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October 16, 20267 min
The Buzz: Acronis names former WatchGuard CEO, Virtuozzo shrinks cloud infrastructure, Proofpoint expands MSP security
Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Acronis appoints former WatchGuard CEO Prakash Panjwani: Acronis has named Prakash Panjwani chief executive officer , effective immediately. He succeeds Jan-Jaap “JJ” Jager, who will remain a shareholder in the company.Panjwani previously served as CEO of WatchGuard Technologies and SafeNet. During roughly a decade at WatchGuard, he helped transform the company from a firewall-focused vendor into a broader cybersecurity platform provider, expanding its capabilities in endpoint protection, extended detection and response, and managed security.Acronis is highlighting his experience building MSP-focused platforms, integrating security technologies and expanding businesses through organic growth and acquisitions. The company has increasingly positioned its portfolio around the convergence of data protection, cybersecurity, infrastructure management and service automation. Panjwani’s appointment suggests that strategy will remain central to its next stage of development. For Canadian MSPs, the important questions concern how Acronis will continue integrating those capabilities, simplifying service delivery and supporting partner profitability. No immediate changes to the company’s partner program, pricing or product roadmap were announced. Virtuozzo introduces smaller infrastructure deployments and updated GPU support : Virtuozzo Infrastructure System 8.0 introduces a lite deployment option designed for environments requiring just one or two servers .The new configuration combines compute , management and storage on local disks, eliminating the need for a separate shared-storage network in smaller deployments. Virtuozzo is targeting service providers, smaller businesses, branch locations and customers that need infrastructure running on their own premises.Version 8.0 also updates Nvidia support to R595 and vGPU v20, allowing dedicated and shared GPU resources on the same host. The company has also made its built-in migration tool for VMware vSphere 8 generally available. Virtuozzo says a one-server configuration can deliver approximately 53 percent lower total cost of ownership than VMware, although actual savings will depend on configuration, licensing and workload requirements. The lite deployment is not equivalent to a conventional high-availability cluster. Virtuozzo says customers requiring automatic virtual-machine failover need additional nodes and shared storage. For Canadian MSPs and smaller cloud providers, the release offers another approach to delivering managed infrastructure and localized AI workloads without requiring customers to commit to larger deployments from the outset. Proofpoint expands Microsoft 365 security capabilities for MSPs: Proofpoint’s MSP Platform business is introducing new security and management capabilities designed to help service providers strengthen customers’ Microsoft 365 environments ahead of broader AI adoption.The additions include Tenant Risk Exposure, a new capability within 365 Permission Manager that will highlight excessive sharing permissions, anonymous access, inactive guest accounts, public groups and other potential security exposures across Microsoft 365 tenants.Proofpoint is also introducing greater explainability for AI-powered email-security decisions, allowing administrators to better understand why messages are classified as suspicious or legitimate. Its Security Awareness Service is expanding adaptive training into Microsoft Teams , while a new AI Cyber Assistant inside the management console will help MSPs with onboarding, configuration, product guidance and customer consultations. The developments build on Proofpoint’s dedicated MSP Platform business, established following its acquisition of Hornetsecurity and expanded into North America earlier this year. For MSPs, the opportunity is to address two related problems: securing the data and permissions that AI systems may access, and reducing the technician workload associated with managing those controls across multiple customers. The new capabilities are scheduled to roll out during the fourth quarter of 2026. Canadian availability of individual features should be confirmed. In Brief Commvault adds threat hunting to Microsoft 365 backups: Commvault has announced new security capabilities for Microsoft 365 backup data , including scanning protected Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams content for malware , suspicious activity and other indicators of compromise. The technology is designed to help organizations identify trustworthy recovery points and reduce the risk of restoring compromised data. Early access is expected in the coming weeks, with general availability targeted for early 2027 as paid add-ons. Descope expands identity governance for internal AI agents: Descope has introduced Agentic Identity Hub 3.0 , adding controls for organizations deploying internal AI agents and Model Context Protocol servers. The release includes agent ownership and approval workflows, least-privilege access enforcement, authentication and audit trails. The goal is to help organizations govern not just who an AI agent is, but what it is authorized to do. Intermedia expands healthcare communications integrations: Intermedia has expanded its healthcare communications offering with AI-powered patient engagement, appointment scheduling, digital forms, payments and connections to 15 electronic health record and practice-management systems. The company says the enhancements respond to demand from its channel partners for more industry-specific solutions. The development gives partners serving healthcare customers opportunities to connect communications with broader administrative workflows. VanishID targets AI-assisted help-desk impersonation: VanishID has introduced an automated response playbook designed to counter attackers who impersonate corporate help-desk personnel when contacting employees. The company says its platform evaluates exposed identity information and triggers appropriate countermeasures through existing security tools. The new playbook is available to current External Identity Protection customers. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca , I’m Robert Dutt, today is Friday, October 16, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. There’s a significant leadership change at Acronis, one of the largest technology platform providers serving managed service providers. The company has appointed Prakash Panjwani as its new chief executive officer, effective immediately. He replaces Jan-Jaap Jager, who will remain an Acronis shareholder. Panjwani is a familiar name in the cybersecurity business, particularly for anyone who’s followed WatchGuard over the years. He spent roughly a decade as WatchGuard’s CEO, helping transform the company from a firewall-focused vendor into a much broader security platform provider. That included expansion into endpoint security, extended detection and response, and managed detection and response. Before WatchGuard, Panjwani also served as CEO of SafeNet. And that background is particularly interesting given the direction Acronis has been taking. The company has been steadily bringing together data protection, cybersecurity, infrastructure management and service automation. The objective is to give MSPs more of the capabilities they need through a single platform, reducing the number of separate tools and management environments they have to operate. That’s a familiar strategy across the MSP technology market. But the challenge is making the different components work together well enough that partners actually become more efficient. Acronis says Panjwani’s experience integrating security technologies, building channel businesses and driving growth through acquisitions makes him well suited to its next stage of development. For MSPs, there are several questions worth watching. Will Acronis accelerate its expansion into managed security? Will it continue adding capabilities through acquisitions? And how will it balance a broader platform strategy with the need to keep its products straightforward and profitable for service providers? The company hasn’t announced specific changes to its partner program, pricing or product roadmap. But the choice of CEO offers a pretty clear indication of the experience Acronis wants leading its business. And incidentally, if Panjwani’s former employer sounds familiar, yesterday’s In The Channel featured current WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski. More on that conversation in a moment. Virtuozzo, meanwhile, is making it possible to deploy its cloud infrastructure platform on considerably smaller systems. The company has released version eight of Virtuozzo Infrastructure System, with a new lite deployment option that can operate on just one or two servers. That may sound like a relatively small technical change. But it has potentially significant implications for the economics of delivering managed infrastructure. Traditional infrastructure deployments can require multiple servers and shared storage, even when the customer’s actual workload is fairly modest. That can make it difficult to justify the initial investment for smaller organizations or individual locations. Virtuozzo’s new option combines compute, management and storage on the same server, using local disks rather than requiring a separate storage network. The company is targeting smaller businesses, branch offices and customers that need infrastructure running on their own premises. Version eight also updates Nvidia GPU support, allowing providers to run dedicated and shared GPU workloads on the same host. And Virtuozzo’s built-in migration tool for VMware vSphere eight is now generally available. That makes the release particularly relevant to partners looking for alternatives to VMware. Virtuozzo says a one-server configuration can deliver approximately fifty-three percent lower total cost of ownership than VMware. Of course, that’s a vendor-provided comparison, and the actual economics will depend on the customer’s requirements. There’s also an important distinction between a smaller deployment and a highly available one. A single-server configuration doesn’t provide the same resilience as a multi-node cluster. Customers that need automatic virtual-machine failover will still require additional infrastructure. But for MSPs and smaller cloud providers, this could create opportunities to offer managed infrastructure, private cloud services and localized AI workloads at a lower entry point. And in a market where both infrastructure costs and data-location requirements are getting more attention, that flexibility may be increasingly valuable. Proofpoint is also expanding its security platform for managed service providers, with a new set of capabilities focused on Microsoft 365. The company says the additions are designed to strengthen the security foundations organizations need before expanding their use of AI. And the most interesting part is that many of those foundations involve problems MSPs have been dealing with for years. Things like excessive permissions, outdated guest accounts and files that are shared more broadly than they should be. Those problems become more significant when AI applications can access and work with the same information. Proofpoint is introducing a capability called Tenant Risk Exposure within its 365 Permission Manager. It will give MSPs and administrators a clearer picture of risky sharing settings and permissions across customer environments. That includes anonymous access, external users, public groups, inactive guests and accounts that no longer have an appropriate owner. The company is also adding more explanation to its AI-powered email-security assessments. The idea is to help technicians understand why a message was classified as suspicious or legitimate, making it easier to investigate unusual decisions or false positives. And Proofpoint is extending its adaptive security awareness training into Microsoft Teams. It also has a new AI Cyber Assistant coming to its management console, designed to help MSPs with product configuration, support and customer consultations. These additions build on the dedicated MSP business Proofpoint established after acquiring Hornetsecurity. The larger story is that securing Microsoft 365 increasingly involves more than stopping malicious email. MSPs also need to understand how information is shared, who can access it, and what happens when AI systems start working with that data. And they need to manage those controls efficiently across multiple customer environments. Proofpoint says the new capabilities will roll out during the fourth quarter. In Brief – Commvault is adding threat-hunting capabilities to Microsoft 365 backups, helping organizations identify compromised data and determine which recovery points are safe to restore. Descope has launched Agentic Identity Hub three-point-oh, with new governance and access controls for internal AI agents and the systems they connect to. Intermedia has expanded its healthcare communications offering with AI-powered patient engagement and connections to fifteen electronic health record and practice-management systems. And VanishID has introduced an automated response playbook designed to counter attackers who impersonate corporate help-desk personnel when contacting employees. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. If you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel features WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski, discussing how AI governance is becoming a new managed-service opportunity. We talk about how MSPs can help customers identify and secure the AI tools employees are already using, why Joe believes AI governance should become a separately monetized service, and how WatchGuard is adapting its roadmap to support those opportunities. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz. ca , thanks for listening. Have a great day.
October 15, 202635 min
From Shadow AI to managed AI: WatchGuard CEO on the next MSP opportunity
Joe Smolarski , CEO of WatchGuard Artificial intelligence is creating a new challenge for managed service providers: helping customers secure and govern AI tools that employees may already be using without their organizations’ knowledge. According to WatchGuard’s 2026 Cybersecurity Hygiene Report , 64 per cent of employees are using AI tools their employers haven’t approved for work. For WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski, that makes AI governance an increasingly important opportunity for MSPs. In this episode of In The Channel , Smolarski argues that MSPs need to move beyond simply helping customers adopt AI to providing ongoing visibility, governance and security . He believes those capabilities should become separately monetized managed services rather than being absorbed into existing security packages. Speaking following WatchGuard’s IMPACT North America partner conference in Nashville, Smolarski also discusses how the company is adapting its product roadmap to support those opportunities. That includes a $10 million AI investment initiative shaped by MSP feedback , the expansion of WatchGuard’s Rai agentic AI workforce , and a commitment to delivering new AI agents every two weeks. Smolarski also outlines the company’s efforts to strengthen its ability to prevent sensitive information from being exposed through AI applications. The conversation explores the growing divide between larger MSPs developing their own AI capabilities and smaller providers that increasingly depend on technology partners for expertise and automation. And looking ahead, Smolarski warns that autonomous AI agents could introduce a new category of security risks, particularly when agents operate with privileges that organizations don’t fully understand or control. For MSPs, the challenge is no longer simply helping customers adopt AI. It’s determining how to manage it securely, deliver those services efficiently, and build a sustainable business around them. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. For the last couple of years, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about how managed service providers can help their customers adopt artificial intelligence. But there’s another side of the opportunity that’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, helping customers manage and secure the AI they’re already using, whether their IT department knows about it or not. WatchGuard’s recent cybersecurity hygiene report found that nearly two-thirds of employees are putting work-related information into AI tools that haven’t been approved by their organization. That’s an enormous potential security and governance problem. But for MSPs, it may also represent a significant new business opportunity. My guest today is Joe Smolarski, CEO of WatchGuard Technologies, who joins us fresh off the company’s North American Partner Conference in Nashville. Joe argues that AI governance is quickly becoming a necessary part of the MSPs portfolio and that at least for the foreseeable future, it’s something MSPs should be able to monetize as a distinct managed service rather than simply absorbing into their existing offerings. We’ll discuss what that service might look like, how MSPs can demonstrate its value to customers, and why the transition from shadow AI to autonomous AI agents could make the stakes considerably higher. We’ll also get into WatchGuard’s own AI strategy, including its efforts to let MSPs help shape its development roadmap, a commitment to delivering new AI agents every two weeks, and some interesting developments on the data governance front. It’s a conversation about the risks of AI, certainly, but perhaps more importantly, it’s about how MSPs can turn those risks into opportunities while preparing for what comes next. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Joe Smolarski. Robert Dutt: Joe, thanks for taking the time. Good to talk to you again. Joe Smolarski: Yeah, Rob, great to see you and great to be here. Thank you so much. Robert Dutt: Your cybersecurity hygiene report found that almost two-thirds of employees are putting work-related information into AI tools that their organizations haven’t approved. That’s pretty remarkable. We’ve talked about shadow AI for a while, but we’re at the point where almost two-thirds of organizations, two-thirds of people in organizations are doing that kind of thing. Are we at the point where businesses have pretty much lost control of how AI is being adopted inside their organizations? Joe Smolarski: They have, Rob, because this is a predicament unlike almost any other in the fact that there’s actually, the employees aren’t doing anything wrong from their perspective, not even close. They’re actually trying to be good employees, and they’re trying to be good employees because all of us, including me, are pressuring people that you’ve got to use AI, you’ve got to be more efficient. If you’re not using AI, you’re not tech forward and things like that. That’s literally the corporate direction of every company at this stage because you feel like you’re going to not be able to compete with your competitors that are out there because if they get the AI advantage, et cetera. What’s happening, because a lot of the corporate AI deployments just aren’t where they need to be. They’re still kind of trialing things and kicking the tires and rolling some things out. Employees feel the pressure of, “I may lose my job if I’m not AI savvy and I’m not using AI to produce more,” et cetera. They’re out there feeling like they’re being a progressive employee, downloading their own applications and whether it’s the standard stuff. Some of them are creating agents and it’s not even technical people. This is a tongue-in-cheek joke, but I joke that my sales team, they’re not technical, they’re salespeople. Yet my head of sales is out there creating agents to do things to automate the task. I always joke with them that if a sales guy can do it, anybody can literally do it. That’s the weird situation that we’re in. You can’t shut it down because if you shut it down and you just block everything and take the maybe more conservative approach, then you’re going to be at a competitive disadvantage of these firms in particular like in the MSP world, et cetera, but also their end customers. So it’s very, very interesting time to be in this space right now. Robert Dutt: You’ve got so much pressure coming in in both directions and the role of IT or whoever is overseeing this can sometimes be at odds with the executive crew that’s go hard, go fast. Joe Smolarski: 100%. Yeah. At my last firm, I was trying to get an AI tool approved because I was getting pressure from the board and literally sat there for three months waiting for approval. I got disgusted and said, “Guys, I can’t wait anymore. I’m going to get fired. We’ve got to get this thing approved.” And I had to literally sign my life away and put my personal commitment that the tool was safe and those kinds of things. So yeah, there’s backlogs. There’s all kinds of issues that are making it more complex, but we have to navigate it because as we all know, while obviously there’s smoke and mirrors and some of what you hear is bullshit, most of it is accurate and there’s no doubt this is a technology transformation unlike probably anything we’ve seen in a very, very long time. Robert Dutt: So to your point on that, that pressure that’s coming from both sides on the, we’ll call it the, you said the salesperson, the average employee, whoever that is in whatever role they’re in. Your research talks about AI governance and shadow AI as two of the biggest challenges that MSPs are helping their customers address, but are those really two separate problems or are they kind of the same thing from two different perspectives? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, I would agree. It is the same thing and what is super, super important because we already concluded you can’t just be overly conservative and stop everything and block everything. Since you can’t, then you better know what’s going on in your environment because ultimately you have to understand how your employees are exposing the firm. So by using things like the WatchGuard stack, because very often it’s not just one tool. You can’t just pop in one tool. There’s so many ways that they can get around things. They can use their corporate account, their personal account. They can do things in the network. They can create agents. You just don’t know where it’s happening. So by having the right governance in a cybersecurity stack, WatchGuard or others, you certainly get the visibility. You then can make some decisions. Is this the right people with the right tools that we want? What types of data are they putting in there? Many firms, we had 500 MSPs at our North American conference this week. We asked, even basics, who has an acceptable use policy for all of their end customers? They don’t even have that when it comes to AI and things like that. So you can get a lot of the basics in place by knowing what’s happening in your environment by having shadow AI visibility and tooling to decide what to do. Then of course, you can set up rules and configurations and everything else to then go from there. Robert Dutt: So let’s take this a little further from the MSPs perspective. We’ve been talking for a while about MSPs helping customers adopt AI. Is there now a significant opportunity in helping them manage and secure what they’re already using? Basically, is AI governance becoming a distinct managed service opportunity on top of rolling it out, developing it, strategizing it, et cetera? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, it certainly is, Rob, from both sides. We talked about the one side of AI from a “you have to be using it from an efficiency perspective.” I talked with one of the larger MSPs in North America two days ago, and he said he’s changing his model. He’s now putting a business analyst as the first person to go to a new customer to sit with them and understand how their business works and how they can use AI, not in a way that just gets them frustrated because it’s giving them a poor experience, but one that’s tailored to their business, etc. You have that side of it that you have MSPs absolutely monetizing the opportunity. Then on the security side, I think one of the good things is the media is doing the work for us in terms of one of the biggest challenges for MSP is the fact that they’ve got to educate their clients on why they need security and why they need this and why they need all these different components and it’s super tiring for MSPs to have to do that, etc. In the case of AI, literally at the top of world news over the last couple of weeks is Dario and Sam from the big LLM companies, Anthropic and OpenAI, saying that if we don’t slow this thing down, very bad things are going to happen in this world and that’s the leading opener on world news every night. At least the businesses are seeing that and they they absolutely are recognizing I need help. Quite frankly, Canada in particular, but US as well, Canada runs on small and medium-sized businesses. That’s the bulk of the economy and none of them can hire an AI governance team, literally zero. That’s going to be the MSP and the MSP gets to monetize that and to your point, it’s a separate service that they can layer on top that the firms don’t need to be overly convinced because of all the attention being placed in the media, etc. Robert Dutt: Especially as an MSP is spinning this up, what does it look like? How are we helping customers recognize the value before something goes wrong? I guess I’m curious, do you think customers are looking for MSPs to help with the governance or is it still something that MSPs have to educate them about and do that role that you’re describing of providing the information, even if it’s headline news? