WatchGuard Technologies has launched a version of its DNSWatch product for mobile users, as well as a new bundled purchasing option for its growing family of user-focused security products.
Unlike the original DNSWatch, which works with WatchGuard’s Firebox firewalls to protect users from phishing attacks, data exfiltration attempts, and other threats while on the network, the new DNSWatchGO is a 100% cloud-based solution that safeguards laptop users beyond the network perimeter. That’s increasingly must-have protection for businesses with roaming employees, according to Michelle Welch, senior vice president of marketing at WatchGuard.
“An exclusively network-centric approach to security really just isn’t enough,” she says. “A comprehensive security offering now has to look both at that network-level protection and what I’ll call user-level protection.”
Fully 92% of organizations currently allow staff to work remotely, according to a recent study prepared for WatchGuard by CITE Research. 80% of participants in that survey expect their remote workforce to grow over the next three years, and nearly two-thirds have already had a remote worker fall victim to a cyberattack.
WatchGuard previewed the future release of DNSWatchGO at this RSA Conference. At present, the system supports Windows-based notebooks only. A beta edition for Chromebooks is slated to arrive later this year, and WatchGuard plans to add protection for Apple MacBooks as well in 2020.
In addition to its core DNS-level content filtering and malware protection capabilities, DNSWatchGO also offers security awareness functionality that kicks in automatically every time users click a dangerous link. “The user gets blocked from going to the known malicious site, but they [also] get an educational prompt that communicates to them what has happened, why they’re not allowed to go where they went, and what they should look for in the future,” Welch says.
WatchGuard offers one- and three-year subscriptions to DNSWatchGO at tiered rates based on number of users. MSP-friendly monthly pricing is available as well. Depending on how many seats they buy and which term they choose, users can acquire DNSWatchGO licenses for as little as $1.50 per user per month.
“It is positioned to be the most competitively priced offering of its kind on the market,” Welch says.
DNSWatchGO is the second member of WatchGuard’s young family of products for protecting individual users rather than entire customer sites. AuthPoint, a multifactor authentication system introduced last July, was the first.
Both solutions are now available for a single price through Passport, the bundled subscription offering WatchGuard also introduced today. According to Welch, the new purchasing option is designed to make selling the vendor’s user security systems easier for partners and buying them easier for end users.
“With Passport, our partners can offer user-centric security with a single SKU, eliminating a lot of work and client confusion,” she says.
Pricing on Passport starts at $3.25 per user per month. Partners who buy now will get the forthcoming third member of WatchGuard’s user-focused security portfolio, an advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) service, at no additional cost for the remainder of their current term when that systems ships in the first half of 2020.
Passport was inspired by WatchGuard’s Total Security Suite bundle, which pairs a Firebox appliance with DNSWatch plus anti-virus, content filtering, sandboxing, and other site-focused security services for one price. According to Welch, the offering has been a hit with partners.
“I’m told constantly that vendors consistently innovate on the technology side but forget to innovate on the operations side,” she says. “That’s where partners win and lose deals, and that’s where they make and lose money.”
Together, Welch continues, Total Security Suite and Passport further simplify the security sales process. “This is our attempt to give partners the ability to give a complete security solution both on and off the network with only two SKUs,” she says.
That will remain true as WatchGuard ships new site and user security products in the future. “Anything that gets added on either side will continue to be added to those single SKUs,” Welch notes.
The new EDR system WatchGuard is currently developing will include a variety of anti-ransomware capabilities. It will also leverage ThreatSync, the vendor’s network-focused threat assessment and prioritization technology.
“It’ll provide that same level of threat detection, threat scoring, and threat ranking that we provide for on-network threats now, but from the endpoint,” Welch says. The system will then help users remediate high-scoring threats, evaluate mid-level threats, and monitor low-scoring threats without acting on them. Partners will have the ability to customize what they wish to treat as high-, medium-, and low-risk issues.
WatchGuard revised its WatchGuardONE partner program this spring to reflect its move into user security. In addition to new sales and technical training courses, the program now provides significantly increased rebates to partners that earn certifications in both site and user security.
