Abnormal AI seeks to widen channel base

The combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and security ticks the top concerns of most customers, and spells, in large letters, an opportunity for the channel.

For those working in that sector, the challenge is to work with the right partners and attract those wanting to deliver solutions that secure AI.

James Anderson, the recently appointed international senior director at Abnormal AI, is currently navigating through that process and is keen to broaden and deepen the channel base for the cloud and email security specialist.

He has joined a business that has already built a channel base, but is now looking for further growth through its partners.

“We’ve done an incredibly good job in our core markets, UK and Benelux in particular, of establishing a core base of what we call our focus partners. Those are partners that have made a movement towards us, and we’ve made a movement towards them, and we’ve mutually committed to go and grow the business together,” he said.

“They tend to be partners that have a cyber security slant to them. They are partners that have large market reach. We’ve reciprocated that, and we always try to go to market with them,” he added.

The firm is putting Abnormal-sourced business through its channel, while also encouraging partners to come up with their own opportunities, which it can then support.

“My job is to try and get all that Abnormal-sourced to flow through the partners that we really want to work with, so that we can then use that leverage to get more partner-sourced,” he said.

Anderson said focusing on abnormalities, particularly when human behaviour changes, is a powerful way of spotting security issues.

“We’re now looking at the behaviour that happens once something is in the environment. Does something change in terms of the way they communicate? Does something change in terms of the to and from addresses on an email that you wouldn’t necessarily pick up? It becomes much more about that, and absolutely it’s the human in the middle,” he said.

“If you think about email in particular, it is probably the easiest way to reach an individual within an organisation,” he added. “The bad actors are trying to manipulate humans into doing something that will compromise them. They’re trying to do one of two things. They’re either trying to get your credentials so that they can gain access and pretend to be you in your environment, or they’re trying to trick you into making some kind of payment externally or do something that will allow them to make gain from it, and that is all human behaviour.”

With criminals using AI to make their attacks more sophisticated, personal and difficult to detect, Anderson said there was an opportunity for partners to pitch a more disruptive security solution.

“We’re seeing much more sophisticated targeted attacks that are behaviour-based, trying to get [users] to do something rather than delivering a payload through the email,” he said.

“What we’re trying to do is see when the tone changes, or something changes in that communication thread that was different to how it was before,” he added.

Anderson said the task for now is expanding the channel base in regions where Abnormal AI is not well represented and in established markets, including the UK, to generate more demand and increase partner support.

“We have a set of focus partners for each of our core markets, and I’m targeting how do we deepen and strengthen those relationships? But I’m also looking at what’s the next set of growth partners that we can go work with, and who are the ones that I would really want to work with, which we’re not at the moment. And I’m looking at ways in which we can open up some of those partnerships,” he said.

“We also look at different types of markets. So, our traditional way of working is to look at value-add resellers or solution providers. One of our really great sales motions is that we’re a great add-on to Microsoft, and by adding on to Microsoft, the customer can maybe eliminate some of the cost of a secure email gateway that they may have had,” he added. “So, I’m looking at, should we be looking at some of the larger Microsoft partners?”