Webroot will integrate its managed data protection solutions into Labtech's remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, the first phase of an initiative to expand its presence in the MSP community, Webroot executives said.
Webroot has bolstered its channel partner program to make it easier for MSPs to deliver its Webroot SecureAnywhere Business -- Endpoint Protection with management automation and virtualized environment support, according to the Broomfield, Colo.-based company.
Jeff Santelices, vice president of worldwide demand fulfillment at Webroot, said the Labtech integration is the first step in attracting MSPs to the company.
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"We recognize that in order to be successful we absolutely have to be engaged and partnered with various RMM providers in the market. The first partnership we've developed is Labtech. We've built scripts and capabilities that allow MSP customers to manage and deploy and have executive management functions through the Labtech console itself," Santelices said.
Webroot expects to integrate into other RMM platforms in 2013 but did not name specific companies nor a time table.
"We're actively engaged and investigating other solution sets. We're engaging leaders in the space. As we continue to go to market, we need to make sure our solution works with other platforms that MSPs are relying on. All that said, we are in phase one," Santelices said. "We're very excited about our partnership with Labtech. We anticipate much more to come."
Webroot's MSP program includes volume discounts and benefits similar to other vendors' channel programs, but the company needs to formalize those offerings, Santelices said.
"We fully recognize that we may need to expand and morph how it is we deliver solutions in the market to ensure MSP partners are able to slot our solution set into a seamless environment," Santelices said. "In this phase, we're comfortable we should be able to gain traction above and beyond where we are today."
Webroot's cloud-based SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Security keeps a light agent, around 700 KB, on a client, Santelices said. The solution accesses the cloud to actively compare the client's files to known malware and virus threats, as opposed to storing a growing database of threat files on each client.
"Virtually every one of the [other] solutions in the market, even if they claim to have a cloud-based solution, are all highly reliant on identifying a piece of software, creating a definition file that protects the endpoint from a piece of malware. They all rely on signature files that are local," Santelices said. "The challenge of that is as the threat environment [grows], those endpoint clients get larger and larger and require more overhead from the system, both in memory and CPU. It becomes a burden to the client and reduces the productivity of the user to do his or her work."
Instead, Webroot regularly checks the client against Webroot's 75-TB threat database in the cloud, Santelices said. Webroot takes a quick snapshot of every file on every client and tracks the behavior of the file, comparing everything on the system to everything that Webroot has ever seen, Santelices said.
"As soon as we ID behaviors that are in fact malicious, a piece of malware, we'll make a determination in the cloud to stop [that file] from executing," he said. "We roll back everything that file has done to its time on the system and return to a pristine state."
PUBLISHED DEC. 17, 2012
