Hey channel insiders, I'm your host Katie Bavoso and welcome to this episode of Partner POV brought to you by Bit Defender. Today we're exploring how Bit Defender and DSN Group partner together to deliver enterprisegrade cyber security outcomes to small and midsize businesses. As a team, they're helping organizations strengthen their defenses, optimize budgets, and gain peace of mind with protection and responsive support. Joining me now to share how this partnership empowers customers to focus on their business, not breaches, are Nicholas Oberondorfer, channel sales engineer at Bit Defender, and Kevin Weiss, president and principal at DSN Group.
Welcome, gentlemen, and thank you both so much for being here today. Kevin, you're actually going to get us started because I'd love for you to give us an overview first of all of what DSN Group is and who your typical clients are. >> Thanks Katie for having us. We are based here in the Chicago market in Hoffman Estates. We have two divisions that we deliver services and products in. One is a traditional bar and the other is a managed service provider.
Most of the focus is regional, so within about a 250 mi radius of Chicago. So Kevin, how did Bit Defender and DSN Group first come together and what made this partnership such a strong fit from the beginning? >> The way that we got introduced to them was through our managed service program. So Bit Defender became our base AV and security protection for all of our managed service clients. and through that experience started working with the sales team and just had such a terrific relationship and support from them added it into our reseller part of the business. >> Well, Nick, let's bring you into the conversation.
Speaking of Bit Defender, how does Bit Defender help partners like DSN Group meet customers where they are on their own IT journey and of course their own cyber security journey? >> Thank you Katie and and thank you for having us here. So I think kind of what Kevin started out with at having two discrete lines of business being what we would call a hybrid partner resale and service provider is really our sweet spot. So so at Bit Defender we can help meet customers no matter where they are.
If you've got small to mid-size business with your own internal IT Kevin can help resell some licenses, get you onboarded, get you started. But for the companies that might not have the internal skills or the the people, the time required, we enable our MSP partners to manage everything from multi-tenant console, really be efficient, deliver the right outcome and do that at a scale that then adds value to everyone involved. >> Very well put and thank you for that.
Kevin, I'm going to go back over to you now. DSN Group both manages and resellers Bit Defender solutions as we've been talking about. What do your customers say about these solutions and how does Bit Defender help extend your internal resources at DSN Group? >> Since we're serving predominantly small and mid-size businesses through through both entities or both divisions, they are tend to be value shoppers. One of the other things is is there in in the security space there are a number of different tools.
There's some overlap in some of them. So being able to meet the specific needs, Bit Defender has been just an awesome partner with the way that they've outlined their delivery of different products, organized part of those offerings to meet the different demands that that customers have. >> Yeah. And Kevin, speaking of those demands, you mentioned the value shoppers, but what other considerations are going into your customers budget decisions in today's IT and cyber security landscape?
And how does Bit Defender solutions meet those budgetary concerns? >> The majority of the organizations know that there's no silver bullet. There's not just one solution out there. So, it's a layered approach to security. So, how do I accomplish that? And how do I do it most uh effectively? The second part of it is they're typically lean staffed. So they need tools that are relatively intuitive and easier to monitor and in some cases monitored um through a service offering by the the partner and Bit Defender has covered us uh in both of those areas with their MDR service so that they're taking the heavy lifting of monitoring the alerts and everything and again having that that value and very granular approach to delivery of the different solutions that they Yeah. >> And Nick, with that answer from Kevin in mind, and of course with budgets and customer size in mind, how does Bit Defender make its solutions more accessible and effective for customers who might otherwise be priced out of enterprise level protection? >> I I think it starts kind of from the first principle of of understanding where is the customer, where do they want to be?
I mean, Kevin kind of mentioned a lot of the challenges they have. Is is the product easy to use, easy to learn? can they get their their hands around the security tools that they already have? And and there's two things that we do that that really help meet the let's say the resource constraint of a customer. One is providing the service at a at a manageable price point. That's something that that if you kind of look at some third party testing, you might dig into the details and find out our our MDR service is priced very aggressively to a point where it would compete with some other vendors EDRs even.
And that would allow a third party MSP like Kevin to to outsource the investigation of incidents and then just handle the remediation response with our advice or that would allow an end customer to do the same. The other piece and this is something that's that's kind of been trending upwards here is consolidation. Adding in as many features as possible into one single agent or one single platform. So for Kevin, if he's if he's helping manage several different aspects of it, he can consolidate patch management into endpoint protection from one single agent, one single console, and customers can do the same thing.
So there's a lot of value from a price point, but also value from a time savings and a tool management point of view. >> And Nick, continuing with you, how does Bit Defender help both partners and customers understand its solutions in the context of today's threat landscape? because as we know it's always changing and always becoming harder and harder to kind of wrap your arms around. >> 100%. We're we're very invested in in education of our customers and our partners.
