MSPs will be forced to fix 'rushed out' remote working solutions post-COVID - SonicWall CEO

SonicWall's CEO says end users will turn to the channel to re-do some of the "rushed engineering" fixes firms put in place at the start of lockdown to enable remote working.

Bill Conner told CPI that as changes to work patterns look set to far outlast the pandemic, pivoting out of lockdown will mean some of the earlier "temporary" remote working solutions will need to be re-engineered.

"Many of us are not going to bring our big offices back," he said.

"When you look at the bigger picture, businesses are now trying to re-engineer.

"One of our largest clients has 400 thousand people. The CIO called me mid-March and said, ‘Bill, we normally engineer for 30 to 50 per cent to work remotely at any one time. Now, today, tomorrow, I need 400,000 people enabled.' "

Conner says the cybersecurity vendor is working with its European partners including Exertis and Infinigate to help customers make longer-term plans for secure remote access.

He added that it's a direct response to the spike in hackers targeting new vulnerabilities in businesses' remote working infrastructures.

"Macroscopically the bad side is changing too. We have talked about state actors upping and ramping up ransomware," he said.

"So interest in VPN and SSL, and SMA are through the roof. Government, enterprise and small business are increasingly being hit.

"Globally, I call it a tsunami of getting remote access turned on, because everybody regardless of scale was looking for mobile access.

"But now they are going to need to lock it down and secure it more long-term, and ask how they do it remotely and what their profile posture is. Suddenly you see best of breed technologies come to the fore and customers realise how little they've thought about cloud app security."

To help customers re-think their remote working security strategy, SonicWall has just launched SonicWall Boundless, a campaign for partners to choose mix-and-match security solution bundles.

"You can have remote worker capture client for your endpoint, capture application security for cloud apps, VPN SSL for your firewall, or SMA if you want to secure VPN and Capture Sec Centre for capture ATP behind all that," Conner said.

"Capture ATP brings together security and RTDMI behind all those points, you can see it. You can look at your risks profile, user by user across the entire platform.

"Launching those bundles last week is our way of helping them roll out this security on their own and help partners see the new norm."

Conner says that the US vendor will be upping its training and marketing support for partners around SonicWall Boundless in the coming months.

"We work with distributors first because they are the first line of support but they have asked us to up video content like SonicWall University. We already have training products there.

"Also, we will have marketing support to get the message out, so when they go to call there's awareness of the capabilities we have.

"The message is, here's what layered security looks like for your remote workforce."

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• Topics
• Vendor
• SonicWall
• Bill Conner
• cybersecurity
• remote working
• COVID-19