Partners are always looking for new ways to have a conversation with their clients about IT needs, and networking security vendor Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is hoping its new “3D” network security assessments will be a conversation starter, and lead generator, for its channel partners.
Check Point has developed a network security assessment that can plug into a customer environment and analyze its security vulnerabilities, creating a report that indicates what pieces may be missing and what pieces of Check Point’s security portfolio may be most beneficial to their particular network environment. Partners can chose to brand the report as their own, and when confidentiality is an issue the partner and even the customer can be given the tools to perform the assessment themselves.
Paul Comessotti, Canadian regional director for Check Point, said it will provide partners with actionable business intelligence to use in their customer engagements. Partners will also be provided monetary incentives to complete the assessments, earning $1,000 per 10 completed.
“This will be one of the major initiatives we’re launching together with our partners this year,” said Comessotti.
Kellman Meghu, head of security engineering for Check Point in Canada and the Central U.S., added the assessments allow partners to have a conversation about specific issue with the customer’s own network, not a broad conversation about threats in the abstract.
“With this information up front I can have a much more valuable conversation with my client,” said Meghu. “Customers don’t care about how other environments work; they care about how theirs works.”
Meghu sees the assessments as arming IT and network security managers with valuable information they can take to their c-level executives and make the business case for investment in their security infrastructure.
“Nothing breaks my heart more than a company spending all their security budget and finding out its not effective,” said Meghu.
On another networking front, Meghu said there hasn’t been much activity in Canada yet on the IPV6 front as Canada is still running-out its supply of IPV4 addresses, but he expects it to become a major issue this year.
“I think in Canada it’s not really on a lot of company’s radar as we still have a lot of addresses. It hasn’t been as urgent as we thought it was,” said Meghu, “We really think it will hit this year. It will be a period of adjustment, and security will be a key component.”
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