IT management vendor Continuum is looking to give its MSP partners a competitive edge in the burgeoning cybersecurity market.
At its annual user conference, Continuum Navigate, held last week in Boston, Continuum sent a clear message to partners that security will have a sweeping impact on the IT services industry. Continuum said MSPs working in the small and medium-sized business (SMB) segment must either pivot to meet their customers' security needs or risk losing relevance. As a result of the growing threats SMBs face, cybersecurity is driving the evolution of the Continuum MSP platform.
"Today's client engagement is not starting with just outsourced IT; it is starting with security. Security is a new way to [MSPs'] clients. It is a lead-in where you can demonstrate value and talk about differentiation and then sell your total solution that solves their problems," said Fielder Hiss, vice president of product at Continuum, at his keynote presentation.
Hiss added that traditional MSP agreements, which include managed services, backup and basic security, will no longer suffice, as clients will increasingly expect advanced security services such as real-time threat monitoring and compliance capabilities.
Continuum MSP security portfolio takes shape
Continuum has been busy building out its cybersecurity portfolio since formally launching Continuum Security in the first quarter of 2018. In June, Continuum purchased Carvir, a vendor of monitored and managed security focused on the MSP market.
According to the vendor, the Continuum Security portfolio includes the following:
Profile & Protect: A security strategy framework for assessing customers' environments and deploying services such as ransomware protection, antiphishing and insider threat detection.
Detect & Respond -- Endpoint: A product for identifying and handling cyberattacks on customers' endpoints. Detect & Response offers a $1 million ransomware warranty.
Detect & Respond -- Network & Compliance: A product using security information and event management technology to gather and analyze data from customers' network devices, endpoint logs and threat intelligence feeds. Continuum's security operations center (SOC) responds to security incidences and delivers remediation documentation and security recommendations.
Last week, Continuum unveiled a Compliance Dashboard for its Profile & Protect offering, providing visibility into customers' technical compliance with regulatory requirements. Compliance Dashboard currently works with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act but will expand to additional industry regulations.
Additionally, Continuum enhanced its endpoint Detect & Respond technology to Microsoft Office 365. Hiss said Continuum MSP partners will see capabilities extended to Amazon Web Services sometime in the next year.
Differentiating in the MSP software market
Speaking to SearchITChannel, Hiss said Continuum's security strategy is in its early days but is already seeing significant traction among Continuum MSP partners. Continuum Security products secure more than 100,000 endpoints today and the Continuum SOC currently employs more than 70 engineers, he noted.
No one is taking the holistic approach that we are.
Fielder Hissvice president of product, Continuum
Continuum Security is an important way the company is differentiating itself from its main competitors, including Kaseya, ConnectWise, SolarWinds MSP and the Datto-Autotask combo. "No one is taking the holistic approach that we are," he said. "I say 'holistic' because it is the tools but also the SOC. We are the only company that really takes the NOC [network operations center] approach."
Hiss noted that smaller competitors are emerging in the managed security market. They are mostly early stage security information management and SOC players, he said. Those companies will likely be acquired at some point by the bigger MSP software vendors, he said.
