Zecurion Launches U.S. Channel Program To Help VARs Curb Internal Security Threats

As internal threats become a bigger worry to small businesses regarding information theft, Moscow-based Zecurion has launched a new channel program in the U.S. to try to recruit more VARs and help end users protect their corporate data.

Established in 2001, Zecurion hopes to cash in on what it sees as an increasing concern by corporate America about protecting its data from internal as well as external threats.

"For many years enterprise security was considered a protection of the corporate perimeter from outside threats, hackers, viruses and so on. Now, the perception of CIOs and CEOs is moving forward to internal security," said Alexey Raevsky, CEO of Zecurion. "They're beginning to understand that company employees may also be a threat for information security."

Zecurion develops products for the encryption of physical storage such as hard drives and data storage as well as mobile storage such as USB sticks and MP3 players, Raevsky said.

The company also sells solutions to control outgoing Internet traffic, e-mail and more, all of which can be used to send information outside the perimeter. It has more than 5,000 deployments worldwide, mostly in Europe, and is just beginning to market to North America, executives said.

"For many years no one considered internal threats. Every boss believed that his employees are good guys and there is no threat from them. Now they face the situation that may not always be true. As customers begin to become aware, they're looking for these solutions," Raevsky said.

Almost 60 percent of employees who left their companies in 2008 stole confidential company data, according to the Economic Institute. "And when you look at unemployment, you see those numbers could be [higher now]," said Ken Beam, president of The VAR-City, a consulting firm advising Zecurion. "That itself is an economic concern."

Zecurion plans to derive all its U.S. revenue from partners, Raevsky said. Starting from scratch, the company hopes to recruit 50 partners by the end of the year with its new Zecurion Advantage Partner Program.

"We wanted to make sure the program had key differentiators and there was a value to the reseller. There is no vendor channel conflict in the U.S. or Canada. We're managing it with a 5 percent margin bump when they follow program guidelines to register an opportunity. Once they register a deal, a dedicated channel manager will work with them closely," Beam said.

"We've been hesitant to bring on partners until we had the foundation of a good best practices program," Beam said. "We will use authorized, certified and premier elite [levels]. We'll also be looking for partners with an established expertise, such as in data storage. We don't want to limit ourselves just to hardware resellers. We'll also be looking at being established as security specialists."

Beam also cited a 2008 FBI study that found that 97 percent of businesses had an antivirus solution in place, 94 percent had a firewall, but only 56 percent had a data file encryption solution.

"What a VAR needs to understand is that [data loss] is the No. 1 problem, yet it's No. 7 on the list of tools being applied to the security fabric. That's why we feel we will have great success focusing on an underserved market," he said.