Security conversations have become more apparent with partners: Arctic Wolf ANZ channel director

Michael Ben speaks to CRN Australia about how cyber awareness has grown over the past three years since Arctic Wolf has been in the market.

Reflecting on Arctic Wolf’s presence in Australia over the past three years, Michael Ben, channel director ANZ, Arctic Wolf said there has been a growth in conversations around security.

Speaking to CRN Australia, he said, “The prevalence of security conversations has become much more apparent with partners.

“When we engaged with partners three years ago, oftentimes partners didn't have a focus on cybersecurity.

“Oftentimes they really didn't have a cyber security capability at all, and it wasn't anywhere on their radar to build it out, because talent is thin and requires significant focus on investment.”

These days, however, Ben said almost every partner will have some cybersecurity focus.

“Small or large, whether it's a partner that is traditionally infrastructure focused or networking focused, or even cloud focused, we'll talk about cyber security as part of their go-to-market, and that's a big change,” he explained.

Ben said he has seen significant change in the partners that Arctic Wolf works with in Australia.

“They embrace our offering a whole lot more and do a lot more with us than that was the case three years ago, as we were trying to build out and prove ourselves in the market,” he added.

Challenges for partners

One of the major challenges for partners, Ben has identified is the overwhelming amount of security vendors in the market.

“We try to help partners to reduce the noise from focusing on tools to focusing on outcomes, and we certainly help our customers move away from focusing on tools to outcomes,” he said.

Ben said many vendors have the same look and feel as each other causing confusion within the market.

"That is one of the real challenges for the channel partners is that there's a lot of vendors out there with solutions, and there's a lot of brochureware confusion, everybody's offering looks the same,” he explained.

“Everybody's pamphlets look the same, the endpoint solutions are differentiated at the very specific, feature function level. Firewall capabilities, endpoint identity management systems are all differentiated at the feature function capability.”

Another challenge for partners is cybersecurity talent.

“Talent shortage applies to smaller partners, and the partners that you know that address that mid market space, that don't necessarily have the capabilities to invest in a large cyber security team and practice,” he said.

“That's another challenge, is access to good people and access to good technical resources, cybersecurity technical resources, and we help our partners with being able to take an offering to market without having to make that investment.

You don’t have to be a one trick pony

Working in the technology industry all of his career, one of the lessons he’s learnt is that is it possible for an old dog to learn new tricks.

In his career, Ben transitioned from infrastructure to cybersecurity, and noted your career doesn’t have to stay in one sector the whole time.

“For myself, I've seen a transition in becoming cybersecurity professional from an infrastructure focused professional. It's something that I didn't know would be possible 10 years ago,” Ben said.

“A lot of our partners have recognised a similar ability to start to grow into an area that they didn't think was previously possible to do.

“We were able to make that happen for them and that's a real privileged place to be in, to help partners grow beyond where they're at.”

Due to the vastness and breadth of the technology industry, people don’t need to pigeonhole themselves.

“The IT industry is fascinating for that reason because there's a lot of new technologies, new conversations and new capabilities that are taken to market. Sometimes people pigeonhole themselves into an area,” he said.

“If you keep an open mind and you focus on the outcomes, and what is this thing that you're interested in, what does it deliver to people? How does it make people's life better? If you focus on that, you can make the transition. If you focus on the features and function, the bits and bites, it's all too hard.”