Cork CEO Dan Candee on Evolution of Security Services & AI

Cork is pushing MSPs to rethink cybersecurity delivery as AI accelerates both business technology adoption and the sophistication of attackers.

In an interview with Channel Insider, CEO Dan Candee said the company has moved beyond compliance reporting and intelligence into active security remediation tooling. As AI and other forces seem to push tighter deadlines for everyone in technology, Cork is building its roadmap accordingly.

“Time has been compressed. And our ability to deliver things has accelerated,” he said.

Cork shifts from reporting to remediation

Candee said Cork’s roadmap has increasingly focused on helping partners act faster and reduce operational drag.

“Four months ago, we actively moved from reporting on compliance, intelligence, and communicating these things into active remediation,” he said. “Just getting things done for people.”

The goal, he said, is to help MSPs reduce the number of tools they manage, prioritize risk, and automate more of the repetitive work that keeps technicians from higher-value customer conversations.

“Partners are trying to reallocate resources to the higher intelligence, higher value customer-facing activities they want to do more of,” Candee said. “We need to help them do that.”

To do so, Cork has spent 2025 and 2026 adding a variety of capabilities and integrations to its platform, including:

• Software Installer Scripts’ capabilities to generate remediation scripts for Windows apps
• An integration with ScalePad tied to automated client QBR prep
• Availability in the Pax8 Marketplace
• The Vantage Platform itself was rolled out in November 2025

AI changes the SMB threat landscape

While AI is creating new business opportunities, Candee said it is also expanding the attack surface.

“With all of the excitement around AI, the reality is you still have to secure the AI environment,” he said. Threat actors, he added, are using AI to improve the quality of phishing and business email compromise attempts.

“These days, the emails are great,” he said. “The emails are better written than some of the emails I get from my employees.”

Recent research from Guardz shows AI-driven phishing, BEC, and other attacks are threatening SMBs at higher rates than before. 

MSPs are now racing to stay ahead of potential risks to their clients while balancing daily operations and other emerging technologies, such as the AI at the center of many of these new risks.

SMB leaders face growing security accountability

Security can’t just be on the MSP, though; customer leadership and internal understanding are just as important to success as the partner’s approach.

Candee said SMB leaders need to take more ownership of cybersecurity, particularly as smaller organizations remain exposed to scams, fraud, and breach risk.

“None of us is too small anymore. We simply can’t hide,” he said. 

To Candee, like others throughout the channel, the best path forward for vendors, partners, and customers will be to share more resources, information, and guidance with peers.

“We have to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, because none of us has time or the financial resources to make too many mistakes.”

MSPs move toward advisory security roles

For MSPs, the complex security landscape creates an opening to become more strategic advisors to clients. 

Candee argued that 2026 should become “the year of thought leadership/QBR, communicating value to clients,” with partners using AI, cyber risk, financial protection, and insurance readiness together as regular customer discussion points.

“You can ask two or three simple questions, so that the business owner understands that you care about their mission,” Candee said. “Mr. and Mrs. MSP are the IT service professionals who are also tied into that business journey.”

That shift is not simple. MSPs are already stretched across technical, operational, and customer-facing roles.

“They’re firefighters, and EMT, and the priest, and the golf buddy,” Candee said. “And yet, we’re also talking about teaching them how to be college professors.”

For Cork, the partner opportunity is tied to helping MSPs save time, improve security posture, and create space for those advisory conversations. 

As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, Candee said financial protection and faster remediation are becoming core pieces of the MSP value proposition.