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, it’s a little bit of both. Like I said, I think that the media has made our jobs a little bit easier because it’s not completely foreign to them and they don’t think you’re a crazy person by saying that very bad things can happen to your environment. Hey, listen, 60% of the firms that get hit with an attack or a major compliance fine or whatever, they’re out of business within four months. So that recognition is there, I think, at this stage for most of the MSPs. And then listen, MSPs need help because you have MSPs of all sizes. Some are very, very large and in Canada, your F12s and others that, or even your telcos and things like that, that have a big presence. But most MSPs are on the smaller side, supporting the local businesses around their communities. And they need a large vendor that can help them, help them with resources, help them with educating their end customers and various webinars and things like that. And that’s where your WatchGuard and your industry leaders will help the MSPs, at least with that entry level of why their end customers need it, et cetera. Robert Dutt: So especially for that smaller MSP and especially the one maybe who hasn’t gone too far down this road, if I want to start offering AI governance services, what does that look like? What am I assessing? What am I monitoring? What am I delivering to a customer? What does the service model look like? Joe Smolarski: Number one, one of the great things that MSPs have done is use tooling even before the ink is signed on a contract to just show the prospect at that stage what they are not aware of that’s happening in their environment. And a lot of the shadow AI tooling, including WatchGuard, can help you do that before you even sign a deal. So you can literally spend five minutes and configure some tools and it pops up and they’re able to say, “Mr. Acme Corporation, Mr. Bob’s dental office or law office, are you aware that 93 of your employees have uploaded sensitive data in your environments? Are you aware that 120 of them have subscriptions for blah, blah, blah, that they’re being used in your corporate offices?” So that in and of itself is such a great way for an MSP not to have to do a ton of work, but literally very briefly, very quickly show a prospect and future customer that this is what’s going on in your environment and this is why you need me as an MSP to help you stay protected so that you’re not running blind because we know if you run blind in some of these areas, very, very bad things can happen, right? You have your hugging face situations obviously at a big global scale, but that’s happening across the board, right? That’s happening when people are creating agents, not because they’re malicious, they’re creating agents because they’re afraid they’re going to lose their job, that if they don’t become more efficient and stay up with everybody that’s using AI, that they’re going to be obsolete. So they go and do these things with very good intentions and many IT departments haven’t caught up. So this agent isn’t, the identity of that agent isn’t protected the way you would protect a human being and it goes off and does very, very bad things in an environment and can ultimately put somebody out of business exposing customer data, which obviously once things like that happen to SMBs, again, can be a business killer. Or if you’re a executive assistant at a dental office and she’s doing her best and she tries to get something done, but unfortunately uploads sensitive medical data in a tool, not knowing it’s going out into the ether and that’s a HIPAA violation, et cetera. So it’s all of those things that companies like WatchGuard and others can help you fight against and get the visibility and then govern and stay on top of it while allowing them to progress their company’s efficiency efforts to keep up with the times and stay competitive. Robert Dutt: From the MSPs perspective, how do you see the economics developing over time? Is this something that an MSP can package up and charge for separately or does it kind of, like so many things in various transitions of the past have over time, kind of been rolled into table stakes and just another responsibility that they have to deliver to customers because that’s what an MSP does. Joe Smolarski: Understood. So I would say first, number one, you have to be doing something as an MSP. You have to be doing something. You must be doing something from a cybersecurity perspective to protect against AI. So whether it gets monetized or not, I do believe if you want to be in business 18 months from now, you have to be on top of that game just the way 15 years ago you were for antivirus or whatever it may be. So I think that’s the level, that’s the pace that’s happening right now. The people smarter than me, billionaires in the investment world, they don’t talk about AI and kind of the models of today. Everybody knows where these things are going, the velocity and how fast the world is changing. So having that visibility, not as well, maybe it’ll happen, but knowing how fast these models are going to automate so many different things and do very, very promising things and very scary things, an MSP has to be in the game. So it’s not up for debate. And then in terms of monetizing it, there’s no doubt to me in the next, call it midterm, 12, 24 months, that this should be an incremental service that’s being provided. This is not something that just gets folded in to the rest of the services and all of a sudden it’s part of your platinum package or whatever. I think it is so top of mind, not only for MSPs, but the world, SMBs, large companies and everything in between, that this should be a separate line item that you’re monetizing to keep them protected and sleeping well at night. Robert Dutt: We’re coming off your partner conference just earlier this week as we speak, a little bit after that as this airs, I’m pretty sure. And there, I’m sure you guys were rolling out the company’s priorities, the product direction. How much of the roadmap right now is being shaped by AI governance opportunities that we’re talking about? And where do you see WatchGuard helping MSPs build those capabilities? Joe Smolarski: Yeah. WatchGuard’s in a very fortunate position that we’ve got almost the entire stack covered. And again, a large part of our strategic direction is don’t just add more tools, but put the AI security capabilities in every layer of the stack, et cetera. And a good example of that is like we’ve been talking about with shadow AI. So with shadow AI, we’ve got it from a SaaS security perspective. And so we’ve got shadow AI in our CloudDR SaaS security application so that you can see what’s happening in all your SaaS applications and see what subscriptions are being signed up for and what tools are being signed up for. You get visibility into all of that with our SaaS security, but you got to know what’s happening in the network, what agents are running, what other applications are running, what’s happening in a corner over here, et cetera. So we built the shadow AI capabilities and announced it to the world this week from a firewall perspective. The red Fireboxes that WatchGuard is so famous for. And then you’ve got your remote users and your remote users are out there and they’re doing anything they want. They’re using their personal accounts and it’s much, much tougher to govern. So with our focus on remote user security and our SaaS application, we built it in there. So I could even see if you’re using ChatGPT or OpenAI or agents using your personal accounts as well to just make sure you’re covered across the board. So that’s on the AI security. And again, we’re doing it in every single layer. We’ve got it embedded in the endpoint, looking for algorithms using AI in our own models and everything else. But then it’s also imperative to address the overwhelmed MSP that just doesn’t have the labor to keep up with all of these new things and everything else. So we launched our agentic workforce. We announced it in May, it’s called Rai, R-A-I. And ultimately, it became very real in this October time period. We flew in, we had MSPs from 20 countries around the world, but we flew in five contest winners. You may have seen, we launched a $10 million investment campaign that said, you know what, it’s funny, I actually, I went to the board about four months ago and told them I needed incremental funding to make sure that WatchGuard was ahead of the game from an AI perspective. And my first pass, I got rejected, which is never good. You get pissed off and all of that. But what we went back with was, you know what, we are not going to define what we’re going to build with the 10 million. We’re going to have our MSPs, we have 25,000 MSPs, and we’re going to get the feedback from them on exactly what we need to build versus a bunch of mad scientists in a WatchGuard office on a whiteboard , et cetera. So we launched the campaign, we had five winners from around the world, and we brought them in and ultimately showed the fruits of their labor from an agent doing work on their behalf so that they can just get out of the mundane and focus on some of the more value add activities as well. So it’s a heck of a time in the industry, and we believe WatchGuard is at the forefront of that. Robert Dutt: Any surprises in what that surfaced, what MSPs told you they wanted needed to do for their customers as opposed to what you guys may have thought you were going to end up building going into it? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, no doubt. We were super thrilled that we took that direction because for as much as we try, like every firm tries to stay super close to your customers and get feedback and listen, nothing better than putting some skin in the game for them and the fact that we’re going to go build if we like your ideas, we’re going to go build it and we’re going to give it to you and we’re going to help you automate your business without you spending any money. And that got people super excited. And I think overall the focus on getting not even the super fancy things, but just get rid of the manual labor that I know when you see the power of AI that you can just get rid of that when we are doing a competitive displacement, right? There’s a lot of our competitors out there have had a bunch of, you know, major vulnerabilities and CVEs. So you got somebody coming across from one of those to become more secure. And it’s like, you know, AI is awesome at saying, I want to go from here to here, do a conversion for me. And previously, that’s like a very time consuming effort. And in this situation, that’s what they’re asking for is cut out that labor, let me convert from one of your competitors over to you very quickly. And we’ve been able to do that. And we’ve been able to turn that around very quickly. So we’re excited and we are continuing to listen and can’t wait to get more ideas from each of the different regions, etc. Robert Dutt: One of the big recurring challenges for MSPs is no doubt complexity. And this both potentially adds to it in that you’re adding another layer of service that you’re providing around AI governance, but at the same time, hopefully it’s using that AI to roll up some of that, make it more manageable. How do you help partners address this new need without making it a new layer of products and consoles and operational overhead and challenges? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, it goes back to what I said earlier, Rob, which is, I think you hit it absolutely spot on, which is they just don’t want more tools. They can’t, they don’t, they don’t have the time to continue to keep up with this environment. It just doesn’t work. Labor will always be an issue in terms of hiring more people and the cost of that and the complexities of that and everything else. So, you know, our approach is just build it into what is already there in the stack and make sure each layer has the agentic controls and the shadow AI and all of those things versus, oh, you need to buy three more tools. That’s not our approach. That’s not going to be our approach because of the exact reasons that you said of just people being overwhelmed and no longer having the staff to keep up with the top, the new tool du jour and it just won’t work. Robert Dutt: So you’ve got a chance to get the latest and greatest out there with the help of your MSPs. You know, as you look out over the next 12 months without necessarily pre-announcing anything, of course, but what are you most excited about being able to do to just make a meaningful difference for how MSPs deliver their services in this area over the next six months or a year? It’s hard to look too far in the future at this point in the game. Joe Smolarski: Yeah, for me, listen, if you talk to my head of engineering, Jay Misra, he’ll tell you, “Joe, I’ve got the foundation now. Now I can move super fast.” So I think five months ago we announced it in terms of Ray and what we’re doing from an agentic perspective. In October, we showed it to the world, but the foundation now is built, and now we can move super fast from the next set of agents we’ve committed to the world, a new agent being published every two weeks to continue to move the needle, et cetera. So I think it’s those kinds of things. And then of course, we had some validation, WatchGuard’s working on a large acquisition around making sure not only do we tell you what’s happening from a shadow AI perspective, but making sure from a data governance perspective that we can stop it. If we see sensitive data being copied into certain tool sets from an AI, et cetera, before you expose your company and expose yourself to violations and potentially going out of business, being able to stop those things as well. So that’s what we heard they need. And that’s what we’re very, very quickly working to fill that gap. And we’re excited about things like that and just the ability to move so much faster. We have time and time. We had an idea just, and this applies to all companies, not just cybersecurity, but we take things from idea to even brand new product, but idea to production in short time periods now, thanks to the amazing tooling that’s been put out there by these AI providers, things that would have never been possible. We had an idea of, you know, WatchGuard’s an expert on the network from all 30 years of firewall experience and everything else, but we didn’t have an NMS tool. So MSPs had to go and do exactly what you and I just said is very frustrating, Rob, and download another tool and put in something else and those kind of things. We had an idea in April and we launched it in October and things like that just, it wasn’t possible before. So that’s the fun part of this time. I caught up with some other MSP software CEOs that we had as guests, including Chris Day from ScalePad and some others. Chris is a Canadian as well, right? I’m sure you know Chris very well. So Chris was at the conference, but if you see like the pace at which he’s running every single week, he personally, even though he’s a CEO of a large company, posting like major advancements like that, that’s a super fun time to be in this space and be able to operate at that velocity. Robert Dutt: So far, or at least the early days of the game have been about shadow AI and identifying and managing that. How does the game change as agents become much more prominent as they’re becoming at a business level and even in recent weeks down to the personal level with meta and with dots and with everything going on on that side? Joe Smolarski: Listen, for as much as AI is real and for as much hype as there is, AI still isn’t moving the needle inside most companies yet. And that’s just the fact that if you ever go and ask people to be honest and not feel like they’re going to expose their weaknesses, most companies have done an awful lot and they know what’s possible and they’re on the brink of really cool things, but they haven’t gotten the ROI yet. They haven’t really got things at a finish line, but we know that’s not because of weakness of AI. That’s just maturity and that maturity is coming fast and furious. It’s coming in Q4 of 26 and it’s certainly coming every quarter of 2027. So that’s where we just have to be prepared for that onslaught. If we worry about the bad guys, we’ve been talking about the adversaries and all these people in other countries that are state-sponsored and whether it’s Russia, China, or anything else, trying to attack our firms, etc. But I strongly believe that the big enemy is going to be the first agentic breach that’s not coming from a clever attacker. It’s coming from an agent that nobody knew had admin rights and it’s sitting out there doing very bad things because that is what can occur. You do need to make sure that you’ve got the platform in place. We’ve talked about it. You’ve done many, many podcasts on it. You as an MSP, you as a small to medium-sized business, maybe if you’re Citigroup or RBC or some major corporation, maybe you can put individual point solutions in. Nobody else can though. You need a platform that’s talking to each other. It’s correlating data and making sure it minimizes the noise for you. Then that’s really where the opportunity is to be able to keep up with this fast-moving world and both exciting, scary, all in one. Robert Dutt: How do you think MSPs are doing in keeping up with that transition? I’m curious. We’re acknowledging that some are going to be ahead of the game, some behind the game, but as a community, how are we doing in terms of getting our arms around shadow AI and getting that managed, but also starting to think through what happens as that starts to take action on the agentic side of things. Joe Smolarski: Yeah, I would say it probably follows the rest of the world. The larger MSPs that are starting to roll up the industry, they’ve been at it for a couple of years now. They have good foundations. Some of them have made acquisitions to get some of the core foundational pieces. I was with some of the larger MSPs this week and made moves like that. I think the larger ones believe that they are going to have a competitive advantage. The smaller ones have struggled and they’re behind. They need to pick a partner that they can get help from because otherwise they won’t be able to keep up with all of the massive players that are out there. You see it. Everybody sees it. This was a very decentralized, disjointed, industry of tens of thousands of small players. That roll-up has occurred over the last five years. I think it’s accelerating. I think AI will make that even greater from an acceleration perspective. But you can keep up if you choose the right partners that can help you bridge that gap. Even though you’re small, you’ve got a big company that can back you up that focuses in on the MSP, knows the space, give you the tooling, give you some of the expertise to help you bridge that gap. Robert Dutt: Last one for me, if you were running an MSP today, what’s the one thing you’d be doing to try to position the business for the opportunities and the challenges that we’ve been discussing around AI governance in particular? Joe Smolarski: Yeah, I would say you have to get in front of it now. It is a rate of change that’s occurring that’s unlike anything that’s been out there before. This isn’t a situation like the movement to the cloud from SaaS applications and maybe I’ll do it now. Maybe I’ll sit on exchange for a couple more years and eventually get people over. You’ll be out of business if you don’t get in front of this movement now because while we said the ROI isn’t there yet, it will be. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows they’re going to have a competitive disadvantage. I’m talking their end customers. Therefore, everyone is using the tooling now at this stage. Older generations, newer generations, everyone is because they don’t want to lose their jobs. They don’t want to be obsolete. Therefore, an MSP just has to say, “I have to get on this now.” If you’re big enough to do a lot of things on your own, amazing. Most are not. 99% of MSPs are not. They’ve got to pick a horse to ride from a major platform provider and just double down and then just go, go, go. Now is the time. It’s both scary and can put an MSP in a very vulnerable position, but it’s also a great opportunity given all of the news, all of the media. It’s a capital financial opportunity for MSPs to jump on and now is the right time. Robert Dutt: Never a dull moment at the intersection of security and AI. Joe Smolarski: A hundred percent. Robert Dutt: Joe, thanks again for the time. I appreciate it. I appreciate the insights and yeah, thank you. Joe Smolarski: Always a pleasure, Rob. Thank you so much. Take care. Robert Dutt: There you have it. Joe Smolarski, CEO of WatchGuard Technologies. Thanks to Joe for joining us and of course, thank you for listening. Few things that stood out for me from that conversation. First, the AI governance opportunity is starting to look a lot more concrete. We’re moving beyond the abstract question of whether businesses should be using AI and into the much more practical reality that employees are already using it, sometimes in ways their employers don’t understand or control. That creates an opening for MSPs to help customers identify what’s happening, establish appropriate policies and manage the risks. And Joe was quite clear that he believed those capabilities should represent an additional revenue opportunity rather than simply another responsibility bundled into existing services. Second, I thought WatchGuard’s approach to developing its own AI capabilities were interesting, particularly the decision to have MSPs help determine what the company should prioritize. The example of using AI to automate security product migrations is a useful reminder that some of the most valuable applications of AI may be the least glamorous, eliminating repetitive work and giving MSPs more time to focus on their customers. And third, there’s the question of what happens when AI stops simply answering questions and starts taking action. Joe’s prediction that a major security incident could come from an AI agent with privileges nobody realized it has is a compelling reminder that identity, access, and governance will only become more important as these technologies mature. If you enjoyed the conversation, you can subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, everywhere you find shows. And if you have a moment, please do rate or review the show. It helps other people in the channel discover us. Till next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
October 15, 20267 min
The Buzz: Slide names McChord interim CEO, Arctic Wolf expands AI security, N-able finds MSP alert overload
Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: Slide names Austin McChord interim CEO as Michael Fass departs: MSP-focused business continuity and disaster recovery vendor Slide has appointed co-founder Austin McChord interim chief executive officer, effective immediately, following the departure of co-founder Michael Fass.McChord is best known to the channel as the founder of Datto, which became one of the MSP market’s most prominent technology vendors before its acquisition by Kaseya. He subsequently co-founded Slide with Fass, another Datto veteran, to develop a new BCDR platform built specifically for managed service providers.Slide says it now serves more than 1,000 MSP partners worldwide. Fass led the development of its initial product and helped establish the partner relationships behind that growth.The company hasn’t disclosed a reason for his departure or announced whether it will seek a permanent replacement.In original reporting from CRN , several MSP partners expressed confidence in McChord’s leadership and credited both founders with building a business focused on service-provider needs. CRN also noted Slide’s Canadian data-centre investment, intended to support customers with domestic data-residency requirements.The leadership change raises an important question for MSPs evaluating the company: whether McChord’s more direct involvement will bring a new phase of product development and expansion, or primarily provide continuity as Slide continues growing. Arctic Wolf expands AI-era security with new endpoint protection, visibility and agentic SOC capabilities: At its Security Operations Summit Wednesday, Arctic Wolf introduced three major developments designed to improve threat prevention, visibility into AI use and transparency around automated security decisions. Aurora Adaptive Threat Protection uses AI-driven analysis of endpoint activity to identify potentially malicious behaviour across sequences of events. The technology is designed to interrupt and reverse attacks before they progress , while operating alongside existing endpoint protection and EDR investments. It is currently available in beta to Arctic Wolf customers. SwarmView is designed to give customers greater visibility into how Arctic Wolf’s AI agents and human security analysts investigate threats, including the evidence considered and the role of human oversight. Initial beta availability is planned for this fall.The company also introduced Shadow AI Discovery , which will inventory sanctioned and unknown AI tools using network, identity and endpoint telemetry. Initial availability is planned for November.For MSPs and security service providers, the announcements reflect a broader shift toward automated security operations that must also be explainable, governable and capable of identifying risks created by customers’ own AI adoption. N-able research finds MSPs struggling with AI-driven security complexity: New research from N-able suggests MSPs are rapidly adopting AI-powered security technologies while struggling with increasing alert volumes, operational complexity and limited confidence in autonomous remediation.The company’s AI Fog Report: When the Signal Becomes the Noise surveyed 595 cybersecurity decision-makers and practitioners in the United States and United Kingdom, including 182 verified MSP respondents.Among MSPs, 86.8 percent reported an increase in security alert volumes over the previous year. Another 61 percent said alert noise interfered with incident response daily or several times a week.Despite that pressure, 82.4 percent of MSP respondents had increased their use of AI-powered security tools, and 88.5 percent had made security-policy exceptions to accommodate AI. Yet just 23.6 percent said they fully trusted autonomous AI remediation.Across the full survey, respondents identified duplicate alerts from overlapping tools and AI-generated alerts lacking sufficient context as leading sources of low-quality security signals.The findings point to a challenge for MSPs: adding more AI to security operations doesn’t necessarily make those operations easier to manage. Providers increasingly need tools that improve prioritization, explain their decisions and preserve appropriate human oversight. The N-able-commissioned research covers U.S. and U.K. respondents, not Canadian organizations, but its findings address operational challenges relevant to Canadian MSPs. In Brief LogicMonitor advances governed autonomous IT: LogicMonitor has introduced new capabilities across its Autonomous IT platform , connecting infrastructure, application and digital-experience information with AI-assisted investigation and controlled operational workflows. Its Edwin AI capabilities can work through existing environments such as Microsoft Teams, Slack and ServiceNow , while a new MCP interface provides read-only access to monitoring context. The development gives MSPs another potential route from monitoring services toward governed automation. Zoho Canada expands government procurement access: Zoho Canada has gained new public-sector procurement qualifications , including a place on Supply Ontario’s CRM Vendor of Record list, approval under Canoe Procurement Group’s ERP program , and qualification across all three bands of the federal Artificial Intelligence Source List. The Cornwall, Ontario-based operation is positioning its Canadian-hosted applications for government modernization projects. The qualifications make participation in procurement easier but don’t guarantee contracts or establish new reseller rights. Optro adds partner funding and distribution track: Optro has expanded its Partner Connect program with technology and distributor tracks, plus Partner Growth Funding for qualifying partners’ marketing, enablement and practice development. TD SYNNEX is participating in the expanded distributor model, which is intended to make Optro’s governance, risk and compliance platform easier to procure through channel partners. NordLayer introduces AI-use visibility and prompt controls: NordLayer has launched AI Scout , a platform for discovering sanctioned and unauthorized AI tools, monitoring actual usage and identifying potential data exposure. The product includes prompt-level data-loss prevention that can warn, redact or block sensitive information before submission, along with visibility into MCP servers used by coding agents. NordLayer says the offering is available now. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Thursday, October 15, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. There’s a significant leadership change at Slide, the business continuity and disaster recovery vendor built specifically for MSPs. Co-founder Austin McChord has taken over as interim CEO, replacing fellow co-founder Michael Fass, who has stepped down. For anyone who’s been around the MSP business for a while, McChord is a familiar name. He founded Datto and built it into one of the most prominent technology vendors serving managed service providers. After Datto was acquired by Kaseya, McChord eventually returned to the market with Slide, co-founding the company with Fass, another Datto veteran. The idea was to build a modern BCDR platform specifically for MSPs. Slide says it now serves more than a thousand MSP partners worldwide, and has expanded internationally, including an investment in Canadian data-centre infrastructure. Fass played a central role in developing Slide’s initial product and establishing its partner relationships. The company hasn’t said why he’s leaving, or whether it plans to search for a permanent CEO. McChord’s appointment is effective immediately. CRN spoke with several MSP partners about the transition, and the reactions were generally positive. Partners interviewed by CRN expressed confidence in McChord’s ability to lead the company, while recognizing the work Fass had done to get Slide to this point. For MSPs, the bigger question is what happens next. McChord has a history of building technology companies around the needs of service providers, and his more direct involvement could be significant as Slide grows. But there’s no announced change in strategy or product direction yet. So this is one to watch, particularly for partners evaluating alternatives in the backup and disaster recovery market. Arctic Wolf, meanwhile, has introduced a series of security innovations designed for an environment where both attackers and defenders are increasingly using AI. The company made three significant announcements Wednesday at its Security Operations Summit. The first is Aurora Adaptive Threat Protection. It’s a new endpoint security capability designed to identify malicious intent by looking at how activity develops across a sequence of events. That’s an important distinction. An attacker may use legitimate tools, valid credentials and ordinary administrative commands. Individually, those actions may not appear suspicious. But when examined together, they can reveal a developing attack. Arctic Wolf says the technology is designed to identify those patterns, interrupt malicious activity and reverse the attack chain before significant damage occurs. It’s intended to work alongside existing endpoint protection and EDR tools, rather than requiring customers to replace them. The capability is currently in beta. The second announcement is SwarmView. Arctic Wolf already uses AI agents alongside human analysts in its security operations. SwarmView is designed to show customers more of what happens during those investigations. That includes which agents contributed, what evidence they considered, and where human experts became involved. The idea is to make automated security decisions more understandable and accountable. Initial beta availability is planned for this fall. And the third announcement is Shadow AI Discovery. That will help customers identify both approved and unknown AI applications operating across their environments, using information from network, identity and endpoint systems. Initial availability is planned for November. Put the three together, and there’s a clear direction. Arctic Wolf wants to use more automation to prevent and investigate threats, while giving customers greater visibility into both their own AI usage and the security decisions being made on their behalf. For MSPs, that balance between automation and accountability is becoming increasingly important. And new research from N-able suggests security providers have good reason to be cautious about handing too much control to AI. The company’s new AI Fog Report examines how organizations are using AI-powered security tools, and whether those tools are making security operations easier or more complicated. The research surveyed five hundred and ninety-five cybersecurity decision-makers and practitioners in the United States and United Kingdom. That included one hundred and eighty-two verified MSP respondents. And the MSP findings are particularly interesting. Nearly eighty-seven percent of MSPs reported an increase in security alert volumes over the past year. Sixty-one percent said alert noise interferes with their ability to respond to incidents either daily or several times a week. So there’s already a significant operational burden. At the same time, more than eighty-two percent of MSP respondents said they’d increased their use of AI-powered security tools. And eighty-eight and a half percent said they’d made security-policy exceptions to accommodate AI. But here’s the disconnect. Just twenty-three-point-six percent of MSP respondents said they fully trust autonomous AI remediation. In other words, MSPs are adopting AI to help manage security, but most aren’t yet comfortable letting it make and execute decisions without human oversight. Across the full survey, two of the leading sources of low-quality security signals were duplicate alerts from overlapping tools and AI-generated alerts that lacked sufficient context. That’s an important finding. The problem isn’t necessarily that security teams can’t detect enough threats. It’s that they’re receiving more information than they can efficiently interpret and act upon. For MSPs managing multiple customer environments, that challenge can multiply quickly. The opportunity for security vendors is to improve prioritization, context and explainability. And the opportunity for MSPs is to build operating models that use automation without surrendering accountability. The research didn’t include Canadian respondents, but the underlying challenges are certainly familiar to the Canadian MSP market. In Brief – LogicMonitor has introduced new capabilities for governed autonomous IT, connecting infrastructure and digital-experience monitoring with AI-assisted investigation and controlled operational workflows. Zoho Canada has gained new government procurement qualifications covering Ontario CRM purchasing, Canoe’s ERP program and all three bands of the federal Artificial Intelligence Source List. Optro has expanded its partner program with new technology and distributor tracks, along with funding opportunities for qualifying partners building governance, risk and compliance practices. And NordLayer has launched AI Scout, providing visibility into organizational AI use, prompt-level data-loss prevention and monitoring of the systems that AI coding agents can access. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. Later today on In The Channel, WatchGuard CEO Joe Smolarski joins us to discuss the changing security challenges facing MSPs in the age of AI, and how WatchGuard is responding to those challenges. And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel features Checkmarx channel chief Jon Kozimor . We discuss how AI-assisted coding is accelerating software development, why traditional application security practices are struggling to keep up, and what that means for MSPs who may increasingly find themselves responsible for securing customer applications and AI-generated code. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
