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Who joined us in Vegas this March? And what did they think? Access the post-show report >>
Craig Galbraith: “All right, hey again, everyone, Channel Futures Editorial Director Craig Galbraith here, looking forward to the upcoming Channel Partners Conference and Expo and MSP Summit, March 11th through the 14th at the Venetian in Las Vegas.”
“ThreatLocker is a big sponsor for us once again this year, so I welcome Danny Jenkins, CEO of ThreatLocker. Danny, how are you doing?”
Danny Jenkins: “Good, thank you for having me here today, Craig.”
Craig: “Yeah, thank you for being here. So let's preview a couple of things you're going to be doing at the event. The first, on Monday the 11th, part of our MSP Summit portion, you're going to be talking about malware and of course what ThreatLocker is famous for, your zero trust approach. So what's going to be the main message there for the MSPs and attendees?”
Danny: “So what I want to do is give some of my experience as an ethical hacker who is someone who's created malware to get into environments and how I bypass antivirus. And I don't want to do that so people write more malware, but I want people to understand how attackers are bypassing our defenses so we can better understand how to get through them.”
“So I'm going to show some of the tips, some of the techniques that I use to actually create malware, bypass what stops them being detected. And even to this day, stops them being detected. And how we can actually defend against those threats.”
“So that's really the purpose of the session is to take you from that story: attackers view, defenders view, how we win. Because the more people that win, the better we are off as a whole.”
Craig: “Absolutely. So then you're also going to be on stage as part of an industry experts panel where business growth is the main topic. So I'm curious, maybe you could talk a little bit about the main opportunities for MSPUs for growth in cyber?”
Danny: “So here's the thing about cyber. It's a real pain in the backside. And there's so much that needs to be done in so little time. Companies have to get rid of that problem because more and more companies now have to disclose more.”
“They have to fix problems. And we've seen in the last few weeks, HPE have multiple disclosures of cyber breaches. And they can't just disclose that and say we haven't solved it.”
“So, as more and more companies disclose the new SEC requirements, but also just in general, companies feel the pain of ‘I need to solve this problem, how do we stop this?’, it's a massive opportunity for MSPs who can actually deliver on value. [They] can go to customers and say, “this is what we do. This is how we're going to fix your problem for you”.
“Because as a business owner, I understand the idea that if I can just write someone a check and they can solve my problem [that] is the best idea in the world. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that most of the time”.
“So if you can deliver that product, you could be an MSP that actually delivers secure solutions, managed solutions, ideal solutions that just solve the problem and say: ‘we've got you taken care of. We've checked all these boxes.We're monitoring your endpoints. We're monitoring your network’. Then there's so much opportunity there. And I think for the MSPs, it's about ‘how do I do this?’. First of all, make sure the product is good. And then ‘how do I message it to my prospects and my customers to show that I can deliver value to that?’.
Craig: “Yeah, that expert's panel is going to be so great because we have people like yourself on the security side. We've got people from all sectors across the channel talking about growth. Danny, speaking of growth,I wanted to ask you about ThreatLocker’s plans for the rest of this year, 2024, kind of just getting started. Are you guys hoping to make any acquisitions this year? Maybe you just give us an overall update on the business.”
Danny: “So obviously last year was another explosive year for us. We doubled in size. Our employees have nearly doubled. Our office is doubled. Everything's doubling and we expect to continue to do that this year.”
“So we've been very focused on new products and new ways to help customers, help MSPs. We launched ThreatLocker Ops out of beta a few weeks ago and we have some exciting product announcements coming up at our zero trust award conference at the end of February.”
“The big thing for us is how do we deliver value? We're not focusing on trying to acquire companies and we're certainly not being acquired. So no intention of doing that. But our goal is how do we deliver more value to the MSP? How do we go beyond just the end point? How do we make sure we're protecting other areas of their system and other areas of technology to make sure that they're fully protected and they have the most effective system to do that?”
“We have in the past done some acquisitions. Acquisitions aren't as easy as I thought and the integration isn't as easy as I thought. So I don't know if acquisition is part of that play. Where it will be is so we can accelerate. We can get good technologies and we can bring it into the thought of a culture of good support, good onboarding, and good everything else.”
“But at the moment our focus is really about developing new technologies and we've got such an excitement going on within the dev team right now and so many new tools coming out, [including] both new products but also enhancements to existing products”.
Craig: “Exciting year on tap for you guys for sure. And you know, Channel Futures will be there at the upcoming event you mentioned and we look forward to seeing you at the Channel Partners Conference & Expo & MSP Summit, Danny.”
Danny: “I look forward to being there.”