Monday Morning Impact – March 18

Gartner’s Top Security and Risk Management Trends for 2019

Gartner, Inc. has identified key emerging security and risk management trends that the company says will impact security, privacy and risk leaders in the current year and beyond. These top trends represent ongoing strategic shifts in the security ecosystem that are not yet widely recognized, but are expected to have broad industry impact and significant potential for disruption.

“External factors and security-specific threats are converging to influence the overall security and risk landscape, so leaders in the space must properly prepare to improve resilience and support business objectives,” said Peter Firstbrook, research vice president at Gartner.

At the top of the list, companies’ willingness to endure risk is becoming increasingly linked to desired business outcomes. As IT strategies become more closely aligned with business goals, the ability for security and risk management leaders to effectively present security matters to key business decision makers gains importance. “To avoid exclusively focusing on issues related to IT decision making, create simple, practical and pragmatic risk appetite statements that are linked to business goals and relevant to board-level decisions,” said Firstbrook. “This leaves no room for business leaders to be confused as to why security leaders were even present at strategic meetings.”

At the Number Two spot, the shift in security investments from threat prevention to threat detection requires an investment in security operations centers (SOCs) as the complexity and frequency of security alerts grow. According to Gartner, by 2022, 50 percent of all SOCs will transform into modern SOCs with integrated incident response, threat intelligence and threat-hunting capabilities, up from less than 10 percent in 2015. “The need for SRM leaders to build or outsource a SOC that integrates threat intelligence, consolidates security alerts and automates response cannot be overstated,” said Firstbrook.

Placing third, Gartner believes that data security governance frameworks will prioritize data security investments. Rather than acquiring data protection products and trying to adapt them to suit the business need, leading organizations are starting to address data security through a data security governance framework (DSGF). “DSGF provides a data-centric blueprint that identifies and classifies data assets and defines data security policies. This then is used to select technologies to minimize risk,” said Firstbrook. “The key in addressing data security is to start from the business risk it addresses, rather than from acquiring technology first, as too many companies do.”

Channel Impact^®
These findings provide clues as to the direction that MSSPs and other channel partners will need to travel in order to better secure the IT infrastructure of their customers.

Malwarebytes Rolls Out New MSP Console

Malwarebytes, a Santa Clara, California-based endpoint protection and remediation vendor, is in the process of deploying a new management console for MSPs. Marketed as “OneView,” the offering is a cloud-based, multi-tenant management console designed to provide management of sites and customer accounts while also tracking trial and paid subscriptions plus threat visibility and management with monthly usage reports.

“Our MSP product expansion is the natural next step for Malwarebytes as we continue to experience rapid adoption across a wide array of customers,” said Barry Mainz, Chief Revenue Officer, Malwarebytes. “Our end-user evangelists often are the ones to bring Malwarebytes into organizations, and by partnering with MSPs, we make enterprise solutions easier to deploy and manage more than ever before.”

Following a successful pilot in Australia, the Malwarebytes MSP Program has begun launching its next phase with additional partners and will be working with them through April of this year. During this time, Malwarebytes will be working with select service providers around the world to refine the product to meet global MSP demands and provide the best possible solution. The program will be generally available to global MSPs in April of 2019.

Channel Impact^®
OneView will provide a customizable portal that is intended to simplify management and reduce service calls.

Micro Focus Announces Global Partner Program and New Partner Portal

Micro Focus, a Sunnyvale, California-based digital transformation company focused on Enterprise DevOps, Hybrid IT Management, Predictive Analytics and Security, Risk & Governance, has launched a new, unified partner program.

The three-tiered program offers a new partner portal, enhanced deal registration, an upgraded MDF program, and promises of accelerated turnaround time for deal registration, quotes, orders, MDF, and rebate payments.

“The announcement of the new Micro Focus partner program and portal demonstrates our continued commitment to providing an easier path for our partners to confidently generate predictable revenue, build pipeline and do business with us,” said Mike O’Neill, President of Worldwide Indirect Sales at Micro Focus. “We expect more than 10,000 partners to log in monthly and this number will grow as we continue to deliver new content and functionality, providing our partners with improved capability to sell more.”

Channel Impact^®
The selection of pricing options, combined with the TCO calculator to help The upgrades are intended to simplify pipeline development, and generally upgrade the company’s approach to indirect sales.