October 14, 202629 min
As AI accelerates software development, AppSec becomes an MSP problem
Jon Kozimor, vice president of Americas channels at Checkmarx Artificial intelligence isn’t just changing how developers write software . By making it possible to produce code more quickly — and allowing people without traditional development backgrounds to create applications, automations and agents — it’s also changing the application security challenge. Recent research from Checkmarx suggests AI-generated code is already becoming commonplace, while security practices struggle to keep pace. That’s creating a potentially larger role for the channel, according to Jon Kozimor, vice president of channel at Checkmarx . In this edition of In The Channel, Kozimor discusses why existing development and application security processes can struggle to keep pace with AI-generated code, and why partners have an opportunity to help customers close that gap. For MSPs in particular, that could mean application security becomes increasingly difficult to treat as somebody else’s specialty. Kozimor argues that MSPs will need to develop AppSec expertise themselves or gain access to it through vendors and other partners as they take greater responsibility for customers’ technology environments. There is also a managed services opportunity. Checkmarx already works with partners delivering Checkmarx-powered services to smaller customers, Kozimor says, and the company’s AppSec Partner Program specifically supports managed service providers delivering AppSec as a Service. Kozimor expects the ways customers consume application security services to continue evolving alongside AI. We also discuss how different types of channel partners can participate, the still-unsettled question of how much responsibility partners should assume for customers’ AI use, and what MSPs can do now to identify gaps in their capabilities and prepare for growing customer demand. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. AI isn’t just changing how software gets built. It’s changing who can build it, how quickly they can do so, and potentially who has to worry about securing it. With generative AI increasingly producing code and putting application development capabilities in the hands of people who may never have considered themselves developers, traditional application security processes face a pretty basic challenge: keeping up. And that may have implications for MSPs and other solution providers that have historically regarded application security as a specialized discipline outside their core business. My guest today is Jon Kozimor, vice president of channel at Checkmarx. We’ll talk about why the speed of AI-generated development is putting pressure on traditional security processes, where Jon sees new services opportunities emerging for partners, how MSPs can build or source the expertise they’ll need, and why the channel may increasingly find itself responsible for securing applications its customers can now create almost casually. Let’s get right into it with Jon Kozimor. Jon, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Jon Kozimor: Of course, of course. Thank you, Robert. Robert Dutt: Let’s start with kind of the premise behind the conversation. We’ve spent a couple of years hearing and seeing how AI is going to transform the channel. I’m curious what you’re seeing that’s different now. What are you actually seeing that customers do with AI that changes the job that partners need to do? Jon Kozimor: Yeah, and I’m going to do a little history here, Robert. I mean, I’ve been in the industry now 30-plus years, and in the channel a good two-thirds of that. And in working with partners, whether I was at EMC or HP or OpenText, there was always a need for partners’ services and also their expertise. So that was always there. And I’ve seen partners, and most partners, evolve from being just, I’ll call it, traditional resellers to really value-added resellers providing that expertise. The thing with AI is that it’s changing so rapidly. I use this example: We had our kickoff in January, and there’s a large amount of that content that just changed in the past eight months. And it’s no different for the customers. The key that I see for the channel, and the pivot that I see them making, and I think it’s natural, customers are going to need partner expertise. Because you know why? Partners did client-server, partners did cloud, partners did VMware . We can name all of those, I’ll call them, transformational things that happened. This is no different. I think it’s more complex, but I think the partners are going to be able to really give customers a view because they’ve seen it all across their customers, and they’ve seen it all across the lines they’ve sold. So I really think it’s a great opportunity for partners. Robert Dutt: One thing that seems particularly different about AI, especially when you get into generative AI, is the speed at which customers can create things. Somebody who’s never been considered a developer suddenly can whip out an application, an automation, an agent, whatever the flavour may be. What happens to the security side of things when you can create software so much faster than you can keep an eye on that or lock it down, and when you hand the ability to do that over to someone who isn’t coming at it from the rigour of an app-dev background? Jon Kozimor: It’s a great, great question. And we’ve done certain reports, so I’ll kind of get us started with data. Fifty per cent of the code that’s generated today is done with AI. The other interesting stat is 70 per cent of developers understand that there are vulnerabilities being deployed because there’s just more code being developed and more vulnerabilities. And the issue that we have with that is, first of all, making sure that whatever you’re going to put in a production environment, let’s face it, it’s against the bad guys. It’s against cyberattacks. It’s against making sure that we don’t have bad guys not only accessing applications and data and doing bad things with it, but think about brand, et cetera. What we’re doing, Robert, as being the leader in application security, is bringing not only the expertise and the deep IP we have, but dovetailing it into the speed of AI to make sure that we’re focused on the right vulnerabilities, but we’re also making sure that the application is secure, and we’re at the pace of development with AI, because that’s not going to change. And the key part is to be at the pace. And the other thing I’ll introduce now is it’s not about the technology solution. It really comes down to governance, but it’s really change control. The processes that most customers have today are not built for the speed of AI. And we’ll take coding development as an example, but you can use that in a lot of different ways. It’s really key to have those processes in place as well, where partners, I think, play a big role. Robert Dutt: And I guess that’s true whether it’s something that’s vibe-coded, done by someone who’s not a developer, or someone who’s in a traditional developer role and is just pumping out stuff so much faster because they’ve got their AI assistant of choice riding shotgun and doing the legwork of actually tippity-tap typing it. Jon Kozimor: A hundred per cent. And the key is, look, developers, their job is to develop great code, develop great applications that ultimately bring companies great, I’ll say, customer outcomes in terms of those applications. Obviously, this is revenue generation. But the developers aren’t security experts. Never have been, right? So it’s like, you know, I’m running real fast. I’m able to run really faster, but maybe the treadmill I bought really isn’t equipped for this, right? So I’m breaking down and such, but ultimately it’s the speed to get to the outcome. And we are understanding that and making sure, working with customers, that they have the right tools there that aren’t slowing them down, but make sure that whatever they’re developing is secure. Robert Dutt: So when we’re at this point where code is being generated so much quicker, and the security has to be obviously considered, hopefully somewhere in there, add in the fact that perhaps some of that app dev is going on in places where not everyone in the organization knows it’s going on. Where do you, in practice, see the AppSec or developer security process start breaking down in this new world? Jon Kozimor: Yeah, I think it can really break down from starting the code because it’s so fast that, at the onset, you’re introducing issues regarding security. So it’s really from beginning to end. I mean, it’s not like, well, once you get to this point of your lifecycle, this is really a problem. You’re creating code so quickly, the vulnerabilities are piling up. So it really is from tap keyboard one. I’m probably being a little bit aggressive there, but it really is early stage. And it’s hence why we’ve developed tools and methodology to get at that early stage, because the quicker that you can address the vulnerabilities, the better, because it’s not going to propagate as you get, let’s say, halfway through or 90 per cent through. You really have to have something that’s beginning to end. And really the big, I’ll call it, secret sauce of Checkmarx is our IP. It’s the platform, because that platform has been built over two decades. And we not only have fantastic innovations, but we have so much that we’ve learned over those two decades that you’re now dealing with an end-to-end solution, development pace, but doing it securely at the front end and being able to have that IP that, through the entire lifecycle, a customer can leverage that expertise. I’m really excited about what we’re bringing to the market, but I’m more excited when you think about two decades. You’re like, wow, I feel like I’m at a startup atmosphere of innovation, but being really, I’ll call it, cemented into a lot of just great IP that’s put into the solution. Robert Dutt: You touched on how long you’ve been looking at the channel community, and I’ve also been watching the space for that kind of time. And we’ve talked throughout that about how you’re not going to be able to survive on hardware resale. You’re going to have to become that trusted adviser. It’s been kind of the underlying message, whether that was through network convergence, whether that was through cloud, now well into AI. That’s still there. I’m curious, though, what does the opportunity for the channel here look like in terms of helping their customers govern, secure, operationalize AI, sitting where you sit? What’s basically really new for partners in terms of what they’re going to have to bring to the table to meet customer needs going forward? Jon Kozimor: I think new for the partners that I’m seeing is they’re creating AI services, but not AI services for Checkmarx or Dell or name your brand. They’re creating, I’ll call it, thought-provoking AI services that are dealing with AI as the opportunity in terms of what customers have, but also peeling that apart and looking at it in terms of where it is in the customer environment. Let’s face it, I’m focused on AppSec, but you can talk about any piece of an environment and there’s an AI component. So I see partners really starting to peel back the onion and doing it based upon all of the different solutions that they can bring together, and bringing it together with, I’ll call it, AI thought leadership . So they’re not only coming into the customer and whiteboarding out, okay, this is how everything works. They’re also understanding what’s the customer outcome and what can we provide as expertise on the front end. So it’s less to do with how do I get this server, software, et cetera, running as a point solution. It’s more to do with how do I harness all this technology, leverage AI in my business, doing it securely, but get to that outcome? I think it’s all about customer outcomes. And it’s one thing out of our program that we have, which is really about, for us, predictability and profitability for partners. But it’s how do we work together to deliver that outcome? Because Checkmarx doesn’t do that kind of work. We rely on our partner ecosystem, which I think is going to do a great job of providing that kind of expertise. So I think, Robert, that’s where I see the opportunity for partners. And I am seeing our channel base embracing that. Robert Dutt: It sounds like an opportunity for partners. This is going to speak into the managed services transition again. It sounds like an opportunity to package a lot of that up and offer that under my own brand, with Checkmarx and a bunch of other vendors sitting underneath that to facilitate it. But is that kind of white-labelling, or “I’m the expert here, trust me, I will orchestrate this for you” approach resonating? Jon Kozimor: A little bit. I think there’s a great opportunity for MSP use. We do it at the lower end of our market today, but we really see it as a potential opportunity. I look at it, Robert, as a consumption model that the customer is looking for, and then what can the partner provide as the value-add , we’ll call it the different value equation. So I think it can play a role, but I think it can get a little bit complex when you’re dealing with white-labelling and saying, here are all of the different kinds of outcomes. I think MSPs are going to need to evolve to that. I don’t think that all of these pieces and parts can come together from an MSP perspective at the onset. I think we have more to learn, but I definitely think the MSPs can play a role. Again, we use them today at a certain market space. I think we can definitely leverage it, but I think it also has to, again, I’m a big believer in the consumption model. How does the customer want to deploy something, and then how do they want to consume what they’re deploying? Robert Dutt: Any trends you can comment on there, especially for that MSP that’s serving the SMB or lower midmarket type of customer, in terms of where things are at with that or where it’s likely to go? Jon Kozimor: We’re seeing nice growth . We have a couple of partners that we work with that basically provide, I’ll say, a white-label service, but they definitely say it’s Checkmarx-run. We’re just looking at great growth. It’s for really the smaller end user, but we’re finding some of these smaller end users are really growing and their consumption is growing. Again, it gives us the opportunity because, look, we’re a fairly small company. It’s very, very difficult to service the entire base of customers, whether it’s global, the Americas, name your region. The MSPs really help us scale for our business in that section today because, look, Checkmarx is a wonderful solution for application security, meant for the smallest to the largest. And I think, well, not think, I know the MSP program that we have is helping us in that, we’ll call it, midmarket space. Robert Dutt: Sitting where you sit, I imagine you’ve looked at a number of different types of partners, but I’m curious how this opportunity is shaping up. We’ve kind of touched on the MSP side of things, but what about the traditional VAR? What about a partner that’s coming at it from a more traditional app-dev kind of role? I’m just curious how you see the different aspects of the channel kind of playing into this. Jon Kozimor: Yeah, I’m an ecosystem guy. I’ve always been that way, whether I was at the different companies I’ve been. So my thing is there’s going to be that focus, we’ll call it, value-added reseller expertise partner that’s going to probably drive a lot of the value and a lot of the revenue. But you may have unique value-added partners that aren’t necessarily doing the gigantic volume, but provide something to either a customer or to Checkmarx that has value to the marketplace. We have hundreds of partners in our ecosystem. We have a percentage of partners that probably drive a lot of, I’ll just call it, revenue. But for me, you need an ecosystem. To bet on just a couple of partners, nothing against those partners, I just think in the technology business there’s so many value-added resellers, from large ones to, say, a boutique-y one that’s in a state that just has some great trusted relationships and value for customers. So that’s what we have built here and are continuing to grow, an ecosystem mentality focused, though, on those value-added resellers of the ecosystem that are really going to drive the most or the better customer outcomes. Robert Dutt: What role do you see yourselves playing in that ecosystem facilitation? On the continuum from a pretty programmatic partner-to-partner kind of structure to, “Hey, that sounds like an interesting opportunity. Do you know about Bob, who does whatever aspect of app dev you might need to add to your quiver to land that one?” Jon Kozimor: Yeah. I mean, I come from HP, where they had Mercury Interactive, and I’ll use them as an example. What a partner program they had. They had a tremendous amount of partners, both midsize, small and large, and I never saw a partner community that was so collaborative. To your point, Robert, X VAR is working, and yeah, Y VAR is kind of a quote-unquote competitor, but they work together to figure out either on the front end of the transaction or mostly on the services that, “Hey, here’s my bench. Here’s your bench. Hey, we just did this.” A lot of sharing happens. So I always try to do that. There’s going to be some circumstances where it works, others where it won’t, because let’s face it, there’s competition there. But I’m a big believer in collaboration in the VAR community. And I saw it happen at HP and through my time working with the Mercury partners. Just a great community of partners. Robert Dutt: So help me with how, or what do you see as some of the common first steps for partners who are looking to start moving in this direction? What works to get in line with customers or even out ahead of customers in how they’re approaching AI and kind of presenting themselves as that expert, that outcome provider that you’ve laid out? Jon Kozimor: I think first it comes down to really baseline to, I’ll call it, advanced enablement, sharing with the manufacturer and sharing, obviously, with different folks in the VAR community that a partner may have, and getting also, I’ll say, thought leadership. No one can predict what AI is going to do tomorrow, never mind a year from now. I think it’s almost like the gut instinct of these partners. They’ve been in business for years. I’ve worked for some that have been doing this for many, many years. They’ve seen it. Go with your gut instinct in terms of what’s worked before, and I would just move forward with that. Obviously, do it in a thoughtful way to make sure that you have all of the things you need to provide that customer with that outcome. But I think the VARs should just use your gut, use the expertise that you have around you, and use the leadership, because you know what? Those leaders have done tremendous things with their companies. I think they just have to continue to do it. Don’t let AI be intimidating. Let it be an opportunity that you’ve dealt with before. Robert Dutt: Alongside security, I think there’s the issue of responsibility, and I’m curious how that’s going to play out in the longer run. If I’m the partner helping a customer safely operationalize AI, how much responsibility am I assuming for what the customer ultimately builds or does with it and where that all goes? Where should partners draw the line between “We secure and govern this environment” and “This is on you, the risk is on you, Mr. Customer”? Jon Kozimor: Yeah, I think it’s an interesting conversation because a lot of customers are saying, “Well, what’s your AI policy if this happens?” I think we’ll be at a crossroads, and we’ll have to use expertise from legal and such. I think it’s what the partner feels comfortable with technically, what’s there, and then I think it comes down to what they feel comfortable with. What kind of responsibility do I want to take? Because I know a lot of partners want to take responsibility. It’s just tough to define it in this world of AI. I’ll give you a simple part of a transaction, Robert. You and I both know, right? Partner sells it, I’ve got the end-user licence agreement, partner’s responsible for their services, but ultimately I hold that. I think in this world of AI there’s going to be different asks from customers, and I think we’re going to have to work together as a community and figure out, well, what’s reasonable, what’s over the top, et cetera. So I think it’s a bit of a TBD. But again, I think partners should go with what their gut tells them. I mean, the ultimate outcome is what customers are looking for. Don’t go over your skis. Use your judgment. They’ve done it in the past, so this is no different. Robert Dutt: It’s going to be interesting to see how that affects contracts and basically how different partner organizations think about that kind of thing. But yeah, I think you’re right. It probably is early innings at best of this game, and we still don’t even know what the game is in some cases because things will continue to change at breakneck speed, it seems. Jon Kozimor: A hundred per cent. The speed I’ve never seen. And again, I go through the different inflection points that we addressed early on. I’ve not seen it change like this. It’s just something all of us are going to have to deal with and come up with methodologies to move forward with. Robert Dutt: My perception is that AppSec has historically been a specialization that some MSPs would get into, others would say, “Eh, you know, that’s not really my business.” Might have a relationship or a connection to answer that if a customer wants it answered, or not. But when customers can kind of casually create applications, can MSPs still say that? How much AppSec expertise does the mainstream-focused MSP need to develop at this point in time, and how do they solve for that? Jon Kozimor: Yeah, I think they have to definitely develop expertise if they don’t have it, or obviously bring in expertise from the marketplace, because they’re the tip of the spear, right? I mean, the MSP is really going to take on the role of being that vendor and probably having an aggregate of solutions, whether that’s us and three or four others that’s white-labelled. So I think the bottom line for the MSPs is they’ve got to have the right bench. And if they have a relationship with a manufacturer, which obviously they have, it’s just having that right back-and-forth communication that’s open. And the MSP, if there’s a gap, they call it out and they fix it. I don’t think this is going to be one, especially around application security, where you’re not going to want to make sure that you’re fully ramped up, staffed up and have all the knowledge you need to make sure with what you’re doing. You obviously are going to have mistakes. We all do. But you don’t want to have propagation of that based upon not having the right knowledge base to give the customer ultimately what they need. Robert Dutt: So it sounds like it’s going to be a mix of hiring or building that expertise, partnering with other organizations for it, and maybe even down the road, who knows, consuming it as a type of managed service themselves. Who knows where things will go, right? Jon Kozimor: Yeah. And you know what? It’s a word I’ve used, and I’ve used it here. I talk about the consumption model. And consumption model sounds very transactional. It really isn’t. It’s about the value at the end of the consumption model, but what’s the best way to do it? Not only from a transaction perspective, but from a solution perspective. So I think we’re going to see different, I’ll call it, consumption models be born out of AI. I can’t predict when, but if I use AI pace, it’s probably going to happen pretty quickly. Robert Dutt: And go in directions we may not expect, which is always fun. Jon Kozimor: No doubt, Robert. No doubt. Robert Dutt: Finally, let’s make this as actionable as we can, given that by the time this comes out a week from now or whenever it goes out, things may have changed entirely because AI. Jon Kozimor: We may have to do another one of these in a couple of weeks. Robert Dutt: For an MSP who’s listening to us and agrees with the argument, but hasn’t themselves really gone that far into the AI application security slash governance, that whole practice area, what are the first two or three things that they should be doing now to be ready for what customers are going to want, need, require, demand over the next year or so? Jon Kozimor: I think the first thing is, and I’m open to all conversations, is to get with the manufacturer and the provider and really find out how we’re supporting our customers and what we’re doing day to day, whether that’s customer success, our sales team, obviously our technical folks in development, and get close to that. And come up with your own, whether it’s a gap chart or however they want to assess, but it’s almost like doing an internal assessment. This is what we do for customers. The MSPs know exactly what they do for customers every day. They’re doing a great job. Take that and use that as a methodology, and then get close to the manufacturer, get close to the space, ask the curious questions. The key part is you know what you need to do in terms of what you do every day. Figure out the gaps, because they would know that, but then it’s going to be about just having those right conversations. I’m a big believer in it. Establish those relationships with development of the manufacturer, with customer success, with the different leaders within the organization, so there’s a streamlined communication. Because look, their success is our success. That’s what I look at from a channel perspective, MSP, name the partnership, because I have different ones. If we have good communication, honest communication and two-way, I think that’s the biggest thing, Robert, I would do. Get curious and make sure that you’ve got a really good understanding of what’s needed, and then fill the gaps if you have any. Robert Dutt: The good news is, I can’t speak for you, but I’m sure your experience is probably the same. There is no shortage of curiosity around the topic of AI and where it’s going in the channel. I think that bodes well for this community. Jon, once again, I’d like to thank you for taking the time. Interesting conversation, and we live in interesting times. Jon Kozimor: Yeah, Robert, it was great to meet you. Thank you for the opportunity. We’re really looking forward to working with all of our channel partners in the ecosystem, and this was a great time. Thank you. Robert Dutt: Thanks again to Jon Kozimor, vice president of channel for the Americas at Checkmarx, for joining us. A few things that stand out for me from that conversation. First, the speed of AI-assisted development is becoming a security issue in its own right. If organizations can produce vastly more code, much more quickly, security processes have to keep pace, and many of the processes organizations have today simply weren’t designed for that. Second, application security may become harder for mainstream MSPs to regard as somebody else’s specialty. As customers use AI to build more applications, automations and agents, partners are going to need access to the expertise required to secure them. That doesn’t necessarily mean building all that expertise internally. It could mean hiring, partnering with specialists, working more closely with vendors, or eventually consuming some of those capabilities as managed services themselves. And third, there’s a business opportunity attached to that responsibility. Jon says Checkmarx is already working with MSPs delivering its technology as part of services aimed at smaller customers, and expects new consumption and delivery models to emerge as AI adoption continues. As always, you can find more from In The Channel at ChannelBuzz.ca, and if you enjoy the show, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts, and consider leaving us a rating or review. It helps people in the Canadian channel find the show. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
