Sophos: Our MDR Offering Empowers Partners to Seize Security Opportunity

Global security technology and services vendor Sophos has seen exponential growth in its managed detection and response (MDR) offerings, driven largely through MSPs and channel partners. Sophos SVP of Product Management Rob Harrison spoke with Channel Insider to share how the company aims to support its partners in growing their security businesses.

MDR support offers agility for partners and protection for customers

Sophos built its MDR offering to support customers directly and through its channel partners, with the latter motion now comprising roughly two-thirds of the offering’s total user base. The goal of the solution, according to Harrison, is to solve a problem many organizations face: how to operationalize disparate security tools and manage, analyze, and action various insights while keeping up with today’s threat landscape.

“Threat actors operate 24/7, worldwide, and without holiday breaks, and organizations have to match that scale while also handling a lot of technology,” Harrison said. “How on Earth do you keep up with it all if you aren’t already a security-focused organization or a partner with a lot of security expertise? You can’t, and that’s where we step in.”

The MDR offering can be fully owned by Sophos or can be customized to the level of involvement a partner feels comfortable with, meaning some channel partners trust Sophos with their clients’ detection and response capabilities entirely, and others prefer to manage lines of communication or even monitor responses themselves.

“MSPs are a really powerful way to service customers, and we want our partners to scale and grow as we do while adding their own flavor to the offerings.”

Harrison also highlights Sophos’ unlimited response promise, which extends the company’s involvement through the entire attack experience should a business suffer an incident. To Harrison, the promise to fully support all aspects of a response differentiates Sophos from others in the space and provides MSPs with another resource to rely on if and when their clients need it.

Third-party integrations open up the ecosystem, keep customers sticky

Sophos has also emphasized opening its technology and services to third-party tools via a variety of integrations, all designed to better meet partners and customers where they are. The integrations also allow Sophos to provide deeper support to its partners and customers utilizing the MDR offering, as the more integrations are available, the wider detection analysis can reach within a business’ tech stack.

“About two and a half years ago we started really opening up our ecosystem to more integrations, and some of those involve competitors who offer tools we also have in our portfolio,” Harrison said. “We understand that businesses make budgetary commitments to certain technologies at certain times, and we also just know that not every solution works for every business. We don’t want to be arrogant and assume we’re the best- we want the best outcome for our customers. That includes working with whatever they have to keep them protected.”

Harrison points out that when partners and their clients know Sophos will integrate with a variety of other solutions, there is trust in the company’s ability to continue supporting them even when other changes are made to the technology stack. Harrison says the company aims to minimize the need to “rip and replace” managed detection and response capabilities as budgeting and other business processes might impact technology decisions.

Sophos aims to stay ‘one step ahead’ of threats and bad actors

With all the success in mind, Harrison says one of the things keeping him up at night is how Sophos can continue to innovate, grow, and succeed alongside its partners, who remain an important component of Sophos’ overall growth. 

“When nearly two-thirds of our MDR business is through the channel, and we know MSPs are trusted advisors to their clients, it’s absolutely critical to our own business and our shared customers that MSPs grow with us.”

To support its MSP partners, Harrison says, the company solicits partner feedback at events and through roundtable discussions in which partners receive a preview of the roadmap and are asked to share how important potential releases would be to their businesses.

Outside of channel-specific growth, Sophos also continues to invest in threat analysis and research to try to stay ahead of threat actors. The company utilizes the massive amount of data and real-time experiences it accesses through its vast customer base to apply trends in attacks to future defense capabilities. The goal, Harrison says, is always to do whatever Sophos can to better understand the security risks and needs of its customers worldwide.

“We’re never standing still. We’re always going to jump to, what is the next threat, what are our partners and customers using technology-wise that we need to integrate with, what can we offer next. There’s always something new happening.”

Secureworks acquisition furthers growth and enablement missions

On Feb. 3, Sophos announced it had closed its acquisition of Secureworks and folded the company’s offerings into Shophos’ vast portfolio of security. The all-cash transaction values Secureworks at approximately $859 million. With the completion of the acquisition, Secureworks’ common stock has ceased trading on Nasdaq.

The deal will, according to the company, enhance how its partners go to market worldwide. Sophos has called itself the “leading pure-play cybersecurity provider of managed detection and response (MDR) services.”

“Sophos’ broader portfolio will enable our collective global partner community to reach more customers and potential customers with enhanced enterprise capabilities, services and a security operations platform designed to scale for MSP/MSSP ecosystems and protect any size customer organization,” said Sophos CEO Joe Levy. “We will continue to work with both our channel partners, MSPs and MSSPs worldwide to ensure our collective customers, from both companies, have optimal cybersecurity outcomes now and as we work to integrate our solutions.”

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