Expanding Cybersecurity to Microsoft Resellers

Interview Transcript

Craig Galbraith: “All right. Hey again, everyone. Channel features editorial director Craig Galbraith here. Super excited for the upcoming Channel Partners Conference and Expo and MSP Summit, March 11th through to the 14th, coming up at the Venetian in Las Vegas.”

“Great opportunity to talk to some great people, one of them I've known for quite some time, Garrett G. Garrett is Global Vice President in Direct Channels and Alliances with Trustwave. Garrett, how are you?”

Garrett Gee: “I'm doing great. Thanks for having me today. Looking forward to talking to the audience.”

Craig: “Absolutely. Thanks for your sponsorship of the event as well. We appreciate it. So let's learn a little bit about Trustwave today.”

“What's Trustwave's security specialty and how do you differentiate yourself from the competition? Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, Trustwave has been a brand a lot of people don't know around for 25 years.”

Garrett: “And we're a pure play managed security solutions provider. I would say that our, you know, our flagship offers our MDR, managed detection and response and co -managed SOC. But we also bring a bunch of consulting to the table.”

“And, you know, that starts with human led pen testing, engagements like assessments, and incident response. Because, you know, the saying now is "it's not when you get breached, it's you're going to get breached”, right?”

“So, we've got a whole host of different products and services. On the product line, we just have some software to complement those professional consulting services and managed services.”

“So, you know, phishing is still the way that most people get into networks. So we have an email gateway product. And we have a database protection product, because that's typically what they're going after, the databases.”

 “On that, how do we differentiate? I mean, I always tend to say: our people. It's true, we believe our talent is as good as anybody, but we really focus on the R in the MDR stack.”

“So we believe a lot of the competition has slick tools that alert customers to problems that they may see, but we really pride ourselves on the human -led response that we pre -determined with our clients. So we put together fundamentally a playbook on how we're going to respond when things happen. And in some cases, we take care of it for the customers, and at our times, they say, “wake me up at 2 am on a Sunday”.

Craig: “Yeah, I can imagine a human element is so important, Garrett. So the audience at Channel Partners is going to be really interested in learning a bit about Trust Wave's channel program. You want to talk about that and the benefits it offers partners?”

Garrett: “Yeah. So we've had a channel program for quite some time, but I would say predominantly, it's been in the reseller and distributor world. So it's a global program. We operate not only in North America, but Latin, EMEA, [and APAC] as well.”

“And it's a very mature reseller and distribution go-to market. We have had an indirect referral program with one of the major TSDs for at least a couple of years. And one of the objectives when I came on was to really grow that.”

“And so for the last year, I've been hard at work with the team and delighted to say that we have a couple more of the key nationwide TSDs on, and we're in talks with others. So lots of great things are going on with the business.”

“A few highlights that I'd like to point out that may be of interest is we are very welcoming to federal, state, and local government opportunities. And I know from experience that often it's a no thank you in the channel because a lot of organizations have big teams built up to face the federal government.”

“We are very welcoming to those opportunities. So bring them in. We are happy to support you. And a few other things, Craig, if you don't mind, I think we have a very competitive compensation platform for indirect partners and a very compelling discount structure for our resellers as well. So when you bundle that all together, I think it's the right time to start looking at Trustwave to partner with us.”

Craig: “Yeah, it's great to hear you're sort of touching all aspects of the channel, a lot of different partner types there. So that sounds good.”

“So Garrett, Trustwave, I mentioned a sponsor and will exhibit at Channel Partners coming up. What's gonna be your main message to prospective partners that you made at the show?”

Garrett: “Yeah, we're excited to meet with partners that we’re already working with and new ones to come by our booth. We’ve got a few exciting announcements that we’re going to unveil at the show, so please swing by and we’ll provide you all those details. A couple of high points though is that we’re going to be spending a lot of time educating our customers on our partnership with Microsoft. 

“We believe that a lot of the partners that are currently selling Teams and Office 365. And if they want to expand into the security space and start positioning things like Microsoft Defender and Sentinel, we have the ability to really help you on that journey.

“So, we have things like Microsoft workshops that we can do with your end user clients, which are free by the way.  And then we even have some incentives for the channel partners for when they bring opportunities to us. Then really making sure that people understand all the things that we can bring to bear from a marketing perspective. 

“I think our mark channel marketing team is second to none, but we can go to market with you. We can help you really build out your cyber security strategy. And we can even do things like intent data. So if you have an embedded base of customers that you've sold Networking Cloud solutions to, and you want to start thinking about positioning security with them, we can do intent data to see what people are searching for within that domain.”

“So then we position the right content collectively to them. So lots of cool things happening on the marketing side that we'll be talking about as well”.

Craig: “Super excited to see you, Garrett and the Trustwave team coming up at the Channel Partners Conference and Expo. Thanks for your sponsorship and great to see you today.”