October 14, 20267 min
The Buzz: IonQ buys Elisity, TD SYNNEX expands partner AI, Pax8 finds SMB AI governance gaps
Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: IonQ agrees to acquire Elisity for up to $1.3 billion: Quantum computing company IonQ has entered a definitive agreement to acquire zero-trust security specialist Elisity in an all-stock transaction valued at up to US$1.3 billion, including as much as $150 million in performance-based earnouts.Elisity specializes in identity-based microsegmentation, using information about users, devices, workloads and AI agents to establish and enforce network access policies. The company says its technology has more than 100 enterprise deployments.IonQ intends to combine Elisity’s existing zero-trust security capabilities with its post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution technologies. The acquisition reflects an effort to address two overlapping security challenges: protecting enterprise networks against today’s attacks and preparing infrastructure for future quantum-related threats. For solution providers, the combination could eventually bring network segmentation, identity security and quantum-readiness projects closer together. However, the companies have not announced a new Canadian channel program or a completed integrated offering. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions. TD SYNNEX brings AI agents into partner operations: At its Inspire conference last week, TD SYNNEX introduced new agentic capabilities for PartnerFirst , including an MCP connector that allows partner-built AI applications to access distributor data and business functions.The connector supports 53 operations involving products, pricing, inventory, quotes, orders and other transactions. A new Agent Bridge provides prebuilt AI agents and tools for creating automated workflows, while the existing PartnerFirst Agent gains 40 additional capabilities.The distributor also launched FinOps Fusion , designed to help partners monitor and optimize customers’ AI token spending across cloud and on-premises infrastructure. The offering includes cost visibility, optimization recommendations, training and managed FinOps services . An AI token-consumption assessment is planned for later this year. Together, the announcements point to two emerging opportunities for partners: automating their own operations and developing recurring services around customers’ AI consumption. The PartnerFirst announcement covers North America, although availability of individual capabilities in Canada should be confirmed. Pax8 finds SMBs building AI faster than they can govern it: New research from Pax8 suggests small businesses are increasingly creating their own AI applications and workflows, often without the controls needed to manage them.The Q3 2026 Pax8 SMB AI Pulse surveyed 1,150 business decision-makers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden.Among businesses already engaged with AI, 67 percent reported developing at least one AI solution in regular use. Another 35 percent had discovered unauthorized AI tools, agents or workflows operating in their businesses during the previous six months. Cost management is another emerging problem. Among businesses that paid for AI during the past year, 49 percent received at least one unexpectedly high bill. That figure reached 57 percent among U.S. respondents. Pax8 also found that 55 percent of AI-engaged business decision-makers personally spend at least three hours a week reviewing or correcting AI-generated work. For MSPs, the findings point to opportunities around AI discovery, governance, security, cost monitoring and ongoing management. The research did not include Canadian respondents, but the challenges it identifies are relevant to Canadian service providers supporting SMB customers. In Brief Ingram Micro patents Xvantage integration framework: Ingram Micro has received a U.S. patent for its Vendor and Customer Agnostic Framework , or VCAF. The technology is designed to connect vendor, distributor and solution-provider systems using their existing data formats and workflows, reducing the need for individually developed integrations. It represents another milestone in Ingram’s effort to turn Xvantage into a broader operating platform for the channel. IRONSCALES and Todyl integrate email security for MSPs: IRONSCALES has announced an OEM integration with Todyl , bringing AI-powered email threat detection and automated remediation into the Todyl Security Platform. MSPs will be able to manage email security alongside Todyl’s SASE, endpoint, SIEM, MXDR and governance capabilities. Availability is expected during the fourth quarter. Netrio expands managed cybersecurity services: Netrio has launched eight integrated cybersecurity offerings aimed at midmarket customers. The portfolio spans security operations, vulnerability management, endpoint protection, identity, third-party risk, penetration testing, compliance and consulting. The MSP is positioning integrated IT and security delivery as an alternative to managing multiple providers. Reach Security raises more than $50 million: Reach Security has secured more than $50 million in Series B financing and introduced Reach Everywhere. The initiative uses APIs, an MCP server and partner integrations to make continuously validated security-control information available across enterprise workflows. The funding will support product development, integrations and international expansion. Ridge Security introduces local AI penetration testing: Ridge Security has launched RidgeOne , a self-contained penetration-testing appliance combining its RidgeGen platform with an AI model running locally on Nvidia DGX Spark hardware . The system is designed to conduct autonomous security testing without sending sensitive test data to an external AI provider. It eliminates external AI token charges, although hardware and software licensing costs still apply. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Wednesday, October 14, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. Quantum computing company IonQ is making a major move into enterprise cybersecurity, with an agreement to acquire zero-trust security specialist Elisity. The all-stock transaction is valued at up to one-point-three billion U.S. dollars, including up to one hundred and fifty million dollars in performance-based earnouts. Elisity specializes in identity-based microsegmentation. Essentially, its technology identifies users, devices, applications and workloads, and then uses that information to determine which systems should be allowed to communicate with one another. That helps organizations contain attacks by limiting how far a compromised device or account can move through a network. It’s an established security market, and Elisity says it already has more than a hundred enterprise deployments. So why is a quantum computing company buying a zero-trust security business? IonQ wants to combine Elisity’s network security capabilities with its own post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution technologies. That brings together two problems enterprises need to address. The first is securing networks against threats that exist today. The second is preparing for a future in which sufficiently capable quantum computers could undermine some of the cryptographic protections those networks depend on. For solution providers, that’s an interesting combination. Network segmentation and identity security are already practical customer projects. Quantum readiness is a longer-term undertaking involving inventories, assessments and infrastructure planning. IonQ sees an opportunity to bring those requirements together. But this is a strategy, not a completed product integration. The companies haven’t announced new Canadian partner arrangements. The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval and other conditions. TD SYNNEX, meanwhile, is putting more AI directly into the way its partners do business. At its Inspire conference last week, the distributor introduced a new set of agentic capabilities for its PartnerFirst platform. One of the most interesting additions is a Model Context Protocol connector, or MCP connector. It gives AI applications built or used by partners access to fifty-three supported business operations involving distributor data and services. That includes things like product information, pricing, inventory, quotes and orders. The idea is that a partner’s own AI tools can interact with TD SYNNEX without someone having to move back and forth between applications or manually re-enter information. TD SYNNEX is also introducing Agent Bridge, with prebuilt agents and tools for creating automated workflows. And the existing PartnerFirst Agent is gaining another forty capabilities. But there’s a second part to the announcement that may be just as interesting for MSPs. It’s called FinOps Fusion. The offering is designed to help partners understand and manage their customers’ AI token consumption across cloud and on-premises environments. It includes spending visibility, optimization recommendations and training, along with the opportunity to provide ongoing managed FinOps services. An AI token-consumption assessment is also planned for later this year. Put those announcements together and you can see two directions in which distribution is changing. One is automating the operational work partners already do with distributors. The other is helping partners build services around managing customers’ AI costs. That’s a meaningful evolution from distribution as primarily a purchasing and fulfillment relationship. The PartnerFirst announcement covers North America, although the precise Canadian availability of individual capabilities still needs to be confirmed. And new research from Pax8 suggests small businesses are building AI solutions considerably faster than they’re developing the ability to manage them. The company’s third-quarter SMB AI Pulse surveyed eleven hundred and fifty business decision-makers across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden. Among businesses already engaged with AI, sixty-seven percent said they had developed at least one AI solution that was now in regular use. These aren’t necessarily sophisticated enterprise AI systems. They can include automated workflows, custom integrations and AI agents that carry out multi-step tasks. But building something is one thing. Governing it is another. Thirty-five percent of AI-engaged businesses said they’d discovered unauthorized AI tools, workflows or agents operating in their organizations during the previous six months. And cost management is becoming another problem. Among businesses that paid for AI in the past year, forty-nine percent received at least one bill higher than they expected. In the United States, that figure was fifty-seven percent. Pax8 also found that fifty-five percent of AI-engaged business decision-makers personally spend at least three hours a week reviewing or correcting AI-generated work. There’s an interesting disconnect here. Small businesses are embracing AI because they expect it to make them more productive. But they’re also creating new work around security, governance, oversight and managing unpredictable consumption costs. And much of that work is likely to land with their technology providers. For MSPs, that creates opportunities to discover what AI customers are already using, put policies around it, monitor spending and help make those systems reliable. It’s also a reminder that managing AI may become as important a service as deploying it. The survey didn’t include Canadian businesses, but the challenges are certainly relevant to the Canadian SMB channel. In Brief – Ingram Micro has received a U.S. patent for technology designed to connect vendor, distributor and partner systems without requiring individually developed integrations, another milestone in its Xvantage platform strategy. IRONSCALES and Todyl have announced an OEM integration that will bring AI-powered email security and automated remediation into the Todyl platform for MSPs, with availability expected this quarter. Managed service provider Netrio has introduced eight integrated cybersecurity offerings for midmarket customers, spanning security operations, vulnerability management, identity, compliance and consulting. Reach Security has raised more than fifty million dollars in Series B funding and introduced Reach Everywhere, an initiative to bring continuously validated security-control information into other enterprise tools and workflows. And Ridge Security has launched RidgeOne, a self-contained AI penetration-testing appliance that runs its AI model locally, keeping sensitive testing data inside the customer’s environment. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. Later today on In The Channel, we chat with Jon Kozimore of Checkmarx on the impact AI-assisted coding is having on MSPs’ security practices. And if you haven’t heard it yet, yesterday’s In The Channel takes us to Calgary, where Fortinet’s Gord Phillips discusses the company’s new thirty-million-dollar cybersecurity innovation hub. We talk about how Western Canadian partners can use the facility’s technical labs, meeting space and other resources, and why Fortinet sees Calgary as an increasingly important centre for cybersecurity and operational-technology security. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
October 13, 202643 min
Fortinet wants Calgary cybersecurity hub to be a home base for Western Canadian partners
Gord Phillips, regional vice president of Western Canada sales at Fortinet Fortinet’s new $30 million cybersecurity innovation hub in Calgary is a substantial investment in Western Canada, but the company wants it to be much more than another regional office. In this edition of In The Channel, Gord Phillips, Fortinet’s Western Canada chief, explains why the company chose Calgary and how it expects partners to take advantage of the facility. Partners can already use its conference facilities for customer meetings, QBRs and events, while Fortinet’s local SE lab can recreate customer environments and demonstrate potential solutions hands-on. As the centre is built out further, Fortinet plans dedicated partner touchdown space, meeting rooms and even a content-creation studio. That could be particularly valuable to smaller VARs and MSPs that don’t have their own labs, event facilities or deep benches of cybersecurity specialists. Phillips says Fortinet wants partners to view the centre as a resource they can use to extend their own capabilities. Calgary also puts Fortinet close to Western Canada’s large critical- infrastructure and operational-technology security market. Phillips sees opportunities for traditional IT partners as historically isolated OT systems become more connected and their data increasingly valuable, but cautions partners to work with rather than against established industrial control vendors. Fortinet’s 2025 State of Operational Technology and Cybersecurity research similarly points to increasing convergence between enterprise IT and OT security . The new Calgary innovation hub, decked out for the Stampede as Phillips describes on the podcast The company’s ambitions go further still. Fortinet is building training facilities and an OT-focused customer experience lab in Calgary, working with post-secondary institutions on cybersecurity skills, and planning additional managed-services and threat-intelligence capabilities. Phillips ultimately sees an opportunity for the facility to help make Calgary a broader cybersecurity centre for Western Canada — bringing together Fortinet, its partners, customers, educators and the region’s growing technology community. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca , bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel for the last sixteen years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. Fortinet recently made a pretty substantial bet in Western Canada, opening a new $30 million cybersecurity innovation hub in downtown Calgary. But what interested me about the announcement wasn’t so much the building itself as what Fortinet plans to do with it, and particularly what it plans to do with partners. The company wants the Calgary facility to become something of a home base for its Western Canadian ecosystem. Partners will be able to bring customers into the facility, hold their own meetings and events there, work with Fortinet engineers to model and demonstrate customer environments, and eventually even use dedicated touchdown and content creation space. There’s also a distinctly Western Canadian element to the investment. Calgary puts Fortinet closer to a large concentration of critical infrastructure and operational technology customers, and the company sees a growing opportunity for traditional IT partners to participate in the OT security market, although, as we’ll hear, there are some important differences that partners need to understand. To talk about why Fortinet chose Calgary, how partners can take advantage of the new centre, the convergence of IT and OT security, and the company’s bigger ambitions for the cybersecurity ecosystem in Western Canada, I am joined by Gord Phillips, Fortinet’s Western Canada chief. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Gord Phillips. Gord, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. Gord Phillips: Thanks, Rob. Robert Dutt: Let’s start with the whys here. Fortinet has obviously been doing business in Western Canada for a long time and hasn’t had a facility like this one. So I guess: Why this centre? Why Calgary? And why now? Gord Phillips: Yeah, there’s a few things. Fortinet really started, kind of, in Canada. Our first products were designed and engineered in Burnaby, actually, 26 years ago. So when we founded the company — when I say “we,” I was not one of the founders — we actually built the first product there, and it still is the location of our largest R&D centre in the whole wide world. So we’ve just kind of taken advantage of that all the time from the West. We’ve been able to obviously grow the market very large because we have that in our backyard. That’s made a big difference. So we’ve got a very large customer base in the West. Calgary was really interesting for a number of reasons. One is critical infrastructure. The energy sector is such a big part of critical infrastructure across Canada and even globally. We do a lot of unique work there around the operational technology security side. So Calgary was logical from that perspective. As you can imagine, it’s hard to attract people to move to the Lower Mainland. Fortinet is growing very fast. We add between 20 and 30 per cent more people every year to Fortinet. To get those developers and to get the right people around the support side and the professional services side, it’s very hard to keep that level of growth in B.C. B.C. is a very mature tech centre, so lots of the big companies are competing for that talent. Even though the schools are great at turning out talent, it’s just hard to maintain that growth level. So we looked at where we could put another office. We’ve got a centre in Ottawa that works a lot with FedGov and does a lot of our global training program . We looked at where we could put one in Canada and looked at a few different locations, but we kept coming back to Calgary for a number of reasons. The biggest thing was proximity to Burnaby, so proximity to our teams there. It’s easy to build those satellite teams here because they’re only an hour and a half away, really close time-zone-wise. There’s a whole bunch of advantages like that. Calgary is a booming tech market. There’s a lot of tech talent in town. With the aerospace and defence industry investing in Calgary, with some of the big startups that have come in, Calgary is really finding its own in that tech world, and the post-secondaries are supporting that. So we see this availability of talent right now. That’s really, really important for our growth and for what we’re doing. That was another big factor. And then supporting that critical infrastructure industry — that’s such a high-growth vertical for us — it made a lot of sense to just focus on Calgary. Robert Dutt: What does having the facility there let you do now that you either couldn’t do before, or couldn’t do nearly as well? Gord Phillips: I think there’s a few things. One is optionality of where our solutions are based to serve our customers. What you really want anytime you’re looking at data sovereignty is three locations, kind of a two-plus-one scenario. So having Calgary allows us to put a lot of those products, data, all that kind of thing in another location in Canada to serve our Canadian clients a little bit better. The other piece of it, outside of data sovereignty — when I say data sovereignty, I’m not just talking about the information we have with our customers, but even how we handle customer support tickets. We can actually handle all those within Canada. We’ve got multiple support teams in Canada. We can keep that ticket or that data in Canada. So we can support the customer right from the beginning to the end through a support process without data leaving the country. That’s a big piece of it. You’ll see some announcements from us around managed services as well, working with service providers and some of the things we’re doing on our own. Being in Canada and having that extra location has certainly helped that along as well. So that was a big piece of it. Anytime we look at where we’re going to put one of our FortiCloud points of presence, which supports our FortiSASE business and all the other pieces around it, having our solutions close to the customer is very critical for us globally. Our executive has invested heavily to make sure that we have offices in strategic locations that we own, where we can provide our solutions to our customers faster. So, less latency. And obviously, you’re less dependent if there’s a technical problem or any sort of global problem. The more individual locations you have shores all that up and makes sure that the failover is here. So this being our second location in Western Canada, we’ve got a really cool ecosystem being built from a tech availability perspective for our customers and partners as well. Robert Dutt: Let’s look at this a bit from the partner perspective. What’s the expectation around what channel partners across Western Canada will be able to do in terms of interacting with the centre? What do you see partners being able to do there in Calgary? Gord Phillips: I think that’s a great question, and I’ve been very lucky. The company’s given me a lot of leeway on this. I come from the channel and have been in IT sales my whole life, so I had a bit of a different vision on what I wanted. One of the things I love about Fortinet is we have one of the largest sales teams in Canada. What does that mean? It means our partners don’t have to be experts on everything because we have account managers to go on those calls with those partners. In Calgary alone, I think we have 11 account teams. In Alberta, we have almost 20. In B.C., a similar size. We have account teams in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as well. We’re very fortunate in that our partners come to us and we can go in the door with them and be that cybersecurity expert or that subject matter expert for them. Calgary has enabled us to do something even bigger around that. As we build up the space, first of all, we’ve got a beautiful conference floor that we’ve already had a number of partners utilize. They host QBRs there, but they also can host customer meetings there, and we don’t charge them for that currently. They can bring in their customers and host a session in our space. It’s a great space. It can hold kind of 80 people seated with their laptops out, or a hundred and some if you want to do it reception-style. I was going to say cocktail-style — I’m just thinking of cocktails. So there are some neat things they can do around activating that space. That’s the first thing we were able to leverage. The second thing, as we moved into the space, we’re showing off some of our technologies. It’s not that we have to do an EBC down in Sunnyvale necessarily, or out to Burnaby. We have a lot of that tech working here. We have an SE lab here on the fifth floor where our SEs will actually build out the customer’s environment or the prospect’s environment and show: This is what you’re running now. This is how we get to where you want to be. And these are all the tools that are part of that. Or if you add this technology, this is how we can leverage your data, this is how we can make you more resilient, those kinds of things. So we can show them live. It’s not a PowerPoint presentation and a whiteboard. We can have hands on keyboards here, which is really, really cool. The next phase of it, as we build out the briefing centre, is I actually have a partner touchdown area. This is going to be kind of neat, and we’ll talk about how the partners will engage in that environment soon. A lot of resellers gave up offices during COVID, so it’s a place for them to book a meeting room, actually book a little content-creator studio if they’d like to for podcasts and that kind of thing, as well as they can just book a desk and work out of the office for the afternoon, for the day, for whatever they need. If they’re downtown and need a place to work out of between meetings, instead of being in a loud coffee shop, they can actually have a place to work out of that’s got a proper cubicle and whatnot, and be able to use the facilities and be closer to the Fortinet team. That’s really what we want in the end. There are some great activations around that, and it’ll be bookable off an app. They’ll be able to request it, get a quick notification that it’s approved and they get Cube Three, and they’ll get a digital fob and be able to scan in on their own after they’ve done the agreements and all that kind of stuff. For partners that are in from out of town, or for partners that have one sales guy here because they’re based out of Toronto or whatever, they’ll have a spot they can work out of when they need it. And again, no charge to our partners around that. We’re trying to really make sure the channel feels part of our family, too. Robert Dutt: It sounds pretty flexible for everything from, as you described, that kind of solo salesperson who needs a place to make a couple of calls for a few hours, through to helping a single customer through a problem or PoC a solution, through to — when you describe an 80- or 100-person room — a lunch-and-learn or a cocktail soirée to talk to prospects. Gord Phillips: Yep, that’s exactly what it’s designed as, Rob. The whole idea is to make it a community hub and make sure our partners can feel like it’s theirs, that they can activate it, they can leverage it, they can use it. Robert Dutt: And what kind of flexibility is there in terms of, especially when they’re bringing customers in, how those are run? Sometimes I think partners are going to want to bring in a customer and hand it off to the technical folks at Fortinet who are there to walk through a solution. And sometimes they’re going to want to have more direct control of that situation themselves. Gord Phillips: Yeah, we’ve done both, and we’ve also done some that are co-branded. We’ve done events with a partner and AWS, or