So so we've launched a few programs in the past few years. One of those that we're really proud of as a Bit Defender Masterclass program. It's a free program for partners, customers, even non-C customers of ours who can log in and watch sessions on product onboarding, making sure you're maximizing the the investment you've put into our tools, best practices, use cases, but also more general cyber security topics. So we have a line called cyberc foundations that are vendor agnostic not necessarily talking the bit defender story but trying to just educate end customers and then outside of the masterclass program we produce a lot of online content now on on different web properties.
So info zone would be more generic customer education. Techone is another bit different product that talks about how our technologies work and that's that's written out. It's not necessarily recorded sessions but a lot of investment in helping people understand what we do and how we do it. That way they can get the most out of their investment but also learn about the new challenges that we're trying to solve. >> Thank you, Nick. Well, this next question is for both of you.
In each of your views, what makes this partnership unique in the cyber security space? What do each of you bring to the table to complement the solutions that you provide? Nick, let's start with you. Bit Defender is bringing a proven solution and we we do our best to demonstrate that through thirdparty testing, but what we really benefit from and and what I hope Kevin is able to touch on is the trust and the relationship with the customers that Kevin works with on a day-to-day basis.
It's impossible for Bit Defender to have that same onetoone relationship that Kevin will build and develop on. So, so we try and bring the best in breed solutions from the Bit Defender side. >> Well, Kevin, how would you build on that? >> Yeah, I think you're right on the money, Nick. And part of I think the success of our relationship with Bit Defender has been the people that we've worked with. The sales organization uh operations part of the business.
Just the entirety of that partnership has been a great experience and that really comes through when we're out in front of customers and talking to them about what that partnership looks like and introducing and making sure that they have a line of communication even from our managed service side to Bit Defender and some of the resources that are available there. >> Very well put and thank you for that Kevin. Well, Kevin, can you share a customer success story that really illustrates how your two organizations work together to deliver an outstanding security outcome? >> Yeah.
Uh, one that actually happened just this month. So, we were talking to an organization. They were evaluating EDR. The requ business requirement was they were renewing their cyber insurance policy. So they had gone out and talked to virtually all the EDR players in the market and through working with our sales rep and engineering team at Bit Defender kind of went through uh each one of the requirements that the customer had, showed them how it would fit within their environment.
Interesting company. They have a number of locations about 400 employees and it really got down to the value and and they ended up going with the MDR service just because they the lean staff that they had in their IT department and saw a ton of value by outsourcing that piece of it. >> Oh, such a great story. Thank you, Kevin. Now, Nick, how can Bit Defender support partners when it comes to those new maybe skeptical clients? How do you help them earn that trust?
For me, it's it starts with establishing some sort of external credibility, whether that external credibility comes from the third party testing that I've mentioned in the past or whether it comes from the customer trying it. So, so I can always lean on on someone like Kevin to give his experience as an MSP working with our MDR team. And that's that's one side of the story, but I'd rather the customer try it and then see what it's like for 30-day period or 14-day period and just understand what is it that they're getting into because we want to build a long-term partnership with them as well.
That's that's our end goal. So, uh, I think testimonials are great, customer to customer referrals are great, having a partner who can vouch that has used it as well as resold it, that's that's incredible. But, but just giving the customer the ability to see what it's like in their specific environment, that's the gold standard. >> And Kevin, you talked about this earlier with the team members that you work with over at Bit Defender, but I'd love to hear more.
What does Bit Defender do to earn the trust of your team at DSN Group? I just think the way that they approach uh the partnership and the way that they've worked with us and the amount of resources and communication and it really gets down to, you know, a group of people working with other people and and calling in those resources and getting help as needed either to troubleshoot an issue or to look at a an opportunity. And the team that we've been working with has just been fabulous to work with.
And you know that makes all the difference of gaining the trust of the rest of the sales organization, the engineering team and our operations team as well. >> Oh, that's fantastic to hear and thank you so much. When you use the word fabulous to describe team members, I don't think that falls short on people. So, thank you so much, Kevin. And Nick, why don't you close us out? Where can those watching and listening today go to learn more about Bit Defender and its solutions? >> So, I I definitely recommend start by by going to our website if you're a customer who wants to learn more at bitdefender.com.
There's free trials available, but also reach out to the local partners near you. If you're in that Chicago area, reach out to Kevin directly. There's several ways to contact us online and we'll get you lined up with the right team. Kind of like Kevin said, it's the team that matters, not just everything online self-s serve. So, get in contact with your partner near you and get in contact with Kevin and then we'll take it from there. >> Nick, Kevin, thank you both so much for your time today.
It's been a pleasure getting to speak with you and get to know your partnership. And thank you at home for watching. To see more episodes of partner POV, check out channelinssider.com. Once again, I'm Katie Bavoso and I'll see you next time.
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