnectWise has added a cybersecurity risk assessment tool to its portfolio of solutions for managed service providers, and announced an agreement to resell a threat detection and response platform from Perch Security.
Both moves, which ConnectWise announced today at its IT Nation Connect event in Australia, are elements of a larger push by ConnectWise into the massive and rapidly growing market for security solutions and services.
Named ConnectWise Identify and targeted at SMBs, the risk assessment solution measures customers against the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, a widely respected set of guidelines for safeguarding IT environments. Based on its findings, the system then generates customer-ready risk reports offering options for remediation. Those reports, which are available via a self-serve portal, include comparisons with similarly-sized organizations in the same vertical industry and location.
The new product reflects a larger conviction on ConnectWise’s part that MSPs can’t protect customers from today’s wide-ranging threats without first gaining a complete understanding of an organization’s vulnerabilities to attack.
“MSPs, and frankly, our whole industry, should be taking a more holistic approach to security. Network scans, while important, are not sufficient on their own. To truly ensure protection against cybersecurity threats, a global view of an organization’s security posture is needed, and that means starting from the beginning with a risk assessment,” said ConnectWise Chief Information Security Officer John Ford in prepared remarks. “Now more than ever, it is vital for MSPs to prioritize working with their customers to identify the areas of their business that have security gaps, vulnerabilities or lack of proper security controls. That’s what ConnectWise Identify allows our partners to do.”
Beginning April 1, partners can run two full risk assessments through ConnectWise Identify—one each for themselves and for an end user—free of charge. After that, a basic edition of the product suited for use by companies with up to 100 employees is available at an introductory price of $99 per month. The standard price for the basic edition will be $199 a month. ConnectWise will offer enterprise pricing at unspecified rates for larger end user environments as well.
ConnectWise announced a risk assessment solution at its last IT Nation Connect event, held four months ago in Orlando. That product was developed in partnership with Tampa, Fla.-based security service provider Sienna Group LLC, which ConnectWise subsequently acquired and renamed the ConnectWise Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. The new group’s mission is preparing MSPs to take on the giant opportunity in security by teaching them industry-standard best practices. ConnectWise Identify contributes to partner enablement in security as well, according to CEO Jason Magee.
“ConnectWise Identify is much more than a product. While others are selling widgets, we are offering a product and educating our partners about their risks and teaching them how to do the same for their customers,” said Magee in a press statement. “This will help them gain a bigger picture view of cybersecurity and a better understanding of their own security posture as well as that of their end users.”
Magee became CEO of ConnectWise last month, after the managed services software vendor’s acquisition by private equity investor Thoma Bravo LLC. That transaction was accompanied by the transition of company founder and former CEO Arnie Bellini into an advisory role.
The Perch Security solution that ConnectWise now resells, which is called the Perch Co-Managed Threat Detection & Response Platform, includes intrusion detection software backed by a threat intelligence database and event logging via a security information and event management component. The system automatically generates a ticket in the ConnectWise Manage PSA platform when it identifies a threat.
Perch’s product is managed on an outsourced basis by the vendor’s security operations center (SOC). According to ConnectWise, leveraging the Perch SOC will cost them less than two percent of what they would pay to build a SOC of their own.
ConnectWise disclosed an investment in Perch during its IT Nation Connect event in Orlando last year, and positioned the stake as part of a larger effort to spur the production of affordably-priced security solutions.
Other elements of ConnectWise’s security initiative, beyond introducing tools and solutions like those announced today, include launching an open source integration language for cybersecurity solutions and acquiring or investing in security software vendors like Sienna and Perch.