a partner and Claroty, and other vendors as well. So we’re pretty flexible on that. Obviously, we’d like some Fortinet involvement if possible, but I get that that’s not always available. Certainly when they’re doing things like an off-site meeting or whatever, I’m just happy they’re using the building. I know they’re bringing customers to the lobby, which has our logo, and I’m happy that they’re using our conference centre that has our logo. The location of the building is amazing. Making sure they see it in the middle of downtown and people are leveraging it, they think of us first. That’s really the intent. Robert Dutt: Does a facility like this potentially level the playing field for a smaller regional partner? A large integrator has its own labs, its own specialists, its own demo space. But especially when you describe that VAR or MSP who maybe gave up their space during COVID, or is a post-COVID organization, they probably don’t have those kinds of facilities to bring people into. It sounds like they can effectively borrow some of the scale and expertise of Fortinet by using the centre here. Gord Phillips: It certainly is. I think it does level-set some of that. I think the access to the team has always been there regardless of partner size. And that access to that team and being able to use the facility at no cost, I think, is a big piece of it because they don’t have to have a big marketing budget to leverage a space that can hold those kinds of people. We can be really thoughtful about it. The other thing, too, is what we’re finding as kind of a tertiary action of that is we’ve got partners that are on committees and groups in the tech industry. There’s one around AI, there’s one around data builders, there are all these different industries that people are involved in, and they’re saying, “Hey, we’re always looking for space. Can we run our event there the evening of the 20-whatever? Can we leverage the space there?” So we’re exposing brand-new people to that as well. And same kind of thing: Typically those are not the big companies that are supporting those events. There are a bunch of these small ones that I’m not going to say we’ve never heard of, but aren’t as active. We can raise that profile, I hope, and really see them change the business. I think there are a lot of smaller businesses, too, particularly around OT. We’re finding lots of the partners are a mom-and-pop shop, I’ll call it for lack of a better term, where there are only a handful of people. They’re looking for that kind of space, too, to be able to come in and see the technology. So we’re able to leverage that as well. Robert Dutt: You’ve spent a lot of time working with customers and partners across Western Canada. I’m curious to get your thoughts on how the security market is different from what you guys see across the country, either to the West or to the East. Gord Phillips: Good question. I think a few things are common, and then there’s a lot that’s unique. A few things that are common: Canada is the second-most-targeted country in the world when it comes to cyberattacks. A lot of our public sector — because we have public healthcare and public support for education — holds a lot of data, and that data is what those bad actors are looking for. So all of Canada is a target. If we look at areas like critical infrastructure, that’s a big target out West. Obviously municipalities and smart cities everywhere are targeted, but because of the energy sector, and because we have big power-generation companies out West — obviously Quebec does as well — those are heavily targeted. If you look at the financial sector in Toronto, Central Canada, heavily targeted. So there are some really unique spots where there are places of focus that the bad actors can go after. We definitely see those. And if you look at other spots, like we do a lot of work up in the territories, there’s a large public-sector customer base because they have to provide those services to the citizens, and they’re constantly under attack. So it really is unique in how they do it. Canada’s got a large public sector, and that really gets hit a lot. The West has a large OT customer space. It gets hit a lot. There are some really interesting unique things that come out of the market in the different regions because of that. Robert Dutt: Especially with how tuned into OT and critical infrastructure you are because of that focus in Calgary, I’m curious: Can you help me through what that opportunity looks like when I’m coming at it from the viewpoint of a traditional IT channel partner? Is there an opportunity for an MSP or VAR that’s historically secured enterprise IT to get into that space? Or does it require a different set of skills and expertise and experience? Gord Phillips: I think a little bit of both, Rob. People are trying to leverage that data. Ten times more devices than people are coming online. So what we’re seeing is this massive pool of data that’s available that all the companies that own that data want to leverage to lower operating costs, to make their environment safer, to do remote monitoring, to allow third-party access, to get their cost of support down. There are all these advantages of leveraging that data, but what it requires is connecting that data that has traditionally been air-gapped. So a bunch of the skills that I would say we kind of — I’m not going to say took for granted — but things that we did where we connected businesses to the Internet 25 or 30 years ago, and we’ve scaled up that connectivity over the years, and now we’re somewhere where we’ve got lots of data and it’s very fast from the IT side and we can monitor so many things, they’re just turning on in OT. So it’s definitely a spot where people can leverage all those skills. Where I think the change is happening is around the AI side. I’m seeing these little AI companies come out. When I say little, I’m thinking of one of them right now in my head, a guy I went to high school with. He’s really a one-man shop with a couple of consultants, and he’s got a great practice around the costing of power on the grid. It requires a whole bunch of connectivity and a whole bunch of data that his software ingests, or his LLM ingests, and then he can provide certain monitoring systems and feedback back to the power-generation companies. So you’ve got these little companies that are smaller shops coming out of this AI world now that are providing tremendous value — as much value as probably some of the big companies around the consulting world have provided — because they’ve made something specific that helps that industry. So I think companies from all sides benefit from this. It doesn’t matter if you’re the big consulting companies, if you’re an established SI, right down to someone who’s got a great idea that they’re going to vibe-code an app and release that to the public and make some money off it. I think it does benefit the whole realm. Robert Dutt: It seems like, in many ways — along with AI, obviously — the word of the current time in the channel scene is the idea of “ecosystem,” that it doesn’t always have to be one partner answering everything. I guess it begs the question: Around OT, is there any place that a traditional IT partner should not try to go it alone and should look to build connections to those who’ve been there, done that? Gord Phillips: Yeah. I would say building connections with the control vendors is really critical. I think that having the Honeywells, Rockwells, Siemens and ABBs, and all those companies as somebody you’re talking to, to understand what they’re doing, is really important. They’re in deep in those customers, and making sure you have some relationship there so that the agenda that you’re working on is compatible with the agenda they’re working on, I think, is really important. When a customer tells us that they’re going to use Control Vendor X to monitor their environment, it’s probably not a good idea to try to sell against that because this is the mission-critical family jewels of the organization. But I get that you want to do business there, so figure out how you attach to that safely would be my advice, and how you co-sell with that as opposed to potentially selling against it, because that will cause friction for sure. I think that relationship with control vendors is very, very critical. Robert Dutt: We’ve seen other technology boundaries disappear over time. I’m thinking back to voice and data becoming one, until the point where most partners stopped thinking of them as separate businesses and became kind of an overall networking business. And, oh, by the way, we can add security onto that, and, oh, by the way, we can add this. Do you think we eventually head towards something like that between IT and OT security, where eventually customers simply expect their security provider to understand both of those worlds and treat them as similar terms? Gord Phillips: Great question. It’s funny, our telephone and camera business is booming right now because there are so many people that have gotten out of the game. And for us, you’re right: It’s a network-attached device, and you know what attaches to our switches. So it made sense that we had those endpoints of cameras and phones, and that business is growing like crazy for us. It’s funny how it cycles, for sure. But to answer your question, I think IT and OT will merge at some point. And again, I think it comes down to that data layer. Companies are really going to analyze and dictate how their data is leveraged because it’s very, very valuable. It’s valuable to the company because they can take that data and, like I said, drop operational costs or find ways that make sense to leverage something new, or know where to grow. There are so many things you can do with that data. It’s also very valuable, though, from the threat-actor perspective. If I can steal Company X’s core sample data, I can go and sell that to a competitor and make money on it and say this is a great area for them to develop an asset in, for example. So that data is valuable. And I think because IT has dealt with cybersecurity incidents for so long, they will get more engaged on that side. The challenge is OT is really holding their cards close. They want to control what’s allowed. They cannot afford that system to go down. They don’t want that patch day of the week where things happen. But I think they’ll both find a way to work well together. I think most of those organizations over the next three years will find ways to merge a lot of that data layer. I think there are obviously still very unique pieces of the business that they’ll run separately, but it’s more on the operations side. I think the architecture side will become a lot more common in how they work together. I think cybersecurity and the incident planning and all that will come together very tightly, and they’ll have a proper understanding of how best to manage that. So there’ll be a management layer, almost, that’s common, and then how they operate will be unique. Robert Dutt: The centre obviously isn’t just about selling technology. There’s also training, skills development and that sort of thing going on. That’s a big part of it. I don’t know if there’s anywhere globally right now that you could say the skills-gap situation around security is good, but I’m curious: Can you give me a little bit of a feel for where the cybersecurity skills situation in Western Canada is right now? And particularly, where are partners feeling the shortage most acutely at the moment? Gord Phillips: I think there are a few things that are tough, and we’re hoping that — we’re building a training facility in the Calgary office. It should be done here in the next four or five weeks. I was just down there for a tour this morning. We’ve got the walls up, we’ve got the framing all done. We’re getting closer. There’s a skills shortage. And at first, we saw this great little dip because people started leveraging AI to support some of that. It didn’t last very long. So we got back up to that point where we have this skills shortage still being very relevant. I know people keep saying, “Are we all going to lose our jobs because of AI?” Our modelling’s not showing that right now. People still need this cybersecurity talent. I feel like Canada’s done a pretty good job of training cybersecurity professionals, and people that want to get into the industry certainly have lots of options for training, from free to master’s degrees and things like that, of course, post-secondary degrees. So there are a lot of options. If I look at what the schools are building in Alberta and B.C. specifically, because I’ve worked with a lot of them in the last few months, we definitely see cyber talent increasing every year. But we also see that need at a similar pace. So we’re not really winning. We’re not getting ahead of the curve. Maybe slightly, but not by much. We’re hoping that with centres like we’re building here in Calgary, we can upskill some existing workers from different industries and turn them into cybersecurity professionals to help shore that gap up. I think the OT side, again, comes into effect there because a lot of these plants are in very remote sites. We’re working with one of our forestry and lumber companies, and they have these data shacks at all their different mill and cutting sites. The problem is, when there’s an attack, it’s Friday at 8 p.m. when the IT guy’s gone home. So how does this operator go, “Okay, everything’s blinking red. Something’s wrong. What do I do?” What’s good now is we’re able to leverage things like agentic AI to, in plain English, ask those questions and help them get to a resolution without having to be that IT professional. That’s great for half of the problems, but the other half are a lot more complex, and that’s where we need that skill set to come up. So you need guys that understand the problem-solving, the technical side of the house, that kind of piece. I think we have an opportunity right now where we can kind of shift people from what they were thinking. If vibe coding is going to take away developers, maybe we can convince them to be cybersecurity professionals. Come and try some courses and see. So the industry as a whole, it’s not going to shrink the amount of people that are required, but maybe different technologies and pockets are. And I think we’ve seen that in the past, where there are certain things we did years and years ago. Token Ring networking is a great example. Nobody’s running those anymore, and boy, some of us were really smart in that space. So now you just take those skills and transfer them to something else. That’s really the idea. Robert Dutt: How much of the mission here is developing skills and people that ultimately wind up out in the partner ecosystem rather than necessarily at Fortinet itself? Gord Phillips: Not just the partner ecosystem, the customer ecosystem too. But that’s a big part of it. There’s a young man I met a couple of years ago at the Calgary Stampede. He was working security at the Cowboys tent, and he was like, “Hey, Gord, I heard you worked for a cybersecurity company. Wanted to introduce myself. I’m thinking about going into cybersecurity, and I’m in computer engineering now. Any advice?” I’m like, “Yeah, take our free courses. See if you like it, and then go that path.” Not too many months ago, about four months ago, he told me he got an internship at one of our customers. He’s interviewing at one of our partners right now. So he did a four-month internship, now he’s interviewing at a partner, and he’s got tons of cybersecurity experience and training now from that process. That’s what I want to see, is we can get some really smart young people into the industry. We can work on reskilling. Our Fortinet Veterans program is part of that reskilling, and lots of them end up at a partner as well. So a lot of it is building that talent so that our partners can help those customers out. I think a few things that partners are doing, and are doing very, very well, is — cybersecurity is hard. It’s not an easy thing. It’s daunting. If you’re a big company and you’ve got a cybersecurity team of eight, that’s great. If you’re a restaurant group or a retail store and there are 20 locations, your IT guy half the time is also your CFO. He doesn’t have the time, or she doesn’t have the time, to be that cybersecurity expert. Then they need those managed services, and they need partners to help shore that up. So they turn to their partner and they say, “Hey, can you help me out?” I think that’s where we’re going to see a lot of that growth, with the services that the partners are offering to those midsize businesses, small and midsize businesses in particular. It becomes very, very sticky, very, very important, because cybersecurity is not easy and everybody’s under attack all the time. That’s the constant, is that you’re always at risk. Cybersecurity awareness is a big piece of that, and the training is a big piece of that, and it’s daunting. It’s daunting for a company. The partners are the ones that instill that confidence that we can operate the business, that we can stay running because we’ve got Partner X behind us, and this guy that we work with is super smart and he’s gone through and made sure that we’re as resilient as possible. And if there is a problem, they also know who to call. They’re going to call that partner and say, “Hey, something happened. I can’t get on my laptop.” Having that expertise to come in and get them through that very challenging time is really important. Robert Dutt: Thinking across the whole cybersecurity ecosystem — the tech ecosystem, even — we have a few markets across the country that have kind of planted a flag as national, or international even, hubs of excellence around different aspects of technology. I’m curious: As you build this out, do you see an opportunity to help make Calgary a cybersecurity centre of excellence for Western Canada, bring together customers, partners, the educational system, basically the whole ecosystem? Gord Phillips: Thank you for reading my dreams, Rob. I think we have something pretty unique in Calgary, in that we’ve got a ton of engineers just because of the energy industry for years. We’ve got schools that have done a great job of building that resource over time. Our engineering schools and programs have done a great job of kicking that out. I feel that cybersecurity is very adjacent to that. I look at some of the investments that Lufthansa and De Havilland and all those companies are building out east of town in the aerospace park, what they’ve done around the industry. Aerospace and defence is growing like crazy. We’ve got a drone manufacturer that I met with a couple of weeks ago out there that’s making some of the technology for defence drones. You’ve got Garmin up in Cochrane and how much growth they’ve had. There’s so much interest here right now. And the schools are really good at adapting to that. And they’ve had to. We’ve heard from all the schools that the financial pressures — they built a lot of infrastructure to support foreign students, and of course the program changed and there are fewer foreign students now. So they’ve got to find ways to change their investment to support what the next phase of growth is. And I think that’s technology here in Calgary. We’re getting great support and interest from all the post-secondaries of all different levels around that in particular. And we’ve got a great program to support them. We create curriculum. We provide guest lecturers. Having that expertise here in Calgary means that we can participate in that. We just did a scholarship a couple of weeks ago that we announced with U of C, a five-year scholarship program that we’ve announced with U of C to help develop that as well and get our name in front of them. The ultimate idea at the end, Rob, is they come work for us. They come work for our partners. They come work for our customers that utilize our technology because they’re already Fortinet-educated when they come out of post-secondary. So we support them with labs, guest lecturing, curriculum, you name it. We’ve got a really great program around that. Robert Dutt: Okay, let’s wrap this up by continuing to read your dreams a little bit and look a little bit further out even. Five years from now, what would be happening at the centre for you to look back at it and go, “You know what? We really got the most out of this investment. We really rocked this one.” Gord Phillips: That’s a great question. We bought the building two years ago, and we’ve been renovating it, working on it quite a bit. Phase one of my crazy dream was I wanted to put a cowboy hat up on it during Stampede. I don’t know if you ever saw the 27-foot inflatable cowboy hat that I put up every year during Stampede, because we overlook the parade. We do a lot of things around Stampede and supporting the community. We support one of the chuckwagon drivers for part of Stampede, and we do a lot of fun things around the centre. Again, we run a big event, bring our clients and partners in for a pancake breakfast, and just try to make it as fun as possible. So that was kind of my first thing, was put us on the map. We put some great signs on the building. We put a cowboy hat on the building. We kind of did something unique to put us on the map so that everybody would say, “Who the heck’s Fortinet?” So that was the first thing. Now it’s about executing on leveraging that awareness. Making sure partners are bringing their customers in. Making sure that our customers are utilizing the centre and learning more. Making sure the public is more cyber-aware. We’re actually going to be putting some screens on the outside of the building to provide awareness around what cyber threats hit Calgary, Alberta, Canada, the energy sector, the municipalities as well, what hits post-secondary. We’re going to have these screens that change every 20 seconds. Our FortiGuard research team is working on it for me right now, where that information will be out there just to make people think twice. We did a big program in October, Cybersecurity Awareness Month, where we’ve got our cybersecurity awareness program going out to K-12 as well. The idea is, as early as possible, educating everyone around that. So what I’m hoping is, in the next two years, we build a large awareness around cybersecurity in the market so that everybody thinks cyber-first. Like, how do I be safe when I interact with — is this really Rob on the video call with me that’s asking me for my bank information? Those kinds of things. How do we make sure people are as prepared as possible to take on cyber challenges? And that has to start at a young age. So that’s a big piece of it. The next phase is our customer experience lab that we’re building on the top floor and what we’re doing around critical infrastructure with the control vendors. We’re partnering with a number of the control vendors up there to show in real time and in real life that this is how you protect that pump jack. This is how you protect that windmill. This is how you protect that water-treatment plant. This is how you protect those coolers in your grocery stores. When they go down, this is how the alerts happen. This is how you set up third-party access to your critical infrastructure. We’re going to show some best practices, again, to make us as cyber-resilient as possible. So I would say phase one is awareness. Phase two is resiliency. We’re going to invest in some other managed services and whatnot that we’ll be able to deliver from our Calgary office. So again, as close as possible. We already have professional services here. I’m working with our FortiGuard threat-intelligence team on adding some resources here as well, so that we have some of those big threat researchers looking at the market closely. One of the coolest things about working here — and I’m just sidetracking here, Rob, so get me back on track in a minute — is because we have this big office in Burnaby and this great office in Calgary, we’re customers to all those businesses in the region. When we fill up for gas, or when I buy electronics, or when I go to the grocery store, those are customers. So they mean something different when they’re the place you go to, right? It impacts you in a different way, and there’s a different level of pride about servicing those customers, knowing that you’re helping operate their business. That’s a big deal to me. It’s a big deal to our whole team. So I think there’s a great benefit from that right across Canada. Like I said: awareness, to building that resilience, and now innovation. We’re going to innovate some things here. I don’t know what that looks like today. I can tell you that our teams move so fast and it changes so quickly, and the ideas come out of everywhere. We have the most patents of any cybersecurity company, and we have the most cybersecurity AI patents of the next two companies behind us as well. And it’s interesting because there are sales guys who have technical patents because they’ve thought of something and have talked to our patent team, and we said, “Yes, we’re going to develop that.” So you don’t know where the next idea is going to come from. As we get more people here, we’ve got a great community building in our Calgary office, but as it gets bigger and bigger, the discussions change at the water cooler. The ideas that come out are very different. One of our team in our office on a regular basis will come by and say, “Hey, look what I built on the weekend.” Again, AI has enabled this whole new thing where we can all be an expert when we don’t know how to be. “Look what I built on the weekend. Look at the information I’m getting out of this dashboard.” And you go, “Okay, we can leverage that. That’s really unique. How do you apply that to your clients in this sector?” And now it’s created a whole side project that we’ve got one of our dev teams working on. So the innovation becomes that next piece over and above that. The whole idea under it, though, is I just want people to be comfortable with Fortinet and making sure they’re leveraging us for that. We’re really open to ideas. We’re very creative ourselves, but the best ideas come from a customer’s need or a partner’s need. Or a partner says, “I’ve seen this common trend in three or four of my customers. You guys should do this.” And then we can take that away and say, “We have an idea of how we address it,” bring it back to the partner, and they create a practice around that. That’s my ultimate goal. I think that’s the stuff I want to see, and we’re seeing that more and more starting to develop here now. Robert Dutt: All right. Big dreams and big goals. I wish you all good luck in reaching those and realizing them, and thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through what you’re doing today, where that’s going, and the new Calgary facility. Gord Phillips: Well, thanks so much for having me. This has been really great. It’s good chatting with you. Robert Dutt: There you have it, Gord Phillips from Fortinet. I’d like to thank Gord for taking the time and, of course, thank you for listening. A few things that stood out for me from that conversation. First, there’s a surprisingly practical partner story behind this investment. Fortinet isn’t just inviting partners to come admire its new building. Partners can use the meeting space and event space, bring customers in, tap Fortinet’s technical resources and labs, and, as the facility continues to build out, even use it as a place to work when they’re in Calgary. For smaller partners in particular, that’s an opportunity to borrow some of the facility’s expertise and scale that they might not be able to justify building themselves. Second, the OT opportunity is worth watching. Western Canada’s concentration of energy and critical infrastructure makes it particularly important here, and Gord expects IT and OT security to increasingly converge. But his advice to traditional IT partners was also important: Don’t assume you can simply walk into an OT environment and take over. Relationships with the control-system vendors and OT specialists already trusted by those customers are going to matter here. And finally, Fortinet’s ambition for Calgary clearly extends beyond one building. Training, partnerships with post-secondary institutions, new OT demonstration capabilities, additional services and threat-intelligence resources are all part of a broader effort to make the facility — and potentially Calgary itself — a cybersecurity hub for Western Canada. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe to or follow the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We’re on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, all the usual suspects. And, of course, ratings and reviews are always appreciated. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
October 9, 20267 min
The Buzz: CyberFOX buys Optimize365, Microsoft secures Windows AI agents, AWS cuts Marketplace fees
Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: CyberFOX acquires Optimize365 to expand Microsoft 365 security: CyberFOX has acquired Optimize365 , adding continuous Microsoft 365 tenant monitoring and security hardening to its growing portfolio.Optimize365 helps organizations identify configuration problems, monitor changes and strengthen Microsoft 365 environments. For MSPs managing dozens or hundreds of customer tenants, that addresses a familiar challenge: keeping security configurations consistent as settings, permissions and requirements change.The acquisition extends CyberFOX beyond its existing privileged access management, password management, DNS filtering and SASE offerings. It follows the company’s acquisition of Timus Networks earlier this year and its September distribution agreement with TD SYNNEX covering North America.The broader story is CyberFOX’s effort to assemble more of the managed security stack under one vendor. The opportunity for MSPs is potentially simpler security management, although the value will depend on how successfully the acquired products are integrated. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, and the announcement doesn’t establish immediate Canadian distribution arrangements for Optimize365. Microsoft puts security boundaries around Windows AI agents: Microsoft has outlined its hybrid-intelligence strategy for Windows , combining local and cloud AI capabilities while giving agents greater ability to work with applications and files.A particularly significant development is Microsoft Execution Containers , or MXC, now generally available on Windows 11 .MXC allows developers and administrators to establish policy-enforced boundaries around the resources an AI agent can access, including files, networks and desktop interactions. Those restrictions are enforced independently of the agent’s own instructions, helping limit the consequences of unexpected or inappropriate actions.Microsoft also introduced new AI-focused hardware, including the Nvidia-powered Surface Laptop Ultra. For solution providers, the bigger opportunity may be helping customers manage AI agents as they become part of everyday computing. That includes determining which agents can operate, what information they can access, and how their activity should be monitored and governed. AWS reduces Marketplace fees for professional services : AWS has lowered fees for professional services sold through AWS Marketplace , reducing the standard listing fee from 2.5 percent to 0.5 percent.The company has also introduced a zero-percent base listing fee for qualifying professional services sold as part of multi-product solutions. Additional fees, including those associated with Channel Partner Private Offers and regional requirements, may still apply.The changes, announced in September and highlighted in recent channel coverage, are intended to make AWS Marketplace more attractive for partners selling implementation, migration, consulting and other professional services alongside cloud technology.For Canadian solution providers, the significance is straightforward: lower transaction costs can improve the economics of selling services through Marketplace, particularly when those services accompany larger software or infrastructure deals. The move also reinforces the growing importance of cloud marketplaces as procurement channels for services, not simply software subscriptions. Partners still need to understand the applicable fee structure and eligibility requirements before assuming a particular transaction qualifies for the lowest rate. In Brief Check Point flags sensitive-data exposure through GenAI: Check Point Research’s September threat report found that one in every 39 enterprise GenAI prompts posed a high risk of sensitive-data leakage. Network and IT infrastructure information was the most frequently observed sensitive-data category, appearing at 71 percent of organizations in the dataset. The findings reinforce the importance of AI-use policies, data controls and employee guidance for MSP customers. Securonix adds AI-agent behavioral detection: Securonix has introduced Advanced Behavioral Analytics , extending behavioral monitoring to AI agents as well as human users. The company says the technology can identify unexpected agent actions, unusual data access and other activity that may be technically permitted but operationally suspicious. Consequential response actions remain subject to human approval. Accenture and Dell establish private AI business group: Accenture and Dell Technologies have expanded their partnership with a dedicated business group focused on private, hybrid and sovereign AI deployments. Accenture plans to train more than 3,000 practitioners on Dell technology, combining infrastructure with consulting, integration and industry expertise. The move underscores the growing importance of implementation and services in enterprise AI projects. Upscale introduces networking architecture for mixed AI infrastructure: Upscale has announced Token Fabric , combining networking silicon, systems and software to connect different types of AI accelerators. The company is targeting hyperscalers, neoclouds and enterprises building heterogeneous AI infrastructure, with general availability planned for early 2027. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz.ca, I’m Robert Dutt, today is Friday, October 9, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. CyberFOX is continuing to assemble a broader security platform for MSPs, this time with the acquisition of Optimize365. The deal adds Microsoft 365 security monitoring and hardening to a CyberFOX portfolio that already includes privileged access management, password management, DNS filtering and secure access. Optimize365 focuses on a familiar problem for MSPs: keeping Microsoft 365 environments securely configured as settings, permissions and user requirements change. For a service provider managing dozens or hundreds of customer tenants, those changes can create a substantial ongoing security and administrative burden. And the acquisition is interesting in the context of what CyberFOX has been doing this year. In June, it acquired Timus Networks to add SASE and zero-trust network access. Then, at the end of September, it signed a North American distribution agreement with TD SYNNEX covering its existing security portfolio. We covered that distribution agreement here on The Buzz last week. Now CyberFOX is extending its reach from devices, credentials and network connections into Microsoft 365 itself. There’s a clear strategy developing: bring together more of the tools that smaller IT teams and MSPs need to manage security across their customers. Optimize365 will continue operating under its existing brand for now, with integration into CyberFOX’s partner program and product roadmap planned over the coming quarters. Of course, buying the pieces of a security platform and integrating them into a genuinely simpler operating environment are two different things. That’s the question worth watching as CyberFOX brings these acquisitions together. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, and there’s no announcement yet about whether the newly acquired technology will be available through the company’s Canadian distribution relationship. Microsoft, meanwhile, is laying the groundwork for a Windows environment in which AI agents can do considerably more work on behalf of users. And that means Windows needs a new set of security controls. At its Windows event Wednesday, Microsoft outlined what it calls hybrid intelligence, combining AI processing on local devices with cloud-based models depending on the task. The company also introduced new AI-focused hardware, including the Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia technology. But for solution providers, the more consequential development may be Microsoft Execution Containers, or MXC. MXC is now generally available. It allows developers and administrators to establish policy-enforced boundaries around what an AI agent can access and do. For example, an agent might be allowed to read and modify files in a particular project directory, but not access personal documents or change system settings outside its assigned task. Those restrictions are enforced outside the agent itself. That’s important because an AI agent can make a decision that seems reasonable in the context of its task but still goes beyond what a user or administrator intended. Microsoft is also working to distinguish agent activity from human activity through Entra, and to extend Agent 365 management capabilities to agents running locally on devices. Those additional identity and management capabilities are still coming. For partners, the implication is that managing AI agents could become part of everyday endpoint management. Customers will need help deciding which agents are allowed, what resources they can access, how their activity is monitored and who remains accountable when something goes wrong. That’s a much bigger opportunity, and responsibility, than simply deploying another AI application. And AWS is making it considerably cheaper for partners to sell professional services through AWS Marketplace. The cloud provider has reduced its standard Marketplace listing fee for professional services private offers from two and a half percent to half a percent. And for qualifying multi-product solutions that combine professional services with other paid products, the base listing fee on the services component can fall all the way to zero. There are some qualifications. Channel Partner Private Offers can still carry an additional half-percent fee, and regional fees may also apply. The lower standard fee applies to new private offers, rather than retroactively changing existing agreements. The standard reduction was introduced earlier this year, and AWS highlighted the broader opportunity for consulting and services partners in September. But it’s getting renewed attention in the channel, and the economics are worth examining. For MSPs, consultants and systems integrators, a two-percentage-point reduction in transaction fees can make a meaningful difference, particularly on larger services engagements. And the zero-percent base fee for qualifying bundled offerings gives partners another reason to package implementation, migration, integration and managed services alongside the software they’re selling. The bigger story is the continuing evolution of cloud marketplaces. They started primarily as places to buy software and cloud services. But increasingly, AWS wants them to be places where customers can procure complete solutions, including the professional services needed to make the technology work. That could open new routes to customers for Canadian solution providers, while potentially simplifying procurement and billing. Of course, partners still need to understand the eligibility rules and total transaction costs before assuming every services deal qualifies for the lowest fee. But this is a meaningful change in the economics of the cloud marketplace channel. In Brief – Check Point Research says one in every thirty-nine enterprise generative AI prompts in its September data posed a high risk of exposing sensitive information. Securonix has introduced behavioral analytics designed to detect suspicious activity by AI agents as well as human users, while keeping consequential security responses subject to human approval. Accenture and Dell Technologies have formed a dedicated business group focused on private, hybrid and sovereign AI deployments, with Accenture planning to train more than three thousand practitioners on Dell technology. And Upscale has introduced Token Fabric , a networking architecture designed to connect different types of AI accelerators within the same data centre. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. If you haven’t heard it yet, Thursday’s In The Channel features Flare’s John Williamson and Eunice Leung discussing the Montreal cybersecurity company’s new partner program, and how MSPs can bring threat intelligence to midmarket customers and build services around it. And coming up Tuesday on In The Channel, we’ll be taking you to Calgary for a look at Fortinet’s new cybersecurity innovation hub, and what the company’s investment in Canada means for partners and the broader security ecosystem. With Thanksgiving on Monday, The Buzz will be off Monday and Tuesday, but we’ll see you right back here first thing Wednesday morning. Have a great Thanksgiving! That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
October 8, 202636 min
Flare launches partner program to take cyber threat intelligence downmarket
John Williamson, CRO at Flare Cyber threat intelligence may traditionally be associated with large enterprises and dedicated security teams, but Montreal-based Flare sees an opportunity for MSPs and other channel partners to bring those capabilities to a much broader customer base. The cybersecurity vendor recently launched a new partner program as it looks to expand its channel business and give partners more support for selling — and building services around — its threat intelligence platform. In this edition of In The Channel, Flare chief revenue officer John Williamson and director of partner marketing Eunice Leung join us to discuss the company’s growing channel ambitions and where cyber threat intelligence can fit in an MSP’s security portfolio. Eunice Leung, director of partner marketing at Flare For Flare, the opportunity starts outside the customer’s traditional security perimeter. While organizations have invested heavily in protecting their own infrastructure, attackers may be working with information found elsewhere, including exposed credentials, leaked data and other information available across the clear and dark web. That creates an opportunity for partners to help customers understand what attackers can see about them — and turn that intelligence into something actionable. Williamson and Leung discuss why Flare believes that opportunity is moving beyond the largest enterprises, how MSPs can make CTI accessible to customers that don’t have dedicated threat intelligence teams, and where the technology fits alongside existing security offerings. They also detail Flare’s new partner program, the resources the company is putting behind its channel push, and the opportunity for partners to go beyond simply reselling the platform by wrapping their own managed and professional services around it. We also discuss what kinds of partners Flare is looking for, how the company plans to work with its channel as it grows, and why the Canadian cybersecurity vendor sees partners as central to its next stage of expansion. Read Full Transcript Robert Dutt: Welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca, and your host for the show. Today, we’re talking about a Montreal-based company that’s been growing quickly in the threat intelligence space and just formalized its channel strategy. Joining me are John Williamson, chief revenue officer at Flare, and Eunice Leung, director of partner marketing at Flare. We’re going to talk about Ignite, their new partner program, what it means for Canadian MSSPs and resellers, and why identity has become the central battlefield in cybersecurity. Let’s get right into it, my chat with John Williamson and Eunice Leung of Flare. John, Eunice, thanks for taking the time. Nice to chat with you. I appreciate it. John Williamson: Our pleasure. Robert Dutt: John, you guys have been growing for years now — triple-digit growth , 300-plus clients, half of them MSSPs. That’s pretty impressive. Why formalize the program now? What were you seeing in the business that made this the right moment to go from ad hoc or organic working with MSSPs to the more structured program? John Williamson: It’s a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with probably the most obvious talking point that dominates the airwaves these days, and that was AI. I think, as we have been for many years from our founding, when we were really focused on the dark web — at that time it was primarily Tor, or The Onion Router, and potentially fraud and identity theft, things of that nature — from that time, we’ve been focused as an identity-first cyber threat intelligence platform. And the reason for the release of this partner program at this time is this really coming to a head. We had made a bet that identity was going to be the last frontier, the last attack surface standing. And because of the way AI has progressed, it’s really made it much more dynamic for vulnerability assessments and scanning and exploitation. Technical barriers have been demolished and are continuing to be shortened. For us, though, the human and non-human identity element is still highly subject to risk. And so for us, we’ve kind of hit a particular, call it momentum, with the business. And as we’ve grown and scaled — 150 people, we’re growing very quickly, to your point, we’ve experienced double- and triple-digit growth — we felt that it was time to really formalize our channel partnerships. You’d mentioned, I know in our previous conversation, we were talking about how many MSSP partners we do have, which is anomalous. I mean, we have more than probably most. And I think that’s also a testament to how we’ve been dialing in our program since the beginning. It’s not like this Ignite program is ushering in anything revolutionary in regard to how we’ve developed products, how easy it is to use, how it can be deployed through channel partnerships, both resellers and MSSPs. But we’ve entered a point where we’re starting to really understand how those are optimized, how resellers can leverage the timing, the AI backdrop, to sell more of these types of products, how MSSPs can so easily integrate this and take advantage of identity remediation, and how, importantly, both of them can sell something very different. We’ve really, over the last — and this puts the end on your question — we’ve really rounded the corner on a promise that we’ve been making for quite some time. Threat intelligence up to this point has largely been, “Look at me. Look at me. You need to know this.” And it’s informational. One of our vision goals was, let’s put a closed loop on it. How about we tell you, “Hey, instead of you have an identity that’s been breached,” what if we could say, “Hey, you have an identity that’s been breached, and we validated against your live identity access management system, and we’ve prioritized it for automated remediation. Would you like us to take action? We can reset those passwords right now, or we can revoke that session.” That’s the last turn for us that’s really given us the impetus to say, “Let’s formalize a program. We’ve got a great product. We’ve been growing very quickly. It’s differentiated in the marketplace. Let’s now take a channel-first attitude and say, let’s really make sure that the program is designed for success and scale.” Robert Dutt: You mentioned the role of identity and the importance of identity figuring prominently in the decision to go this way, and it certainly maps with what I’m seeing both from you and your peers in the vendor community and in the halls at partner conferences this year. Identity is showing up so much more on the security side of things. I’m curious how you are seeing the kind of questions, the kind of sophistication your partners are coming at identity with, changing as it’s become more prominent and as the tools from yourself and others have evolved. John Williamson: It’s funny that it’s not as if it’s changed, it’s just that AI has industrialized it. It’s kind of one way of looking at it. The leverage — and as we’ve talked about, this is synchronous warfare. I mean, it’s AI against AI. It’s good versus bad. But what it’s done is it’s created the dynamics where attacks on identities have multiplied, primarily because of just the sheer scale. Phishing kits, infostealer kits, these things are being deployed en masse because of how quickly they can be developed. One of the things we’ve talked about, too, is how AI against AI — I think it’s now 70, almost 80%. I think it was 78% of all companies, this is kind of a global standard, have deployed AI in their security technology stack. So the ability to automatically remediate technical vulnerabilities and patch management and whatnot. Microsoft is releasing patches now, and there’s over 800, I think, in the last Microsoft patch remediation. That was as much as they used to do in a year, and you’ve probably seen these. And you can see the acceleration of AI. However, this industrialization of AI, particularly as it relates to credential attacks, number one, it’s making it much more scalable. And it’s really an area that’s actually increasing. That is the human element. Humans are still subject to phishing. They’re subject to infostealer malware by malicious links, and it’s happening en masse. But I think, importantly too, AI has had another effect, and that is that, in many ways, the whole concept of identities is shifting. Not only is it human identities, but I don’t know if you’re familiar with NHI, or non-human identities, the sheer magnitude of the proliferation of non-human identity. So again, these are things that are just starting to become evident. And I think that’s where — and again, I’m obviously Flare and I represent Flare — but I think Flare is particularly well positioned, obviously, for this. We’ve been planning for this for quite some time. And I think our channel program is really a way for us to be able to scale the distribution of our capabilities. Robert Dutt: Eunice, Ignite is positioned specifically around, as John said, both MSSPs and resellers, which are two different camps that increasingly — there’s some interchange and intermingling. The multi-tenant platform, obviously a big part of your pitch. When you were designing the program, what did you learn from the existing folks, those 300-odd MSSPs you’ve been working with, about what they actually need and want versus kind of the vendor-side lens of what the program should be? Eunice Leung: What our partners really wanted to see from us was what it would look like to have a scalable growth path with Flare, primarily. And so we built this not for the benefit of the vendor, ourselves, but really, how can we advise and ramp up our partners to grow with us and also scale and build more business with us? And so each tier of the program reflects that. So whether it be additional support or additional MDF or go-to-market support across the board, we are there to help our partners every step of the way, and we want this program to reflect that. Robert Dutt: You have five tiers: Registered, Growth, Scale, Select, Premier. How do partners think about the progression there, and what’s kind of the gating? Is it about revenue volume, or are there other paths to advancement through the program? Eunice Leung: Yeah, so right now it is reflective of the revenue achievement from the previous year. But as we actually launched it just recently, right now it will be based on the current commit levels of our partners, and then come January we’ll do that new leveling. But that’s the primary metric that we’ll be looking at. Robert Dutt: Flare’s headquartered in Montreal. Eunice, you’re out in Vancouver. I think a lot of Canadian channel companies, and companies in general, wonder if a Canadian-headquartered vendor can compete at a global scale, or how they do so. John, what’s the pitch to a Canadian partner who’s looking at Flare and comparing you to sort of one of the larger U.S.-based threat intelligence platforms? John Williamson: Yeah, that’s a good one. Buy Canadian, I think, for sure. I mean, that’s an interesting question too because it’s a charged environment right now. And I think that, in particular, there’s some particular strengths. Number one is data sovereignty. I think it’s interesting. One of the things that we found is — I don’t want to leave all of the non-Canadian partners out of this — but having said that, it’s our adherence to a lot of the sovereignty. I think it was Quebec Law 25 , whereby, because we are Canadian and because we had built our infrastructure and our privacy controls around Canadian law, it’s actually been very advantageous for us for EU expansion and other markets because the privacy laws so closely match and are distinctive to those in North America. For example, they’re more stringent, and they take into account more detailed protection of individual and private data. And so for us, it’s been an advantage. It’s actually streamlined our global reach in some respects because of just kind of building it right for a more global audience out of the gate. But I think, given today, we have kind of a hybrid environment. I mean, we’re able to sell effectively into Canada because of our Canadian roots. We have been very successful in North America. We’ve been very successful in Europe. We still have plans to expand beyond that. But from a Canadian standpoint, we’re a very proud Canadian business, and I think that’s something that has been very beneficial to us. It’s still probably disproportionately a larger market for a share of revenue than other companies around the globe, but I think that’s also a testament to the ties we have. Robert Dutt: Yeah, I was actually curious how much of the current partner base is Canadian versus global. I imagine there’s at least some degree of hometown, home-field advantage going on there. And basically, how are you thinking about building presence here in Canada from where you’re at now? John Williamson: Structurally, existentially, we’re based in Montreal, Quebec. That’s where our permanent headquarters are located. That’s where all of our office-bound employees are located. The majority of our development engineering staff are located in Montreal. We also have resources in the Toronto area as well, in Ontario. But I think from that perspective, we are very Canadian. And that’s, I think, partly from a standpoint of the resources that you might expect, the level of cultural alignment. French is our primary language in the office, from a Quebec standpoint, of course. But I think those things are all conducive to Canadian partnerships. Certainly, like I said, I don’t want to exclude broad swaths geographically, but for our positioning as a Canadian company, our founding in Montreal has been very advantageous for Flare in Canada, for sure. Robert Dutt: For an MSSP who’s never sold threat intelligence as a service before — maybe they’ve heard of the idea, they want to add it in — what does the readiness path look like? How long does it take me to go from signed up for the program to having a first customer conversation to being realistically proficient and functional at an operating level in a realistic scenario? John Williamson: I’ll answer this, Eunice, at a high level, and I’ll let you take it from a programmatic level. One of the strategic initiatives that we had this year — and this goes all the way back to the beginning of the year, so we’re now obviously entering stages of maturity — was how can we facilitate the most streamlined process for MSSPs who want to adopt cyber threat intelligence? I hope I get these numbers right, so I’m sure the audience is going to correct me. I’ll do the best I can. I believe in 2025, the threat intelligence category was about $12 billion, $11 billion and change. It’s expected to be, by 2030, $22 billion. So it’s essentially going to double. The demand and market for cyber threat intelligence, external security, if you will, is going to more than double in the next four to five years. The question then is, where’s that growth going to come from? One of the things that I think is interesting about MSSPs is a couple of things. Number one is they have installed bases of primarily small to mid-sized businesses. When I say small to mid-sized, that doesn’t mean the smallest. That means, let’s say, up to 5,000 employees. That is the fastest-growing segment of those taking advantage of cyber threat intelligence as an external source of information. I think there’s a particular opportunity for MSSPs to very swiftly hoover up both their existing, but also create distinctive products for new customer acquisition as well. In order to do that, though, it goes to your question, Robert: it needs to be easy. They need to be able to take a look at Flare, adopt it, test it, utilize the technologies themselves, have not-for-sale environments where they can do demos and POCs and whatnot. Very importantly, they need to integrate it into their existing technology stack. It’s one of the reasons that we’ve developed technology that’s very much like a Swiss Army knife of integration capabilities and API endpoints, so that it very quickly integrates with their existing technologies. To answer your question more specifically, it takes no more than about 30 to 45 days total for full integration and go-to-market to effect. That, bear in mind, includes not only the technical integration, but that includes setting up the testing environments for them to be able to utilize for their own utilizations internally, but also for POCs and demos and whatnot. It includes sales enablement and training, a big part of our program. It includes technical resources as well, and technical training. Then, very importantly for MSSPs, I think this is something that’s worth mentioning: we also bring to bear research services. You might wonder, how do research services factor into a scalable automated service that could be delivered from an MSSP? There’s a lot to be said around, A, understanding your geographic market, but two, being able to provide fresh, meaningful, important content to your customer base to illustrate the value of the services and the products. For example, recently we did a custom research project with one of our Canadian partners and I think it was a FTSE 500 company, financial services company operation. It led to thousands of leaked, stolen credentials that could be utilized for nefarious reasons. That was a joint research project between us and one of our partners. Those are the kinds of things we bring to bear that make it not only easy from a technical standpoint, but also a go-to-market standpoint, giving them tools, information, content that helps them