Hey channel insiders, I'm your host Katie Bavoso and welcome to this episode of partner POV brought to you by Bit Defender. In today's cyber security landscape, organizations need protection that's not only powerful but also accessible and adaptable to their unique needs. That's why the partnership between Bit Defender and Penteamic Security stands out. It combines world-class threat intelligence with hands-on expertise to help customers strengthen their defenses and simplify security.
Joining me now to explain is Don Clint, CEO and president of Pandemic Security, and Nicholas Openorfer, channel sales engineer at Bit Defender. Welcome to both of you. It's great to see you today. Don, you're going to get us started with this first question. Pentamic Security is a data protection and cyber security architecture firm. A lot of your focus starts at the endpoint. What are customers looking for when it comes to endpoint security in today's threat landscape and why can this be so challenging for them? >> Well, Katie, thanks for having us and yeah, when it comes to endpoint security, our customers are always worried about what are their employees doing, how are they making sure they're protected, what if they're going to sites that they don't know about, and what happens when that zero day threat comes in.
So, it's very challenging for customers to be able to protect everybody, whether they've got 200 users all the way up to 25,000 users. They need to make sure that they're protected. >> 100% there, Don. With that in mind, what makes Pentamic Security's partnership with Bit Defender such a natural fit and what Bit Defender solutions are the most popular with your customers? >> So, Gravity Zone for midsize enterprise is one of the larger pieces that we sell of Bit Defender to our customers.
And why Bit Defender is such a natural fit is because we are able to go in with our customers. We're both security focused and we can sit down and talk to our customers about what the real threats are in their environment. And then Bit Defender comes in and kind of shows where there are gaps or maybe where there can be some improvements. We sell with pure trust in mind and we're not trying to scare people, but we're trying to show them how to protect without having to worry about it.
So the sea levels can sleep at night. >> Yes. And it's important. We know if the sea levels are sleeping well, nobody else has to worry. So important point there. Thanks, John. Nick, let's bring you in. How does Bit Defender build onto Pentamic Security's endpoint offerings? >> I'd like to say it it starts with meeting Pentamics's customers exactly where they are. Not every customer is at the same stage in their journey. Not every customer is at at that end stage.
And really, we we kind of we lead with the MDR service. I think Don will probably get into how that service is complemented their customers, but some customers aren't yet ready for MDR. Maybe they just need a solid endpoint protection. they might need to consolidate a few features. So, we we build in by by offering the full portfolio and a simplified go to market and then Don is able to to be that customer's trusted adviser and either move up the stack, move down the stack and get the right solution for the right person or organization. >> Well, Nick, for those customers who are ready for MDR, manage detection and response, it's obviously a top priority for them, but sometimes it often comes at a steep cost.
How does Bit Defender make MDR more accessible and effective for customers who might otherwise be priced out of the enterprise level protection? >> Great question and it's something that we come across uh quite a bit working with with Pentemics and and others. It's it's really a question of economies of scale and trying to solve the skills gap challenge for our customers. So managed detection response at its core is about having skilled individuals there to detect and respond around the clock 24x7 365 and we deliver that through our global sock operations.
So having three different geographies and a follow the sun model, we're able to achieve a size and scale of operations that really helps out on a per customer basis to to drive down the overall cost and and deliver the value that they're looking for. >> Well said, Nick. So Don, back over to you. Many customers today are looking for ways to consolidate tools and simplify their security stack. How does your collaboration with Bit Defender help reduce complexity while still strengthening protection? >> Yeah, great question, Katie.
So a lot of times our customers will buy solutions that it makes it very hard on the IT teams. It makes it hard on the security teams to be able to figure out what is going on with Bit Defender's MDR solution and their entire stack for what they have to offer customers. It makes it very easy for them to quickly know what's going on, which endpoints are online or offline and how things are protected. And this is all done in a single pane of glass, which we all hear in security all the time. what it truly is a single pane of glass for customers to go in and see where they're at with their endpoint protections and what may or may not be happening on their network. >> I've got a question that I'm looking for both of you to answer.
Trust and transparency in a partnership are incredibly important as you both know, especially when it's based around cyber security. What are some ways that trust is demonstrated in this partnership and how does this shared approach translate into a better experience for your customers? Don, why don't you get us started with that? >> For sure. So, as we talked about earlier, we believe in coming in with trust first. We like to say that we're cyber enthusiasts first.
