Cybercrime is headline news on a daily basis, from massive email breaches to leaked classified documents, even to claims of foreign nation states tampering with our presidential election process. When President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 145 on Sept. 17, 1984, it was our country’s first national policy around the threat of cyberattack and cyberwarfare. But back in 1984, I don’t think anyone could have imagined the threats we face today. Cybercrime is much more than a threat to our national security, or a threat to enterprise organizations. It has evolved to become a major criminal enterprise aimed at financial gain, targeting consumers and companies of all sizes.
The new millennium of cybersecurity
This is one of the reasons why Ingram Micro put a big focus on our cybersecurity business in the new millennium. Over the last 17 years, our cybersecurity practice has become an award-winning, multibillion-dollar, dedicated security business unit, with over 40 market-leading and emerging security vendors, that provides security solutions and services to over 10,000 resellers annually.
Cyberattacks—not if, but when
Businesses are the primary targets of cyberattacks. Small and midsize businesses constitute 62% of all known cyberattacks. It’s assumed that the percentage is higher due to unknown attacks. On average, there are 34,529 known computer security incidents per day in the U.S.—cybercrime is big business. Cybercriminals look to cash in on the estimated value of $450 billion to over $1 trillion of the hacker economy. Couple these attacks with the proliferation of devices and endpoints, fueled by the growth of mobile and IoT, and it’s no longer a matter of if businesses will be attacked. It’s a matter of how you will respond to the attack when it happens.
The Security Sales Cycle
With these risks and challenges in mind, we have built a framework to help you to become more profitable, highly trusted security advisors, regardless of the maturity of your security practice. It’s designed to provide a path to business transformation, and to position incremental and profitable services and solutions throughout the entire security sales cycle.
> Training services: The sales cycle starts with training and education. It’s a proven fact that channel partners that invest in certification training sell more. We have also expanded our offerings to help you to transform your business with business-building, security-focused workshops and security awareness training from vendor partners like Cisco and Sophos. For example, we’ve partnered with David Stelzl to help you be more successful as demand for managed security services is at an all-time high. And security awareness training is critical to protecting businesses. According to Symantec’s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report, spear-phishing campaigns increased 55% in 2015, and once a business was targeted for attack, it saw an average of 3.6 successful attacks. And about two-thirds of U.S. office workers are unaware of the ransomware threat. This is a great opportunity for channel partners to position these trainings to their clients, to better protect their end-customer companies.
> Pre-sales professional services: We employ our own, Ingram Micro-badged, certified ethical hackers who can perform assessments on your behalf. These assessments include penetration tests, web vulnerability assessments and social-engineering attacks where we deploy our own spear phishing techniques. We’re also expanding our proof-of-concept services and line card from vendors like Check Point, Cisco, Fortinet and SonicWall.
> Operations and enablement: This category touches on all of the channel-enablement services Ingram Micro provides—from deal registration to partner program excellence to market development and licensing. Our technical enablement teams also augment the efforts of our vendors’ channel teams to help you be more profitable. Lastly, we are uniquely qualified to help you deliver multi-vendor solutions. For example, to address the growing ransomware concerns, we can help you to position the right backup storage solutions and security technologies.
> Financial services: As you work through the sales cycle and identify the right solution for you and your customer, we can help you find the best way to pay for and deploy the technology. We have a number of financial services programs, but that’s just a part of the solution. With growing demand for cloud and hybrid cloud environments, in addition to demand for MSP programs, we have a solution to help you close the sale.
> Post-sales professional services: IM Link is a network of Ingram Micro solution providers offering an array of professional services to enhance or expand your capabilities. We’ve also added specific SKU’d services for vendors, including Forcepoint, Fortinet and Proofpoint, to deliver remote implementation services. This is a great opportunity to deliver expert implementations that will ensure that all of the features and benefits have been professionally installed and deployed.
> Managed services: Now that you’ve moved your way through the sales cycle, and the technology has been professionally installed, you’ll need to manage it. You’ll need the right tools to manage the policies and alerts that are occurring at an exponential rate, so you can take action and remediate the most important notifications. We help you position services in this category from our vendor’s own management tools, SIEM technologies, and offerings from Foresite and NetEnrich.
Security: Partner for Profits
Looking at this holistically, I believe that if you partner with Ingram Micro Security to offer new services, or to augment your existing services throughout this framework, you’ll be more profitable and highly trusted, security providers.
Cybercrime is more than a threat to our national security—it’s a trillion-dollar problem that’s impacting all of us as technology users. And cybersecurity isn’t a sell-it-and-forget-it sale. It’s a services-rich market with incredible demand. Your customers don’t want products. They want business outcomes to solve their problems, and they need trusted security advisors to get there.
More Info: For more information, visit the Ingram Micro Security & Services website or send us an email.
Eric Kohl is vice president advanced solutions, networking and security, Ingram Micro. Read more Ingram Micro blogs here.
