Strongarm Debuts Partner Program for MSPs and VARs

Strongarm recently launched a partner program to help managed service providers (MSPs) and value-added resellers (VARs) offer their small and midsize business (SMB) customers security services beyond firewalls and antivirus solutions. The program offers a simple, automated security system to solution providers that haven’t been able to provide advanced security protection and incident response services due to their complexity and resource needs.

The Strongarm solution protects SMB customers from threats that include ransomware, exploit kits, phishing, malvertising and other forms of malware, while reducing the time spent on alerts, reporting and resolution. IT providers can deploy Strongarm in less than 10 minutes as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, and it stops and remediates malware automatically and provides alerts on potential infections, according to the company.

“SMBs are a growing market for cyber-security services, and they are increasingly a target for cyber-criminals,” the company’s materials. “Forty-three percent of targeted cyber-attacks are aimed at SMBs, and 60 percent [of them] go out of business within six months of a cyber-attack, according to Small Business Trends.”

A survey conducted by the Ponemon Institute found that more than half of the SMBs surveyed were subjected to a breach in the last 12 months, and only 14 percent rated their company’s ability to mitigate cyber-attacks as highly effective. The most frequent attacks on SMBs were Web-based and included phishing breaches.

Strongarm’s security services automatically block threats that hit a client’s network, said Joel Silberman, the company’s senior vice president of business development and strategy.

“Every partner we have deals with ‘happy clickers’ at their clients, [people] who repeatedly click on malicious links,” said Silberman. “Strongarm protects the MSP’s clients from these clicks, and eliminates the need for the MSP to spend time triaging and cleaning up after the event. Strongarm also helps MSPs educate their customers about how to be more careful about whether to open email links.”

The key elements of the partner program center on helping solution providers get up and running quickly, and jumpstarting their sales to current customers. The company offers a special, one-year Jumpstart Package to MSPs that want to deploy Strongarm to their current customers. MSPs can roll out Strongarm to an unlimited number of their current clients at a “low flat fee.”

The package deal gives MSPs access to all the benefits of the Strongarm partner program, which includes hands-on setup and deployment support, email support to assist in triaging and investigating potential infections or attacks, and pre-sales support including demos, trials and proof-of-concept. They also have access to Strongarm Insights, a domain name system (DNS) reporting tool that shows popular URL requests and categories.

Partners also receive marketing and sales support to launch and sell the service. In addition, Strongarm offers a white-label option for MSPs.