Ian Gordon, Trend Micro Canada’s channel chief and marketing director, isn’t saying the security developer is a managed services provider, but the company’s Worry Free 7 Business Security suite Version 7 can be hosted and administered in a Web browser.
Trend Micro released Worry Free 7 specifically for SMB market customers who do not have a dedicated IT department or staff. Worry Free 7 comes with integrated Mac and PC-client protection through a single management console that enables either a customer or solution provider to view security status and configuration for both Windows and Mac platforms.
Worry Free 7 also features email data loss prevention technology for those accidental or deliberate loss of data incidents. And, Worry Free 7 also has USB control that can restrict access to USB ports to prevent anyone copying information to portable USB drives and to prevent threats from originating from USB drives.
The hosted version of Worry Free is currently not at the same stage as Worry Free 7 for SMB, but the technology functions as a managed service where the security suite is deployed out to laptops and desktops in a SMB environment.
“We are not a managed services provider; we just host the service and its one more piece for smaller resellers who do offer managed services to offer control and worry free installation,” Gordon said.He believes this solution is perfect for VARs with 20 to 30 customers and it offers them one Web interface to make policy changes. “The other guys don’t have this. This is uber-management control for all customers, while the others do it one at a time,” Gordon added.
Trend Micro’s channel strategy with Worry Free 7 is to be totally committed to selling through solution providers. “This year is the first time ever that Trend Micro will be run in Canada by Canadians. We are going to be dedicated to the channel. It is a big piece of what we do and we are really excited to be here and everything will go through the channel,” he said.With that Trend Micro is offering 30 per cent margins to solution providers.
According to Gordon, Trend Micro takes another approach to security and they try to prevent viruses and malware from ever entering your computer. “The market says that all the anti-virus protection is the same, but we have a different approach with our security. We look at the threat landscape and with threats occurring every 1.5 seconds we recognize that PC scans do not work and it slows down the PC’s performance,” Gordon said.
Trend Micro has built a Web app that can send data from the user to the company and while there it’s determined to be either good or bad.
This information helps Trend Micro receive up-to-date information on threats and it does not interfere with the speed of the user’s machine.
“Our focus as a company is to stop the threats from getting to the machine and not relying on checking files when it’s on the machine. We try to block the threats from entering your machine. It’s like you have a fly in the room and your try to kill it with a fly swatter. We instead put a screen on the door and the flies can’t come in.”