At ChannelPro LIVE: Dallas, Executive Editor Jonathan Browning sat down with Joe Alapat, founder and chief strategy officer of Liongard, for a look at the evolving role of visibility, cybersecurity, and automation in the MSP space. Their wide-ranging conversation touched on why MSPs struggle with asset management, how Liongard helps solve that challenge, and why visibility is key to security, compliance, and operational efficiency.
Alapat also discussed Liongard’s partnership with Cork to enhance cyber warranties, why MSPs must rethink their cybersecurity stance, and how AI is shaping Liongard’s approach to automation and support.
Their conversation has been condensed and organized for clarity.
Liongard’s Value Proposition
ChannelPro: Thank you, and happy to have you here. If an MSP isn’t familiar with Liongard, can I get the 30-second pitch?
Alapat: It comes down to one statement, ‘you can’t manage or secure what you don’t know.’ Without visibility, you can’t quote, onboard, manage, secure, or bill your clients. And that’s a tragic situation. We help give them direction. We call it GPS, which stands for growth, profit, and sanity.
Relationship with Cork
ChannelPro: Tell me about the relationship with Cork, because that was a big story earlier this year.
Alapat: Think about cyber asset inventory. Businesses add all this technology to drive value. Threat actors see the same inventory and view it as an attack surface. They’re not two different things. When we think about cyber insurance, they are financial instrument vehicles that mitigate the risk that’s out there. Liongard and Cork are partnering to strengthen that infrastructure so that Cork can provide this cyber warranty to ultimately protect the end customer, but also the MSP from the eventual mess that ensues.
Doing More Cybersecurity Business
ChannelPro: What do you say to MSPs hesitant to get deeper into cybersecurity because of the risks involved?
Alapat: We partner to help them assess all the assets. We identify misconfiguration and vulnerabilities. Major vendors have created a name for it: attack surface management. Even if you don’t think of your MSP as being cybersecurity-focused, your job is asset discovery, management, managing the configurations, and addressing vulnerabilities every time you apply a patch. The game has changed. Businesses expect everything to work and to be secure. I jokingly say, “You want it to run like a fridge, it just runs. Open the door, it’s cold.
ChannelPro: If nothing’s broken, do the clients understand how much you’re accomplishing for them?
Alapat: You have to share your visible progress. We have to operate left of boom. Show those assets to demonstrate what’s changing in the environment and rank things in terms of how critical they are. Red for real danger, yellow is a warning, and green for good. I say jokingly, always show a little yellow. Mr. Customer or Mrs. Customer, you rushed us on that onboard and we didn’t set up multifactor authentication on every system. Here is the risk and what it could mean. You learn over time that when you’re always doing well, you actually have lower ratings from a customer than when you stumble and rise like a phoenix out of the fire.
The Role of AI
ChannelPro: How is AI built into your product?
Alapat: We launched Leo AI on our platform. We’ve actually incorporated it into our knowledge base. By talking to Leo in our app, you can ask questions and get the answers you want. Now, about 40 to 50 percent of the questions are immediately answered.
Partnering with Liongard
ChannelPro: If an MSP needs you on a phone call, is that something Liongard will do?
Alapat: We have a partner success team. A lot of partners tell us we go the extra mile. Here’s a good example. Microsoft Power BI, right? It causes people to get weak in the knees. They know there’s a lot of value in dashboarding and reporting. But it’s complex so we literally help our partners set it up. We produce templated reports to show them how to use Power BI. Our partners said, ‘You helped train me on Power BI, and I’m no longer fearful and I can show value for the visible progress to my customer.’ We want to get closer to the outcomes, so the MSP can look like the hero to the end customer.
Reader ROI: Why MSPs Should Work with Liongard
- Continuous asset discovery and inventory, because you can’t manage what you haven’t discovered.
- Guidance to increase MSP growth, profit, and sanity.
- Automated controls to meet cyber insurance requirements.
- Reports to show visible progress protecting your clients.
- Configuration monitoring and management.
- Templated reports for dashboards and reporting.
- Leo AI in the knowledge base that immediately answers.
James E. Gaskin contributed to this article.
Images: iStock
