Q&A: talking cybersecurity solutions, services and trends with Ingram Micro’s Security Business Unit

Q&A: talking cybersecurity solutions, services and trends with Ingram Micro’s Security Business Unit

24 January 2022

With the threats and market opportunities surrounding cybersecurity more challenging than ever, Ingram Micro’s experienced Security Business Unit helps our channel partners become more profitable and highly trusted security advisors.
 
To learn more about the value this cross-functional team brings to our partners, Ingram Micro spoke briefly to three of their experts: Jacob White, Senior Security Consultant; Brian Rauls, Senior Technical Marketing Engineer; and Thomas Mroz, Cybersecurity Consultant.

What does your team do in a nutshell?

Thomas: We help our reseller partners expand and grow their business through security services and solutions that fit their go-to-market needs. There hasn’t been a solution we haven’t been able to fill for someone, even if it’s financing. And if we don’t do it directly, we have professional services and Ingram Micro Link to get partners to do it for us. Our philosophy is never turn down a cybersecurity opportunity.

What’s the benefit of your team being cross-functional?

Jacob: We can’t all be experts on every technology because there’s a million. We each specialize in different segments. There’s a lot of collaboration and tossing things over the fence to team members with the specific focus that fits what our partners need.
 
Brian: We all have knowledge of our security line card which has about 110 vendors on there and we all understand how to address our reseller partners’ needs with specific solutions.

What are the primary cybersecurity challenges your partners and their customers are facing today?

Jacob: Ransomware, MFA, phishing and email security awareness, not knowing the state of their network security, unpatched devices…there’s a whole gamut of things everybody is worried about. It’s not just one thing, because if you have a network, it’s all these things. Our goal is to have a comprehensive conversation; a partner might ask for identity access management, but what are they doing for patch management? We make sure they’re expanding their horizons to other considerations and find solutions for that, too.
 
Brian: Not only tools, but staffing is a huge issue. Partners come to us and say, “Hey, I lost 3 engineers. How can I function with what I have?” We help partners do more with less, whether that’s staff augmentation and professional services for our partners and their customers, or we can help with staffing as well.

Can you talk more about the uptick of managed services and do you expect that trend to continue?

Jacob: The great benefit of managed services is resellers are getting a double whammy in their ability to earn revenue. The reseller gets to resell the tool and get an hourly or monthly fee to manage it, which is where the money is made. It’s opened a new revenue stream that’s easy to operate, which is great during a time when we’re having supply chain issues.
 
Thomas: We have vendors who won’t have hardware until 2023. Imagine if your business revolves around hardware sales. That isn’t an option for the next year. So you need to offset that with something else. It’s a lot easier to sell services you can manage and maintain than sell a product over and over. So overall services are going to have a huge play going forward in helping people run their environments more efficiently with what they already have.