to articulate the value of cyber threat intelligence, how it can be utilized, and the kinds of threats that they can be facing and can be remediated. Those are all parts of the program. Robert Dutt: That research piece is one that caught my eye and kind of raised my eyebrow when I was looking at the details of the program. It seems like a pretty unusual and useful benefit for partners. That’s one example. Any other color on how — I know it’s relatively new — but how partners can and are using that? And do you find it’s generally a door opener, or does it kind of convert into ongoing engagement? What’s kind of the role that you see it playing? John Williamson: Yeah, also— Eunice Leung: Go ahead, John, please. John Williamson: I’m sorry. Eunice Leung: Sounds like it. Yeah, so that research component of it definitely is, like you said, a standout of the program itself. And just a quick correction on John’s previous point. It’s a UK partner, so just our Canadian cousins over the ocean over there. But then, yes, it was on the FTSE 100. They got picked up by Forbes. It was a continuous piece of content that was used later on as well in different campaigns with that partner. And so the thing is, with Flare, is that we have done so much research-led content for years now, and we’ve established a really strong CTI foundation in the community. What we really want from our partners is to be able to leverage this in a lot of the conversations that they’re having with their prospects. And so these research reports, they’re in-depth. It’s a lot of data, but how we work with them is to identify really the key industry that they want to target, right? Either key industry or audience, and we build something that’s custom to them that will actually speak with their audience base. Having the ability to leverage our research team is probably one of the strongest pieces here. It’s definitely something that we want to continue to scale up and have this continuous piece of content. We have people creating marketing campaigns from the sales campaigns. It’s the bridge from Flare to the partner to the customer. John Williamson: I agree. And I was going to add, too, that the research is not just a — it is obviously a very valuable part of our partner program. It’s a valuable part of how Flare has evolved. Our utilization of our researchers is very much a part about our understanding of emergent threats, the content that we collect, how we collect that content, where we collect it, from whom, and a couple of examples of how research has manifested itself into helping both Flare, but also our partners, take advantage of emergent trends . For example, a lot of people, when they think about the dark web, they think about Tor and some of the other dark webs. Increasingly, it’s Telegram. Telegram is a command-and-control environment. It’s utilized for phishing kit exfils. It’s where a tremendous amount of talk is going. It’s much more scalable. It’s perfect for flat-file uploads and whatnot. So it’s starting to play a key role in infrastructure. We’re seeing similar things happening in Signal. We’re seeing the utilization of unique malware variants that we’re able to identify, collect, and then index and provide as part of our graph framework. These things are all from research. It plays a very powerful role. It’s one of the reasons that, when we think about deploying it on behalf of our partners, it’s not something that we’ve just introduced as an interesting partner trick. It’s really part of the Flare fabric. And it’s just something that we believe, if we extend it further into our partners, it’ll help them to articulate to their customers why these things are so important and how they can be protected. Robert Dutt: John, you’re coming at this from SOCRadar and the broader threat intel space, so you know the market well. For a Canadian MSP or MSSP that’s evaluating this kind of threat intel recurring service model, what’s the realistic business case for them? Are we talking about something that adds some incremental service revenue, or does this become a meaningful line of business unto itself? Basically, what’s the typical mindset of a partner going into this? John Williamson: It depends on the partner, obviously. I can only give you maybe some anecdotes on the different, let’s call it, mindsets that we work with generally. And I’ll kind of use the most compelling for the purposes of this answer. One is absolutely the emergence of external threat intelligence as a primary driver in any information security model, or depending on where they are in their information security maturity. It’s becoming increasingly important. It’s very common for us to provide demos, POCs and whatnot for us to illuminate virtually in real time on a demo the types of threats that an individual company is facing. So we tend not to just say, “Hey, let’s just show you what we do. Let me show you an example of what an infostealer malware output might look like, or what a leaked credential might look like and where it might be coming from.” We go into these situations because we know how to tune the systems very quickly so that we can show them specifically, these are the kinds of things you are likely facing. In this particular case, it’s existential. You are facing these. So in those particular cases, that could be a high-value additional service line. That could be very complementary to a managed detection and response service, or to some type of penetration or red teaming. It would be the ability to say, “Here are the kinds of things we found. Here are the things that you could do in order to remediate these types of risks.” They might be multi-factor authentication. It might be password vaults. It could be any number of things, including automated remediation once you see these things in the wild. Opening up new service lines is very much a use case. Number two is that oftentimes — and I kind of alluded to this in my previous — oftentimes it helps them sell more of their existing capabilities or software. For example, the illumination of the kind of threats that Flare uncovers oftentimes drives the need for the kinds of security processes, products and services that are already in their mainline product list. It also helps them to extend intelligence to help them augment additional, or actually sell existing, products and services. The third part is probably one of the most compelling in some respects, both in terms of scale and volume, is some of our larger MSSP and channel partners who have large existing customer bases. They find that the promise of threat intelligence, particularly identity-first cyber threat intelligence, which is obviously a Flare specialty, is highly compelling on the renewal side. The ability to upsell, saying, “This is something that is incrementally of high value. I’d like to show you a quick idea. We can run some quick tests on it.” What they’re finding is that that really can tweak net recurring revenue on a retention and expansion basis. That’s probably the most compelling. We find the highest levels of adoption and traction in those, but that’s kind of the spectrum of how we generally approach. Create a new service line. Two, it helps you sell more of your existing products. Number three, it’s outstanding on renewal and expansion and add revenue. Robert Dutt: And a bit more on the nuts-and-bolts side of things, but important because you do reward on partner-sourced recurring revenue: what does deal reg look like in practice? Is it first come, first served, territory protection? What does it kind of look like for the partners involved? Eunice Leung: Yeah, so right now it is a bit of a first-come, first-served situation. But for deal registration, once it is registered, we give that partner priority. And then, John, you might have to correct me here. I believe we have a 10% protection on any renewal deals as well, right? John Williamson: We do. And it’s a real simple process. Obviously, part of the program’s announcement is the partner portal. It’s easy to make those deal registrations. It’s important to note that as we move into these markets, part of the advances we’ve made is in our deal registration, how those are treated, how they’re protected, the margins associated with them and whatnot. And obviously, this is very self-serve. This is not something that you need to do as it relates to calling Flare or anything. The process of registering a deal is just a matter of getting credentials to our portal. Robert Dutt: You touched earlier on the identity side of things as being kind of a differentiator. I’m curious what your partners tell you are the Flare differentiators, the reason that they’re going with Flare as opposed to a competitor in this space. It’s a crowded space. John Williamson: One is going to be — if I was going to give one, I could give you a couple — but if I was going to state the most unequivocally dominant reason that they would go with Flare: if we find something that they were not aware of and that another provider didn’t find, we win. And when I say we, us and our partners, obviously. The division of the services, part of what we’re talking about, is how that’s uncorking this level of kind of partnership-based distribution. In those particular cases, it’s where Flare can prove that we have access to the broadest and deepest source of credential- or identity-based data that could be weaponized and utilized by threat actors to create meaningful breaches or system access. When Flare has data that nobody else has, when it’s the freshest data, we win. On top of that, too, we’ve taken it a step further. One is our claim that we have the most important, the best and most comprehensive set of data. And this includes all of its sources. Like we’ve already talked about Telegram and other chats, the dark web, clear web, GitHub repositories for leaked code and things of that nature, or code injection on API keys. But more importantly as well, we also make the claim that when we do find that information, we’re going to give you more transparent data than anybody else. We’re very transparent about where our sources are. A lot of people will be very careful about what they want to show, how much they want to show. Flare completely opens the kimono and lets the partner make the meaningful decisions based on that context. And then I would say lastly, what they’ve really found with regards to working with Flare is — and this is one of the reasons we’re excited about this partner program — how hands-on we’ve been traditionally with our partners, always with regards to helping them to both understand Flare, how to sell it, how it’s positioned, how we’ve been able to achieve the kind of growth that we have, how we can empower and enable those types of techniques for them. And the role we’ll play on an ongoing basis with regards to technical integration and forward-deployed engineering help and assistance, the setup of test environments and not-for-sale environments where they can utilize these things to better articulate it. Everything that we’ve done on our side to grow the business at this point, we’ve basically forklifted into our partner program. And that’s really what this is all about. Robert Dutt: And sort of the flip side of that question, Eunice, from your side, what’s the most common objection you hear from prospective partners, and how do you answer it? Eunice Leung: So I would say, for me, I’m usually on the go-to-market side. But anytime you have a partner who is a little bit more hesitant on trying to see if there’s the right kind of vendor for them, it’s going through a discovery process of getting to understand what their services are and what their practice currently looks like, right? Because a lot of times people may say, “Well, this is CTI.” And like John said earlier, CTI used to just be, “Hey, look at me.” There’s nothing that you can really propose to a customer because half the customers just go, “Well, this is a lot of data that I don’t know what to do with now.” But once we flip that on its head and go, “Well, what about all your current services?” One of the things that we’ve been integrated into with other security packages is MDR. And so any partner that has an existing kind of security package that includes MDR, or even with or without it, it starts to make a lot more sense when we start to talk about the workflows and APIs that they can actually integrate into. And they start to see that value there. And just to bring it all back to that validation and remediation aspect that we have within the platform, that’s where the true value comes out. And we’re able to kind of close the book with a partner because they go, “Well, this actually makes my job 10 times easier, because I thought all I’m looking for is data threats, but this actually helps a big bulk of automation that we didn’t have previously.” John Williamson: Yeah, I think, too, when I think about the objections we get — a reason I really liked your question is these objections have driven the program. And what I mean by that is one common objection is, how easy is this to get going? How much of a commitment are you guys talking? What are we talking about here in terms of commitment? And we’ve gone to great pains to make it as easy as possible to get started with the minimum. And I’ll give you one example. MSSPs, a lot of times — I remember in my, you talked about, I’ve been in this business for quite some time, and I’ve been hearing these objections for quite some time — we don’t want to start too big. How quickly can I get going? What if I’ve just got one customer that I’m thinking about? And what if it’s a really small customer? And how quickly is it going to take to get this done? How much money am I going to make? The three things are: how do I get started? How easy is this to get going? And then what are the margins and what are the broader implications? Part of this program and some of the quieter elements are that we’ve built really interesting tools, and we’ve applied a lot of our thinking, what we know. We can sit down with any partner and have those discussions and say, number one, we can start as small as you need to. And the program is designed so that we can grow with you, and that’s advantageous, obviously, because of the margins. Number two, we will make sure that it’s very quick and easy to deploy. And three, we actually have built some programmatic software to help them understand what are the implications from an economic perspective in terms of: what are my current customers? What’s the penetration I think we can make against those? What would I sell them? What are the range of products? We can run these scenarios very swiftly and give them a very good sense of, what’s my low, medium and high prospects over the first year, two or three of this partnership? All driven, again, largely because of the objections that have been inherent for quite some time. Robert Dutt: Okay. So if we were looking back at this a year from now, and you were looking back and saying, “Okay, Ignite was a success,” what are the one or two metrics that you’re going to be looking at to determine that? Is it number of partners, average partner revenue, something else altogether? What’s the dashboard that you’re looking at to decide if this did what you wanted it to? John Williamson: I’ll say that— Eunice Leung: Go ahead. John Williamson: Eunice, I didn’t want to interrupt. I think you were getting ready to say something. Eunice Leung: No, I think we’re probably on the same page here regarding — it’s probably going to look at the partner revenue growth that comes with Ignite. One of the things that we wanted to roll out with this was to establish 30-, 60-, 90-day goals with our partners and actually go through a full go-to-market planning session with all of our partners. This process, we wanted to really help ramp them up as fast as possible. Like John said before, the setup’s not bad at all, how easy it is to actually, within 90 days, start generating business with Flare. John, I don’t know if you have another point to add to this one. John Williamson: No, I agree. There are the obvious ones, right, Robert? It’s going to be partner revenue. It’s going to be sell-through. It’s going to be overall. I’d say that it’s going to be a case-by-case basis, in the sense that I would prefer, if we had to launch this program and envision scenarios, if we were very successful and it was with only five partners, and those five partners had a meaningful impact on their business, they had raised their net promoter scores amongst their existing client base, they were able to very clearly, without any level of vagary, determine that they were able to solve 100% of threats on a consistent basis, and that their customer retention was very high — if it was just five of them, I would consider this program a success in that regard. Obviously, we’re built for scale. Flare is a company that — we have extremely high ambition. Our growth rates have given us that ambition. But importantly, I think that we want to get this partner program right. I don’t want to just be a shell saying, “Hey, everybody, sign up for Flare. It’s going to be the easiest thing, easiest money you’ve ever made.” Really, we realize we have to put real skin in the game. We know how the threats are evolving. We understand how AI is driving the acceleration of these threats. We understand how to position it. We understand how to demo. We understand how to POC it. We understand how to price it. I mean, these have all been inherent in our ability to go to market. Our plan is just to share that knowledge with the partners that choose to engage with us and optimize it for each. So clearly, there’s high-level metrics that we’re looking at, but I think it’s the quality of those partnerships and the longevity of those partnerships that are ultimately how it’s going to be judged. Robert Dutt: So bring on a not necessarily small number, but relatively smaller number of partners and really kind of guide them, shepherd them through the process, make sure they’re successful, as opposed to sign up everyone and end up with a bunch of partners that you don’t hear from in a year. That makes sense to me. Last one for me. For a Canadian MSP or MSSP who’s listening to this and thinking, “Okay, maybe threat intel is the next service for me to add,” whether it’s Flare-specific or industry-specific, what’s kind of the one thing they should know before they reach out to you? John Williamson: I hope this answers your question. I would say 60%. Sixty percent is how many data breaches are caused by an identity or credential compromise. It is such a pervasive access point. And as I mentioned before, it’s being exacerbated, and the risks are accelerating because of AI. And Flare is an identity-first platform, first and foremost, in the category. It’s our distinguishing characteristic. And I think we’ve proven that that is a bet that is worth not only us making, but it’s something that we want to provide on behalf of our customers. This is a threat that is very large, present, and it’s growing because of the market dynamics. So I think that would be the one thing that I would leave with people. Robert Dutt: All right. You make the case well. John, Eunice, thank you for taking the time, and good luck with the Ignite launch and getting that out there. It was great talking with you. John Williamson: Thanks, Robert. Eunice Leung: Thank you so much. Robert Dutt: There you have it, John Williamson and Eunice Leung from Flare. I’d like to thank John and Eunice for their time. To our listeners, if you’re an MSP or a reseller thinking about threat intelligence, the numbers that John cited are worth sitting with. Sixty percent of data breaches start with an identity or credential compromise, and the threat intelligence market is on track to nearly double by 2030. Flare’s bet is that identity-first intelligence with automated remediation is the way to close the loop, and Ignite is their attempt to make it accessible to the channel. If you want to explore it, check out the link in the show notes or the blog post. Follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. Always appreciated. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
October 8, 20266 min
The Buzz: TD SYNNEX buys BlueStar, HPE launches ProLiant Gen13, and Cisco puts AI agents in Webex
Today’s headline news for Canadian IT solution providers: TD SYNNEX agrees to acquire BlueStar: TD SYNNEX has entered a definitive agreement to acquire specialty distributor BlueStar , adding expertise in automatic identification and data capture, operational technology, mobility, RFID, point-of-sale, digital signage, networking, robotics and security. BlueStar has an established Canadian operation with locations in Montreal, the Toronto area and Vancouver, giving the transaction direct relevance to Canadian VARs serving retail, warehousing, logistics and other specialized markets. Financial terms were not disclosed, and the companies will continue operating independently pending regulatory approval. TDSynnex News HPE launches its first ProLiant Gen13 servers: HPE has introduced the first four ProLiant Gen13 systems , powered by sixth-generation AMD EPYC processors and aimed at workloads ranging from virtualization and analytics to AI inference and agentic AI. The lineup includes the 1U DL525, the GPU-dense DL585a and two OCP-based high-density systems, while iLO 8 adds automatic drive encryption, multi-person authorization and expanded post-quantum readiness. The first system arrives later this year, with the remainder following in 2027, and HPE is making the new generation eligible for its 90/9 Advantage financing program . Hewlett Packard Enterprise Cisco puts AI agents directly into Webex : At WebexOne, Cisco unveiled a broad set of agentic collaboration and intelligent-workplace updates , including Claude Managed Agents and collaborative agents that can join Webex spaces, meetings and calls to carry out multi-step work across Webex and third-party applications. Cisco is also introducing RoomOS 27, adding native Google Meet support alongside Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and extending workplace management through Cisco Cloud Control. Dialog, meanwhile, brings long-running AI-agent workflows and persistent customer context to the Webex customer-experience platform. Cisco Newsroom In Brief Canadian AI adoption outruns governance: New CPA Canada research based on responses from 5,000 Canadian CPAs finds organizational AI use rose from 5 percent in 2023 to 43 percent in 2026. But only 45 percent of respondents report having a formal AI policy, and 34 percent say their organization has implemented employee training or a formal AI strategy, leaving a potentially significant governance and advisory gap for technology providers. GlobeNewswire EfficientIP sees malware overtake phishing in DNS threat data: EfficientIP’s H1 2026 DNS Threat Intelligence Report , based on analysis of more than 150 billion DNS transactions per day, says malware nearly doubled from the second half of 2025 and became its largest DNS threat category. Daily malware activity climbed from 8 million hits in January to 32.6 million in April, while rising domain-generation-algorithm activity appeared earlier, suggesting DNS telemetry can provide warning before malware campaigns accelerate. EfficientIP TD SYNNEX takes KUKA robots to European partners: TD SYNNEX and KUKA have signed a distribution agreement giving partners access to KUKA autonomous mobile robots, initially in the U.K., France, Spain and Benelux. The distributor will provide enablement, technical training and demand-generation support, with collaborative robots, education packages and industrial software expected to follow; Canada is not part of the initial rollout. KUKA Switzerland BlueVoyant names John Hultman CRO: BlueVoyant has appointed former Druva chief revenue officer John Hultman as CRO , putting him in charge of global sales and revenue operations. Hultman’s previous roles include Americas sales leadership at Cohesity and nearly two decades at Dell EMC. Read Full Transcript Welcome to The Buzz from ChannelBuzz. ca , I’m Robert Dutt, today is Thursday, October 8, 2026, and here’s what’s happening in the channel today. TD SYNNEX has agreed to acquire BlueStar, a specialty distributor with a significant presence in Canada. BlueStar specializes in some corners of the channel that sit outside traditional broadline IT distribution: automatic identification and data capture, mobility, RFID, point-of-sale, digital signage, networking, robotics and security. And this one matters directly in Canada. BlueStar has Canadian operations in Montreal, the Toronto area and Vancouver, serving VARs in markets including retail, hospitality, warehousing, transportation, logistics and healthcare. For TD SYNNEX, the acquisition adds specialized expertise in technologies that increasingly connect traditional IT with physical operations. That’s particularly interesting as areas like warehouse automation, edge computing and robotics begin overlapping more heavily with the infrastructure and AI practices already familiar to solution providers. In fact, TD SYNNEX separately announced Wednesday that it’s taking KUKA autonomous mobile robots to partners in several European markets. Put the two announcements together and there’s a pretty clear direction of travel toward operational technology and physical AI. Financial terms for the BlueStar acquisition weren’t disclosed. It’s a definitive agreement rather than a completed deal, and the companies will continue operating independently while it goes through regulatory approval. HPE has introduced the first four systems in its next generation of ProLiant servers. ProLiant Gen13 starts with sixth-generation AMD EPYC processors and covers a pretty wide range of infrastructure. At one end is the DL525, a 1U single-socket server with as many as 256 CPU cores. At the other is the DL585a, which supports two EPYC processors and as many as eight double-wide PCIe GPUs for AI inference, model fine-tuning and other accelerated workloads. HPE is also introducing two dense Open Compute Project-based systems aimed at AI and high-performance computing. But the generational change isn’t only about feeding more AI into the data centre. HPE is adding new security features through iLO 8, including automatic self-encrypting drives, two-person authorization for high-impact administrative actions and expanded post-quantum cryptography readiness. Compute Ops Management also gets new power-management and low-touch onboarding capabilities. That’s useful territory for infrastructure partners because customers don’t necessarily need a dedicated AI server project to enter the Gen13 refresh cycle. Virtualization, analytics, databases and conventional infrastructure modernization are still part of the pitch, with AI capacity available as requirements evolve. Availability is staggered. The DL525 is due later this year, the DL585a in early 2027, and the two dense systems later in 2027. HPE is also making Gen13 available through its 90/9 Advantage financing program. And Cisco is turning Webex into a workplace not only for people, but for AI agents. At WebexOne Wednesday, Cisco announced that Claude Managed Agents are coming to Webex, along with collaborative AI agents that can participate directly in spaces, meetings and calls. The idea is that instead of someone privately asking an AI tool for help and then bringing the answer back to the team, the agent becomes part of the shared workspace. A user might ask an analytics agent for data inside a Webex space, then hand the result to another agent to update a presentation. Cisco says those agents will also be able to carry out multi-step work across Webex and third-party applications, with identity, security and governance controls around what they’re allowed to access and do. There’s also a substantial physical-workplace piece. RoomOS 27 will add native Google Meet support to Cisco collaboration hardware alongside Webex, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, while Cisco Cloud Control increasingly brings collaboration devices, networking and workplace intelligence into one management layer. And in customer experience, Cisco is introducing Dialog, designed to let AI agents maintain customer context and keep working across systems even after an individual conversation ends. For partners, the bigger story may be that Cisco isn’t treating collaboration, networking, room systems and AI as separate practices. It’s increasingly trying to make the workplace itself one managed technology environment. In Brief – CPA Canada says organizational AI use among respondents has increased from five percent in 2023 to 43 percent this year, while fewer than half report having a formal AI policy. EfficientIP says malware has overtaken phishing as the largest category in its DNS threat data, with daily malware activity quadrupling between January and its April peak. TD SYNNEX has signed a European distribution agreement with KUKA for autonomous mobile robots, backed by partner training and enablement. BlueVoyant has named former Druva chief revenue officer John Hultman as its new CRO. Full details and links in the show notes or the blog post. And if you haven’t heard it yet, Wednesday’s In The Channel introduces Kurt Mills, KnowBe4’s new channel chief, and looks at his plans for distribution, partner programs and the company’s MSP business. We’ll have more new conversations coming soon on In The Channel. That’s how we’re seeing the headlines today. I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, thanks for listening. Have a great day.
