Deep Instinct reaches out to MSSPs

The source of security solutions has widened over the past few years, with the channel just as likely to be pitched a data protection solution from a storage or cloud vendor.

Some in the security industry have responded by seizing the initiative and coming up with proactive, rather than reactive, tools to give MSSPs and security resellers something to pitch.

Deep Instinct, which uses deep learning to identify threats before they become a major problem, recently landed $100m in Series D funding to support its go-to-market strategy.

Brooks Wallace, vice-president of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) sales at Deep Instinct, said the technology was there to help MSSPs help their customers get a step ahead of the cyber criminals.

“People say, ‘Well I’ve heard it all before, there’s artificial intelligence’, but they don't understand that there’s artificial intelligence and machine learning, and some of that is deep learning, deeper than machine learning,” he said.

“Deep learning works by building a neurological network with all these algorithms, sitting there to learn on its own from a vast amount of raw data. So we don’t give it what is benign or malicious files, we give it all the data and we let it learn on its own and it makes its decision process, organically and autonomously, and it is much more accurate than machine learning.

“We are spending a lot of time evangelising right now because what we’re talking about with deep learning is that it’s not a foreign concept. Prevention has always been the kind of the holy grail of security and has not been achieved, until now.”

Deep Instinct has been taking out the solution to challenge the traditional anti-virus market and arm its partners with something that should gain customer interest.

Wallace said that when it came to expanding its channel, it looked to work with those that really understood the market. “Our focus is on the ones that know about security, that are gathering managed endpoints for their customers, and they’re coming to us to replace legacy AV and replace next-gen technology that is not blocking the ransomware,” he said.

“That’s where we’re finding opportunity. The deals that we’ve signed in the last 12 months, the majority of them across Europe, have been with larger MSPs that want to roll this out and replace their existing AV technology.

“Since we do not compete directly with EDR companies, since we can augment that technology stack, we’re able to fit into a mature resellers model portfolio.”