Selling software has always been a competitive game, with vendors vying against one another to clinch deals and gain entrez for their technologies at ever more user sites. That overarching focus on pushing products, rather than solving problems, hasn’t necessarily served customers well in the past.

It certainly doesn’t where cybersecurity is concerned. Spending several years working in the sector, including a four year stretch being exposed to a local organisation which grew its security division from three employees to 70, has given me a pretty good handle on how businesses think when it comes to protecting their infrastructure, systems and data, from hackers and cyber-criminals.

Since the onset of the Covid crisis, doing so has become an increasingly urgent imperative, for organisations of all stripes and sizes. The frequency and severity of attacks has risen significantly – the Australian Cyber Security Centre received more than 67,500 cyber-crime reports in the 2020-21 financial year, up 13 per cent from the previous financial year – and so has the average loss per successful event.

Gartner projections suggest that major ransomware attacks, such as those which crippled beverage giant Lion’s operations back in June 2020, could cost more than $5600 a minute, according to Food and Drink Business.

Meanwhile, attackers are becoming more sophisticated and organised and businesses know they’re squarely in the firing line. Many have accepted that, realistically, when it comes to falling victim, it’s now a case of not if, but when.

Solutions not sales

Against that backdrop, business leaders and security chiefs aren’t just looking to get their hands on a string of tools and technologies that promise to deliver best of breed protection for various elements of the enterprise’s ICT ecosystem.

What they really want is for those products to work together, to form a comprehensive, robust protection layer; one that gives their enterprise the ability to deter and repel infiltrators and detect and neutralise them rapidly, in the event they’re able to slide through best defences.

Arriving at that status quo becomes significantly easier when vendors are willing to collaborate with one another; to align and integrate their products to create solutions that are compatible with customers’ existing operating environments and risk profiles. Automating, consolidating and simplifying processes, and achieving greater visibility into the entire network, should be the end goal.

Supporting the channel

Taking this tack isn’t only in the best interest of customers; it’s good for resellers too. Every channel partner I’ve spoken with (and they are numerous!) agrees it’s the best way forward. They recognise the benefits for customers and they realise that solving problems rather than selling products will build customer loyalty and trust, and up their annual earnings to boot.

That’s because tightly integrated products tend to enjoy greater longevity than point products that are easily swapped in and out.

Moreover, customers are more likely to make greater use of the functionality and features their chosen products offer; thereby eliminating duplication and gaps in their protection layers.

Working together

ExtraHop’s focus on collaboration with other premium vendors was one of the things that prompted me to join the company in late 2021. Its global partnership with CrowdStrike, signed in June 2020, has seen the two organisations marry their best of breed detection and response capabilities to provide comprehensive network to endpoint protection. The net result? A stronger security posture for their thousands of joint customers around the world.

Since coming on board in the ExtraHop ANZ office, I’ve made it my business to begin seeking out opportunities for us to form more technology alliances and relationships, at a local level – and to communicate the benefits of doing so to our network of channel partners. Joint marketing and events will allow us to share those benefits, in turn, with the ExtraHop user base here in Australia.

It’s a change in modus operandi for all of us but one I’m confident will enable our reseller partners to continue servicing local customers differently and better in today’s complex and challenging threat landscape.