October 7, 202629 min
KnowBe4 channel chief Mills looks to bring greater focus, distribution to partner strategy
Kurt Mills, senior vice president of Global Channel Sales at KnowBe4 Kurt Mills is just a few weeks into his new role as global channel chief at KnowBe4 , but he’s already identified some significant changes he believes can help the company reach its next stage of growth. Mills, who most recently led global channels at Trellix , tells In The Channel that KnowBe4 has built a very large partner community, but one where a relatively small percentage of partners account for most of the business. His goal is to build a more focused, “segment optimized” channel, while making greater use of distribution to support the company’s long tail of partners. That will include changes to KnowBe4’s partner program and pricing structure, as well as greater field coverage. And Mills says that need to be present in the market applies particularly to Canada, where relationships with partners and MSPs can’t effectively be built remotely. MSPs are another area where Mills sees room for improvement. Asked what he would tell an MSP that knows KnowBe4 but hasn’t figured out how to make money with the company, his answer is direct: “We can do better.” In this edition of In The Channel, Mills discusses his plans for KnowBe4’s channel, what he learned transforming the partner business at Trellix, the company’s evolving distribution strategy, opportunities around AIDA and AI-driven security and partner services, and what needs to change to build a stronger MSP business. Read Full Transcript **Robert Dutt:** Hello, and welcome to In The Channel from ChannelBuzz.ca, bringing news and information to the Canadian IT channel community for the last 16 years. I’m Robert Dutt, editor of ChannelBuzz.ca and your host for the show. Kurt Mills is the new channel chief at KnowBe4, the company you probably already know for security awareness training, though they’d like you to think of them now as digital workforce security. Kurt’s held channel leadership roles at Trellix, Check Point, Mimecast, FireMon and Blue Coat. He’s basically done the full cybersecurity channel tour. He joined KnowBe4 about a month ago. He’s still very much getting the lay of the land, but he came in with a clear diagnosis: too many partners, too much non-standard pricing, not enough presence in the field. He’s also walking into an interesting company moment. Brian Palma has been CEO for about a year and a half. The company is owned by Vista Equity Partners, and the product story is expanding from phishing simulations toward AI agent security and a broader human risk platform. Let’s get right into it, my chat with Kurt Mills from KnowBe4. **Robert Dutt:** Kurt, thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it. **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, it’s a pleasure to be here, Robert. I always enjoy talking to our friends across the pond there in Toronto and look forward to, like I said, having a good hang today. **Robert Dutt:** We were discussing, dear listener, before we got into this, that Kurt is located in Chicago, and exchanged some of the Great Lakes weather dynamics , as it were, which are a constant topic of conversation. You’ve spent a long time in the industry, most recently running global channels at Trellix, where you made it to SVP. You’ve done Check Point, Mimecast, Blue Coat, FireMon. What was it about this moment and about KnowBe4 specifically that made you say, “Yeah, this is the next fit?” **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, well, let’s start by saying when you mention all those, it makes me feel a little bit old, Robert. But yeah, 25 years in the industry, and you learn a lot over that time. I will say it’s gone fast. But when I say you learn a lot, you learn a lot about the type of cultures, the leadership and the opportunities that you want to participate in. And for me, that means it starts with leadership. Having the opportunity to work with Brian Palma, our CFO and a few others here, again, was a really exciting opportunity for me. When you take that and you really look at the bones of this company and the opportunity to scale through a billion dollars, that’s what I like to do. I like to find companies with good bones, and maybe, Robert, they have just a lever or two that they need to pull to get to that next level of growth. And in many cases, that comes from the channel. **Robert Dutt:** How much of your job do you see as kind of preserving what works there versus looking for those opportunities to find the scale? I’m just curious because KnowBe4 has traditionally had that kind of identity as Stu’s company, with Kevin Mitnick as the face. Now Brian’s been in the chair for a while — I know a familiar face to you — and you’re coming in as channel chief. I’m curious where the balance between optimize for scale and maintain the founder’s company kind of sits for you right now. **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, well, like I said, they’ve done an amazing job as far as good bones, getting it to a certain point. But as you know, there are certain levers when we talk about channel where the growth started to slow down a little bit with the model they had, which was very much an inside-out type model. In the worlds that I’ve come from, you have to be present to win, and that’s a big part of it. But ultimately it is a balance, because I don’t want to distract from the great amount of energy this company has. It’s very infectious. I’ve had the opportunity to spend time in our Clearwater office as well as our D.C.-area office over the last few weeks, and it just blows me away how much energy there is through that place. It just kind of resonates. So I want to make sure I maintain that, with the idea of evolving the company in such a way from a channel perspective that we are really improving our coverage, bringing in certain best practices from the industry. I had a background in Mimecast, as you highlighted, and so I was used to working against or competing against KnowBe4 in the past. And I think what we did very well in my past days is make sure we had the right partners selling the right solutions to the right customers. But we also made sure we focused on the right partners and had the coverage, as far as being available and present from a channel perspective, and then really the enablement piece. Weaving those pieces in, if you will, Robert, to complement what was already going on here as a company. **Robert Dutt:** At Trellix, you were there in the aftermath of the big merger of McAfee and FireEye coming together, trying to build a unified channel, unified story out of those pieces. KnowBe4 is a very different kind of situation. It’s one product line, very strong brand recognition, but maybe the challenge is around building that enterprise channel over time. Without asking you to choose which of your children you love the most, which challenge do you prefer? **Kurt Mills:** Again, there are a lot of similarities between the two, believe it or not, although they came to where they are in very different fashions. In both cases, they needed to evolve as a company. One was taking two giants together and trying to integrate them, and there was a lot to do there. In the case of KnowBe4, they are adding solutions to be what we’ll call a fully integrated solution. But in both cases, it’s really a matter of: how do you do that? I wouldn’t say there’s a favourite one over the other. I’m here at KnowBe4 now, so that’s where I’m excited to be. But when all is said and done, it’s about how do you evolve a company and move a ship in the next direction. **Robert Dutt:** Speaking of that evolution, the language or the message of the company has shifted a bit of late. Security awareness training used to be the byline, the mantra. Now it’s much more about digital workforce security, securing humans and AI agents. For Canadian partners who are listening, what does that mean in terms of how they position you to their customers? Is this still kind of a compliance checkbox kind of sale, or do you see the conversation moving up the stack a bit? **Kurt Mills:** Let me start by going back to the whole Trellix thing. It’s always still about where, how and when do you win, right? When you’re talking to partners, the speeds and feeds are interesting, but they really want to understand how you win. And so that’s the really big component of what we’re trying to do here as we move the ship. As it relates to the Canadian partners, it’s how do you leverage all different types of routes to market? I know from working in Canada for many, many years, it’s not just about the reseller community. It’s about the MSPs, how you leverage the hyperscalers, for instance, like AWS and others, as well as distribution. And so there is an opportunity here at KnowBe4 to make sure we are leveraging all these different channel routes to market, those levers, if you will, to make sure we get to a point here, hopefully early in the new year, where we’re really focused on scale, leverage and growth. What I’m trying to do, Robert, between now and then is set the table to serve up dinner for our Canadian partners, as well as our partners globally. **Robert Dutt:** Speaking of the Canadian market, from what I can see, Canada represents around five percent of the customer base. The Canadian channel market, as you suggest, is very heavily MSP-driven. A lot of mid-market and SMB customers, obviously given the nature of the nation. How are you thinking about Canada? Is this kind of a mini-America market, or is there a distinct strategy, programs, maybe distinct distribution for Canada that fits because it is a little bit different than just take the American strategy and shrink it? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, and again, I don’t know if there’s an American strategy versus a Canada strategy, but I’ll go back to my original comments: you’ve got to be present to win. Certainly in Canada, the relationships are important, and it’s hard to do that when you’re making phone calls from Florida in many cases. You have to be there. So again, I’ll go back to the comment I made about coverage. It’s critical that we make sure, as we are hiring and as we’re evolving our organization, that we have people on the ground in Canada that maybe have history, credibility and success with those Canadian partners, MSPs, et cetera. **Robert Dutt:** On the product side, you guys launched AIDA orchestration back in February, basically an autonomous AI agent that runs a security awareness program without human intervention. For partners, that sounds both really, really good because it means something I can do without having to do it, or a threat to my services revenue — maybe both. How are you positioning AIDA to the channel? Is it something they wrap services around, or does it reduce the need for their involvement? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, it’s interesting. I go to a lot of these big conferences and such, and you know, Robert, from walking through them, everybody says AI this, that or the other. But for me, what was a big draw to this company is the fact that we actually cut our teeth with AI. Think about where we started out, kind of that tier three or segment three of SMB, and we literally had to help our customers who were very challenged with their workforce or the resources they had to do things. So this isn’t new to us. We kind of started the company with the idea of this behavioural intelligence and AI to support customers. And now we’ve just moved upstream over time, which has been accepted and adopted by mid-market, enterprise and even Fortune accounts. **Robert Dutt:** And given that it’s been out there for six months or more now, any thoughts on what you’ve seen partners doing in terms of building services around AIDA? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah. I think there are a couple of things. Services is always kind of a loaded comment because what is the definition of services now? You have a lot of SaaS companies and cloud-based companies where you’re just pointing something to the cloud, you’re hitting it and you’re going. It’s not like the old days, Robert, where you had hardware and it was 15, 20 days of implementation services. Where I do think there’s an opportunity here — and again, I’m on week four on the clock — is what we’ll call those assessment-led services-type opportunities. There was a mention in some of the briefings we had about systems integrators. If you really think about it, the ability to use our solutions for even health checks and things like that is really powerful because, again, we still know that over 70 percent of breaches are coming from your employee base. So I think there’s an opportunity there. I’m still digging into it. Please, IT department, don’t get upset with me for saying these things. But again, when I look at the crystal ball of where there’s a huge value opportunity in services, that’s one of them. **Robert Dutt:** All right. Speaking of crystal balling, the press release announcing your new role talks about the priority of evolving the global partner program, operations, routes to market. That’s kind of the boilerplate of it. I know you’re still getting the lay of the land and figuring out all the strategy, but what specifically can you tell us about what you see as the priorities to align, fix and figure out over the next 12 months? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, well, it’s been a bit of backing out of the driveway going 70 and changing the tires, if you will. But again, there are things that we want to have going into the new year, so we’re moving very quickly. The good news is this isn’t the first time I’ve done it. That’s my background, right? I come into places and assess the situation, and we put a motion in place. Really, what we’re trying to do, Robert, very quickly is create what we’ll call a segment-optimized channel, so that we have the right people focused on the right things. We have way too many partners here. I’m sorry to say that, but it was just sign up anybody and everyone. It’s the old 80/20 rule. Twenty percent of them are representing 80 percent of the revenue. So we have to bring in distribution. We have to do things like that. That said, going back to your question, I kind of look at the world in three phases right now. What we’re trying to do is focus on the coverage first, focus on how we’re going to engage and how we’re going to teach our partners how to recognize a KnowBe4 opportunity. That’s the table stakes in phase one over the next 90 days here. Then there is an opportunity, without a doubt. We have to pull that lever with the channel program to drive the behaviours, but also just the alignment with the partner community. I have no hesitation saying that we have a little friction in the gears as far as just too many non-standard pricing scenarios for the segments we play in. What I mean by that is there has to be a partner program that has enough discount stack in it that incorporates distribution, for instance, and even incorporates, we’ll say, the hyperscalers into an opportunity. So one, we capture everybody involved in the opportunity, but two, so that they are self-servicing as far as the channel and distribution to work with their customers without having to come back to us for support on additional quotes, et cetera. And then phase three, like I said, is we’re off and running like a rocket come the beginning of next year. It’s go time. The mantra I’ve been using internally is: go, go, go. No more no, no, no. **Robert Dutt:** You mentioned the channel has kind of been an everyone’s-invited kind of thing, which does lead to that large channel partner base where no one’s really closely — or not many are closely — aligned. Have you been there long enough to see the common threads for what makes one of those 20 percent of partners who do 80 percent of the work the kinds of folks you want to build that program around for the next generation? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, it’s a really good question. When I look at the profile or common denominator, they’re selling what I’ll call — we have probably 70 integrated solutions with other vendors. So they’re selling maybe a CrowdStrike, maybe they’re selling a Netskope or somebody like that, where we have integrations. Think about that better-together story. They’re already talking to customers and having those conversations about their transformations. For us, we want to be part of that conversation because we do provide value with all the solutions we have now to them with those integrations. So I think that’s a big part of it. **Robert Dutt:** At Trellix, you talked a lot about specializations and partner certifications that kind of align with industry best practices. Is that still kind of the playbook or the guideline here — more tiers, more specializations — or is this sort of a simplification situation? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, a little different situation. That’s where the two companies are very different. I had over 55 different solutions at Trellix. There is no way I’m ever going to a partner community and say, learn 55 different solutions, Robert. One of the things I had to do immediately there was just break it down to specializations and really try to cater to the fact that if a partner really focuses on endpoint, here’s the track you’ll go to learn. If you’re focusing on this area or that area, go there. Here it’s a little bit different. We’ve been an industry leader for a long, long time as far as our awareness training goes, and really what we’ve done is we’ve just incorporated new pieces to it to make it more of a full solution. So the challenge and the opportunity I have here is going to the partner community and letting them be aware of all the different things we do. They just don’t know. We have to be more front and present with them to educate them, so they are better serving their customers as well. **Robert Dutt:** You touched on distributors and needing to get distribution in place and figured out a while ago. Where are you at today? Are distribution relationships in place, particularly here in Canada? And where do you see that going over the short to medium term? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, another loaded question. As I mentioned earlier, there is no way I could ever hire enough people to support the amount of partners we have. So we have to be very conscious of the profile of the partners where we need to have people in field and present in the territories or at these big partners every day. That’s a big part of it. But I don’t want to dismiss or forget about the fact that we do have this whole other set of partners, probably a few thousand of them, that we still want to do business with. But we believe if we leverage distribution, they may do a better job than us to make sure they’re readily available, accessible and can support their opportunities they have from time to time. So to answer your question, internationally we’ve just recently signed up Infinigate, and we’re starting to get them ramped up. In North America, we have Carahsoft for our public sector business, SLED. What’s really powerful, as a pleasant surprise when I came in, is we’re working with almost a thousand of the 3,000-plus universities in North America. That’s a really powerful building block to have. But what we haven’t done, and what I’m in the process of doing over the next 90 days, is making sure we’re leveraging and picking the right distributor that aligns to our needs. And that is somebody who can support our long tail of partners in a very proactive way. And there are a couple we’re talking to right now. **Robert Dutt:** So it sounds like specialist distribution is kind of in place for deeper support, and maybe you’re looking to expand on the more broadline, long-tail-supporting kind of distributor. **Kurt Mills:** Without a doubt. And even go as far as beyond our long-tail partners, our MSPs. If you look at Infinigate internationally, they have an MSP program within themselves. And there are a couple that do here with wonderful platforms to support them. So I think as you wake up into the new year with KnowBe4, you’re going to see what I want to say are more best practices as far as how you scale by leveraging these different channel routes to market, including distribution. **Robert Dutt:** Your bio mentioned building teams through IPOs, acquisitions, rapid expansion, the latter of which is obviously a goal here. But you’re walking into a company that went private a few years back. Does that change the channel strategy at all and how you think about it? Is the goal to build for eventual exit, and how do you balance that against kind of long-term partner-value types of questions? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, it doesn’t really change the approach. I’m not a big believer in this word “playbook.” You really have to kind of assess and diagnose before you prescribe anything. You heard me say companies with good bones. I’ve gone to companies where they’re like, “Kurt, we need to get through $500 million or a billion dollars.” I’ve gone to those who say, “Hey, Kurt, we want to go public,” or, “We want to sell the company in 12 to 18 or 24 months.” It’s really about outcomes in some ways and understanding and really having the transparency from the executive teams as to what they’re trying to achieve here. You’re right. We went back private, and there is a huge opportunity for us to go back public, for instance. And to do that, there are certain best practices that have to be in place, even from a channel perspective, and rules of engagement and integrity aspects that have to be done. Again, I’m very fortunate that they have a lot of this already in place. We just need to evolve it a bit to be more meaningful with the partner community, but also just be easier to work with. **Robert Dutt:** Something I’ve noticed, I think, is accelerating over the last 18 months and really accelerating of late: cyber insurance providers asking for proof of security awareness training as part of their overall requirements. Do you see that kind of human risk management becoming a standard managed service that MSPs bundle, say, the way they do endpoint and backup today? And if so, what is the margin? What does the business look like for a partner today and into the future? **Kurt Mills:** Well, let me start by saying I hope so. I hope so. I hope there’s regulations around it, because that’s certainly great for us, right? I would say that one will take me a little bit longer to figure out the how, Robert. But I will say this: one of those channel routes to market is, there are OEM relationships, there are tech alliance relationships. We talked about a few from the traditional cybersecurity vendors, but there are other relationships we’re having conversations with that are more aligned to the area that you just highlighted. And there’s a very great interest from those companies to partner with us in some smart way. **Robert Dutt:** One of the big words of the industry and the channel, of course, is ecosystem: the idea that it’s not always going to be one vendor and one partner going to market with a customer because there’s a wider range or wide variety of things that need to be solved for. You obviously touched on that in mentioning that one of your key definers of a good KnowBe4 partner is one who takes you and a bunch of complementary things and goes to the customer with that all brought together and thought through. But when you’re doing that, how do you manage channel conflict, different models between the vendors and those kinds of things between yourselves and the EDR, the email security vendors and the other folks that they’re carrying as well? **Kurt Mills:** You heard me mention earlier, we’re pretty fortunate. Again, one of those pleasant surprises when I got here is I didn’t realize we had 70 native integrations with all these different vendors. That’s a wonderful storyline in itself because it’s telling you they’re looking to us to complement how they’re going to market. And some of those companies, as you know, are the biggest cybersecurity companies in the world. So that tells you something there. But I think there’s also an understanding, as we get the message out more. We do have 16 years of behavioural threat intelligence. Nobody has that. And kind of a shout-out to my competitors, but I know how you go to market. I’ve worked for some of you. Ultimately there’s an opportunity for us to really leverage, as you talked about, the beginnings of this company that now really resonates. So that 16 years of intelligence really is going to help us out as far as where we go next and how our partners position us alongside some of these other technologies. **Robert Dutt:** That’s mostly the technology side of it, which is often different from the business integration side of things. Is there any concern there? How do you think about that when you’re going to market, kind of not directly hand-in-hand but also in partnership with some of these folks who have complementary business models? **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, well, I would say we’ll schedule a follow-up call at some time here in the near future, and you’ll see one of those very large organizations who are now starting to, let’s just say, promote us over their own technologies because they know their customers are asking for it. **Robert Dutt:** All right, that’s a good teaser for the near future. I appreciate that. Along those lines, if we talk again in a year, what will have changed for a KnowBe4 partner? What’s the one big thing that you hope you’ll be able to stand there and say, “Bam, that’s what I did?” **Kurt Mills:** Yeah, well, my hope is pretty simple, and that is our growth is increasing significantly with them because they know us, they trust us. More importantly, they know how to position us in the marketplace. And as a result, we’re having a conversation about how close we are to passing through a billion dollars as an organization. And our partners are more talking to us: How do we do more? How do I get more people involved? **Robert Dutt:** And last one for me. For the MSP or VAR who’s listening and says, “Okay, I’ve heard of KnowBe4, but I’ve never really figured out how to make money with them,” what’s kind of the pitch? Why should they take another look at KnowBe4 right now? **Kurt Mills:** I would say this to the MSP community: We can do better. We can do better. And that’s an area that I really am digging into right now, Robert. There are certain areas that, from a platform standpoint, we can be more MSP-friendly. We do have some MSPs that do a great job. But again, you heard me talk about programmatically, operationally, really deciding as a company: What does MSP mean to us? It’s always an interesting thing, Robert. I’ll leave you with this thought: Every company I go into, I say, “Tell me your definition of MSP.” And 50 percent of the time I hear the words, “Well, this systems integrator.” And I’m like, “No, that’s managed infrastructure. That’s not MSP.” “Well, this MSP…” I’m like, “No, that’s a reseller. That’s not MSP.” So again, it always starts with the idea of what is MSP going to mean to us, so we have a clear, clear go-to-market strategy that MSPs can decide to participate in. **Robert Dutt:** Good luck on defining that and building out the channel program. It’ll be an interesting one to watch over the next year. And thank you again for taking the time. **Kurt Mills:** Appreciate it, Robert. And if we decide to get together at some point, I don’t mind going to Canada in the winter. I’m used to it. **Robert Dutt:** I appreciate that. All right, take care. There you have it, Kurt Mills from KnowBe4. I’d like to thank Kurt for his time and for being as candid as he was about what’s working and what isn’t, particularly on the MSP front, where he was direct that KnowBe4 has room to improve. Some thoughts on this one. KnowBe4 has a channel scaling problem, and they’ve hired someone who’s done this before. His three-phase plan — fix coverage, fix the program and then accelerate — is sensible. But the real test is whether Canadian partners see field presence and distribution presence that matches that plan. Kurt’s committed to a follow-up conversation down the road, so we’ll hold him to that. For the channel community, this is worth watching. If you’re an MSP who looked at KnowBe4 and bounced off the platform experience, Kurt’s explicitly asking you to take another look. And if you’re a VAR already carrying CrowdStrike, Netskope and other vendors in the KnowBe4 integration ecosystem, there’s probably a better-together conversation you could be having. Thanks for listening today. Please follow or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and most podcast directories. And if you want to leave a rating or review, we’d love that. Until next time, I’m Robert Dutt for ChannelBuzz.ca, and I’ll see you in the channel.
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