Monday Morning Impact – June 13

SolarWinds Acquires LOGICnow

SolarWinds, an Austin, Tex.-based provider of IT management software, announced it has completed the acquisition of LOGICnow, backed by a consortium of investors led by Insight Venture Partners. LOGICnow is a global provider of integrated cloud-based IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions focused primarily on the MSP community.

The combined company intends to deliver to MSPs comprehensive IT services management solutions that encompass data-driven automation, security, network management and service management. As a combined entity, SolarWinds MSP expects that it will serve more than 20,000 managed service providers worldwide, managing more than five million end-points and one million mailboxes.

“SolarWinds is committed to the growing MSP market and has realized great success through the acquisition of N-able, making the acquisition of LOGICnow a natural next step for us,” said Kevin B. Thompson, president and chief executive officer of SolarWinds. “SolarWinds MSP, combining the capabilities of LOGICnow and SolarWinds N-able, will offer MSPs a complete set of IT service management solutions via the cloud and on premises delivery models.”

Offerings will include remote monitoring and management, security, backup/disaster recovery, secure email, help desk, analytics, and multi-platform support forWindows, Mac, Linux, VMware, Hyper-V, iOS, andAndroid.

Channel Impact^®
This is a major acquisition that is likely to expand the combined company’s market strength at a global level

Gurucul Introduces Channel Partner Program

Gurucul, a Los Angeles-based user behavior analytics and identity access intelligence company, has rolled out its Insider Partner Program, and has also announced the appointment of Rosanna Pellegrino as vice president of strategic alliances.

The Gurucul platform is designed to detect and prevent attacks that exploit user identities as a threat surface for compromising data center and cloud apps. The platform combines IAI to reduce excess access rights and outliers that open the door to phishing and account compromise attacks, and UBA to perform user profiling and behavior anomaly detection to identify account abuse, compromise and suspicious activity.

Benefits of the new channel program include training/certification, sales and marketing enablement, deal registration, lead generation, branded marketing collateral, online support, and phone support.

“User Behavior Analytics is moving beyond the early adopter stage with more and more large and midsize enterprises recognizing that identity has become a security perimeter,” said Rosanna Pellegrino, the newly appointed VP of strategic alliances. “There’s a lucrative opportunity for partners to capitalize on market demand for Gurucul’s products, which combine UBA and Identity Access Intelligence to both detect and prevent threats, while shrinking the surface accessible to attackers.”

Pellegrino previously led channel and alliances programs for Lumeta Corporation, iSight Partners (now FireEye), Qualys and RedSeal Networks.

Channel Impact^®
As new technologies move beyond proof of concept and gain momentum, a strong channel program becomes a practical necessity.

Ransomware Domains Increase 35 Fold in Q1 2016, According to the Infoblox DNS Threat Index

Infoblox Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based network control company, has released research indicating a 35-fold increase in newly observed ransomware domains compared to the fourth quarter of 2015. This dramatic surge helped propel the overall threat index, which measures creation of malicious Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure including malware, exploit kits, phishing, and other threats, to its highest level ever.

Ransomware is a relatively brazen attack where a malware infection is used to seize data by encrypting it, and then payment is demanded for the decryption key.

According to Rod Rasmussen, vice president of cybersecurity at Infoblox, “There has been a seismic shift in the ransomware threat, expanding from a few actors pulling off limited, small-dollar heists targeting consumers to industrial-scale, big-money attacks on all sizes and manner of organizations, including major enterprises. The threat index shows cybercriminals rushing to take advantage of this opportunity.”

The FBI recently revealed that ransomware victims in the United States reported costs of $209 million in the first quarter of 2016, compared to $24 million for all of 2015. High-profile Q1 ransomware incidents include the February 2016 attack on Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles and the March 2016 breach at MedStar Health in Washington D.C.

Channel Impact^®
This research clearly underscores the channel’s security opportunity, as well as the importance of effective backup and disaster recovery infrastructure.