Channel-first cybersecurity provider SonicWall is adding support for vendors SentinelOne and Cylance to its managed detection and response (MDR) solution, which will create a co-managed security service for MSPs who offer SonicWall Capture Client or Windows Defender.
The move is part of what SonicWall CEO Bob VanKirk is calling an endpoint-agnostic solution, and it’s part of a larger strategy to welcome vendors important to MSPs into the SonicWall ecosystem.
The company plans to assemble a platform of many managed services that will be "tailor-made" for MSPs.
Michael Crean, VP of managed services at SonicWall, told ChannelE2E that SonicWall will continue to look to add to this lineup in the months ahead. Crean joined SonicWall in November 2023 when the cybersecurity vendor acquired the master MSSP Solutions Granted, which Crean founded and led. With the addition of Solutions Granted, SonicWall got into the MDR business.
Expanding SonicWall's Cybersecurity Strategy and Mission
SonicWall is looking to become the go-to solution for MSPs’ cybersecurity needs, expanding beyond its three-decade legacy reputation as a firewall provider, Crean said.
“Partners make choices in their security stack that are good for them and good for their customers,” Crean said. “And (partners) don’t want to have to do a rip and replace…Now, if we find a partner out there that loves SentinelOne, and they are using it, but they don’t have an SOC, they can come over to us. It’s a simple, easy migration. We put all of our rules and intelligence behind it. We put our 24 by 7 US-based security operations center behind it.”
This kind of solution helps MSPs with the issue of vendor sprawl, Crean added. Partners can migrate their existing SentinelOne licences over to SonicWall, and then SonicWall provides the license, the billing, the accounting, tier 1 and tier 2 support, all training and all of the required SOC services.
Creating a Single Ecosystem for MSP Cybersecurity
Chandrodaya Prasad, SonicWall’s executive VP of product management, design and marketing, told ChannelE2E that because of vendor sprawl, partners are looking for a ‘best-of-suite’ rather than a ‘best-of-breed’ when it comes to cybersecurity.
“They are looking for a vendor that can integrate all these capabilities under one single ecosystem, and that’s why we are building this platform ecosystem,” Prasad said. “As we move towards the future, months from now, those vendors that integrate well within the ecosystem, plus integrate with third-party capabilities outside of what their capabilities are, are the ones which will rule the roost.”
Prasad said SonicWall is looking to build out a security ecosystem for MSPs that provides easy-to-deploy capabilities that are backed up by reliable support and are cost-effective. They are also looking for an ecosystem with flexible consumption models, he said.
SonicWall has been working to build out on this vision with these new additions, with the acquisition of Solutions Granted in November 2023, and with another more recent acquisition. SonicWall acquired Banyan Security, a cloud-based provider of security service edge (SSE) solutions in early January 2024. Their product lines are aimed at companies replacing legacy architectures with SSE technology and zero trust network access (ZTNA).
“We are building a cybersecurity platform for MSPs that actually brings together all of these different capabilities under one unified portal,” Prasad said.
