ConnectWise has acquired Perch Security and StratoZen, makers of SOC and SIEM services for MSPs. Terms of the transactions were not disclosed.
Together, the two companies will arm ConnectWise to help technology and managed service providers overcome the “siloes of chaos” created by anti-virus systems, firewalls, EDR solutions, and other stand-alone products by centralizing, interpreting, and acting on security data faster and more effectively, according to CEO Jason Magee.
“This is going to change the way TSPs and MSPs think about security, how they manage security, how they protect themselves and their customers, and really get this under control and eliminate those silos,” said Magee during a keynote address at ConnectWise’s IT Nation Connect event. That conference kicked off online this morning.
Perch and StratoZen contribute to that effort in complementary ways, notes Vice President of Security Product Management Brian Downey. Perch’s solution consolidates security information, he says. StratoZen’s platform then inspects that data for actionable insights, something Fortify’s SOC team has been doing manually until now.
“It was working at human speed,” Downey says. “What StratoZen brings to the table is more automation around that analysis.”
Perch, he continues, brings MSP-specific functionality unavailable in other SIEM platforms. “You’re not going to find a lot of SIEMs out there that have native integrations with PSAs,” he observes, or a multi-tenant architecture either.
Existing Perch and StratoZen users can continue working with both vendors independently as before. “If they’re happy with where they are, we want to continue to support them,” Downey says. ConnectWise plans to offer new services to both sets of partners as well, however.
“We want to be able to allow Perch customers to get the value of the content that StratoZen’s built. We want to allow StratoZen customers to get the value of the Perch SIEM where that makes sense,” Downey explains. “We’re really looking at this as additive in everything that we do.”
Fortify has offered SIEM services in the past through an alliance relationship with a third-party provider. “We’re going to continue to support the partners using that,” Downey notes. “You’re going to see us definitely, moving forward, investing a lot more in the Perch-based solutions.”
ConnectWise, which disclosed an investment stake in Perch two years ago, has been collaborating closely with the company since then. Buying Perch outright, according to Downey, will enable ConnectWise to add deeper integrations more quickly.
“By having them as part of our family we’re able to drive those much more unique innovations across multiple areas like advanced endpoint, and some of the other areas that you see in the security space, rather than just kind of the more basic integrations that you would get through partnerships,” he says.
ConnectWise Fortify is the security services and software suite ConnectWise bought along with Continuum a year ago.
The coronavirus pandemic and associated work-from-home IT phenomenon have fueled increased need and demand this year for both managed services and security assistance among SMBs. 86% of SMBs place cybersecurity among their top five priorities and 60% will invest more in cybersecurity going forward, according to ConnectWise research published in September. IDC, meanwhile, expects spending on security hardware, software, and services to climb at a 9.4% CAGR through 2023 and managed security outlays to rise at an even faster 13.9% CAGR.
With such figures in mind, ConnectWise launched a new partner community called IT Nation Secure and a new cybersecurity framework for MSPs in June, and held its first IT Nation Secure conference last month. Security has been a strategic priority for the company since 2018.
ConnectWise competitors have been building out their security capabilities as well. SolarWinds MSP, for example, purchased password management vendor Passportal and rolled out an EDR solution based on technology from SentinelOne last year. Kaseya has purchased security vendors RapidFire Tools and ID Agent in recent years, as well as data protection vendors Unitrends and Spanning.
Elsewhere at IT Nation Connect today, ConnectWise introduced an updated edition of its ITBOOST documentation system, a new direction for its BrightGauge reporting tool, and a new underlying platform for its entire family of products.