So, we want to run with a partner that has the same mindset. Bit Defender is exactly there with us. They're there to take care of the customer. Of course, we're here for sales, but at the end of the day, it's making sure we're living in a protected world that our customers are not spreading ransomware everywhere. And we do this together. They bring us in this customer situations and we also bring them into our customers and together we're growing to help protect the environment and protect our entire ecosystem as cyber enthusiasts. >> Oh, I love to hear that.
Well, to a fellow cyber enthusiast, Nick, how can you add on to what Don just said? >> I wish I could just repeat everything word for word, but to give you something a little bit different, I think the key element of trust is also built on with the team. So, so back when when we brought Pentamics on board or I guess when they brought us on board cuz it goes both ways. I remember half of that conversation was around thirdparty testing and validating is this solution really a truly effective solution for the end customers and being able to prove that out.
Not just taking our word for it, but taking some third party tests for it and then we can move on to driving the value, showing them kind of a tour of our console, a demo and then the first few at bats, the first few customer conversations that really proved the thesis out. >> Well put. I think definitely a wonderful add-on to what Don said there. So Nick, let's continue with you. Education is a key theme in cyber security. We can never stop learning because the threat landscape never stops evolving.
Can you talk about Bit Defender's Masterclass program and how resources like that empower both your partners and customers to get the most out of their solutions? >> Yeah, of course. So, so Bit Defender Masterclass to tell you a bit of a backstory in the program, it really started out as a way to enable customers and partners to get more out of their investment with our product suites and our platform. So, the masterass was founded around product onboarding sessions, best practices, use case scenarios, certain add-ons, and the goal was simply improve adoption, improve ROI for the customers, help our partners be better enabled to deliver services themselves.
And it grew from there and now we see it more as a as an educational tool for everyone, whether it's about Bit Defender products or not. We recently launched a a cyber security foundations course line where every month or so we have new products that are generic and product agnostic to try and inform our customers more and if our customers know more about the challenges that we are trying to build around and solve they might see more value in a solution like the one we're providing too. >> Love to hear that.
And speaking of value in a solution, Don, Bit Defender has launched several new tools this year, like several, including Phaser and Gravity Zone Compliance Manager to help businesses stay ahead of evolving threats and regulations. How are innovations like these helping pandemic securities customers stay compliant and resilient? >> Well, let's just say everybody loves compliance. Compliance is fun. Now, as we continue to go in this world of ever evolving change, so CNMC keeps doing their different compliance piece.
PCI just released their new compliance piece. HIPPA sock one, sock two, right? It depends on the compliance that your customer is looking for. But what Bit Defender has been able to do is as these compliance standards keep changing, so does their ability to let you know if you're compliant based on what your endpoints are doing. Did somebody take a certain feature off to where they needed to do something? You can immediately be alerted that, hey, now this endpoint or this user or this set of endpoints is now out of compliance because of this happening.
GDPR and all of the privacy act compliance pieces that are coming in are now requiring stricter and stricter standards for our customers. So using things that Bit Defender has like Phasar and Gravity Zone, it just helps them get that quick snapshot, understand where they are any moment in time, not just for a compliance audit, and keeps them compliant throughout the year. >> Some great details and experience there. Thank you so much, Don. And speaking of Phaser, Nick, what about this solution has helped Defender stand out in the market, it being such a new solution? >> It's brand new this year and we're incredibly excited about it.
And there's there's a few key elements, so I'll try to try to address all of them. First and foremost, what's the need for a tool like phaser? I should define the acronym. It's it's proactive hardening attack surface reduction. Our goal here is to reduce your attack surface over time dynamically. And the feedback we've gotten not just from customers, but from analysts in the market is this is a truly necessary tool and so much so it's helping define a new market for dynamic attack surface reduction tools.
But we're trying to solve customer needs. We're not just trying to sell additional products. So, Phaser is a tool that can help learn over time on a per user, per device level and really deny access to tools that people shouldn't be using in their day-to-day operations so that if a bad actor, an adversary gets access to an endpoint, to an identity, they then can't use that endpoint or identity to do anything outside of the typical business operation.
