Find the right product, and they will buy: For VARs just coming into the market to sell UTM appliances, you want to look at a company with good name recognition that also has a good, stable product. Look for the nicer features, like enhanced firmware to give granularity over NAT tables and firewall rules. You've got to get a reliable solution that's got easy setup and configuration, a stable platform, speed, performance and all those good things.
You're the expert; act like it: Customers are cool. They'll listen to you as a trusted adviser, so it's up to you to make the right decision on what solution you recommend for them. We sell UTM devices day in and day out. There was some stagnation last year, when people needed to get up to speed on the learning curve for these appliances. Now they're an easy sell.
It pays to be secure: When people look at the cost of this stuff, they are going to listen when you go up to them and say, 'Look, everything evolves, threats evolve,' and you say, 'Every three years, you're going to be upgrading this device, because threats are evolving and security gets upgraded.' Look, we're not manufacturing lightbulbs here.
Talk up scalability: We recommend SonicWall's UTM appliances. They've got a range of products that scales for SoHo to the small office of 10 to 25 users. Anything larger than that, we go with the TZ 190 with unrestricted nodes. You should also be looking for a device with wireless cards that gives wide-area connectivity, so you've got Internet backup, but it can also be used as primary Internet.
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Symantec's Code Red: The Law Enforcement/Anonymous E-Mail Exchange Law enforcement officials negotiated via e-mail for more than two weeks with an Anonymous group member trying to extort $50,000 from Symantec to keep stolen product code off the Internet. |
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How To Sell IT Security Services To Your Customers Cyberattacks can cost a business thousands, even millions, of dollars, and can deal a death blow to some. Here's how IT solution providers can help guard against malicious attacks. |
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Cybersecurity Experts: What They Know Could Scare You A recent report based on interviews with security experts in government, business and academia finds more than half in agreement that a worldwide arms race is taking place in cyberspace. |
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- Insider Threats: The Next Frontier for Security Resellers and SMBs
- Complete Security and Your Bottom Line: Sophos, Value and the Channel
- Tough Threats, Tougher Security: How You Can Leverage New Solutions To Combat A “Targeted Attack” Landscape
- Dark Clouds Ahead: Why the Mid-Market Needs To Ramp Up Cloud Security and How You Can Help Them Get There