So, really closing those gaps and learning over time without overwhelming the end user. That's what makes it so special. And my one last note about Phaser, which I'm super thrilled about, when this product first launched in April, it was something that was only available on top of the existing Gravity Zone stack. Now we we've made it a standalone feature set or capabilities. So So now Donald doesn't have to convince a client to go all in with Bit Defender just to see those capabilities.
Any customer using any endpoint protection tool can leverage Phaser to go ahead and reduce their attack surface over time. >> I'm sure Don would say, but you should probably check out a few of their other solutions, too, if you're interested. Thank you so much for that, Nick. And another question that I think is something I really want to get both of your opinions and experiences on. Pandemic Security and Bit Defender have been partners for about a year now.
What's an example of a success story that you can point to in that time that really exemplifies the partnership? Don, can you get us started? >> Yeah, so we had a customer, which we'll keep nameless, that was looking at Bit Defender and they were very excited what they could see. We did a proof of concept that showed them here's how Bit Defender is catching things that the existing solution was not catching and then they wanted to wait until the next quarter when budgets got released and all of a sudden something was happening and because we were running that P bit defender was catching it and the other solution wasn't.
So they immediately switched to Bit Defender got that sale going if you will for us which was great but also got the customer protected right. So when you do these PC's and you're seeing what Bit Defender can do over other solutions, it makes it very valuable to the customer, which makes us seem more of a trusted partner to a customer because when that PC was done, we didn't just turn everything off. We knew they were going to buy in a couple of months, so we let it run and it helped protect them in the background. >> Oh, that's fantastic.
And Nick, can you build on that? Either building on that story or giving us a totally separate one that comes to mind. >> I guess to to tie into that story, we we truly believe in trying it before you buy it. It's something that security is is so complex and it's unique to every individual organization. So, I'm glad Don was able to touch on the fact that the customer gets to do a PC and sees the value for themselves. But just as as an additional kind of proof of of the collaboration between the two organizations, we've worked with with Don and the team on on several, I'd say, requests for information or or requests for quotes or proposals in a way where we can try and match all of our capabilities where Don doesn't have to be the expert in Bit Defender.
Don has to know who to talk to and and who to get at Bit Defender to solve the right questions at the right time. That way, Don can be scalable to his customers. He can build that trusted relationship with them and he can lean on us to be the experts in what we do. And that's that's been a key success for us throughout the past year is really working together whenever these RFPs, RFQS come up. >> These are exactly why these success stories are my favorite part of any interview we do.
Thank you both so much for those examples and those points. Don, looking ahead, what excites you most about how this partnership will continue to evolve and how will that next phase help customers strengthen their cyber security posture even more? >> You know, we we have a lot of um vendors and partners that we work with throughout the industry. And working with Bit Defender allows us to go into a customer as a partnership. It's not an us versus them.
Hey, we need to rip this out to put this in. It really is sitting down with Bit Defender and talking to the customers in a conversation kind of like what we're having today, but understanding their gaps, understanding where a customer needs help. And Bit Defender is right there with us. And the tools that they have and the tools that they keep evolving have been really helping our customers. It's what the industry needs, especially as we move into the world of AI.
We're using AI to try to defend against these threats. our bad actors that are out there are also using AI to try and extract data quicker than what we could defend against. So to see what Bit Defender is constantly evolving and where the roadmap is going makes a big difference and allows us to be very excited about this partnership as we go forward. >> Love to hear that Don. Thank you. Nick, last question for you today. For those watching and listening who are interested in learning more, where can they go to find out more? >> So if you're looking for more about Bit Defender, go to our website, bitdefender.com.
There's tons of resources there for everyone from consumers all the way to enterprise competitive intel. You name it, it's all there. But I would also encourage you to reach out to the team at Pentamics and see if we can find out more and collaborate with them. Like I said, it's all about the relationships and starting a conversation with them would rapidly include us and you get a little bit more of a a hightouch effort like that than just going through a website.
So again, bidfender.com or to pandemiccurity.com. >> Don, Nick, thank you both so much for your time today. I loved getting to learn about the partnership between Pentamic Security and Bit Defender. And thank you at home for watching. For more episodes of Partner POV, check out channel insider.com. Once again, I'm Katie Bavoso and I'll see you next time.
This transcript was generated automatically from the
video's captions and may contain errors.
