The Company You Keep

For all of the embarrassment the recent Sony hack caused for that company, it did offer some positive effects for the world at large simply by dramatizing just how pervasive and insidious security threats have become. Like Sony, too many SMBs haven't kept abreast of the current threat landscape, underestimating the sophistication and tenacity of today's cybercriminals. As a result, they still cling to antivirus (AV) solutions that are woefully inadequate for their IT environments.

That's the bad news...the good news is that this unhappy state of affairs presents some great opportunities for resellers like you, and not just to solve customers' virus and malware challenges. It also puts you in a prime position to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, and thus your value as a trusted advisor.

Don't underestimate the importance—and business worth—of establishing this kind of trusted advisor relationship with your customers. The credibility you'll gain by providing them with modern, comprehensive AV solutions can yield benefits that extend far beyond simply becoming their preferred reseller for endpoint security solutions. You'll also position yourself as a solution provider who is committed to only providing the best, most effective products to its clients.

You might remember from childhood an Aesop's fable with the moral, "You are known by the company you keep." That principle certainly applies when selecting the vendor solutions you'll offer to customers; the effectiveness and efficiency of those products are a direct reflection on you. Simply put, VARs who settle for mediocre AV solutions ultimately encourage customers to view the VAR as equally undistinguished.

Not surprisingly, delivering truly exceptional endpoint security to your customers, and thus building credibility and trust with them, demands a fundamentally new approach...precisely what Webroot solutions employ. The Webroot cloud-based architecture combines far better protection, quicker installation and much faster scanning than conventional AV solutions. Indeed, some organizations have been forced to use two such AV products to achieve the full protection from the latest malware threats (e.g., CryptoLocker) that a single Webroot solution delivers.

Webroot solutions also require less investment in dedicated infrastructure than on-premises AV products, resulting in significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for your customers. The key to the Webroot technology advantage is its real-time threat analysis network. Unlike traditional AV solutions, Webroot draws on a cloud-based network that constantly monitors emerging threats and can update responses/fixes in real-time; the net result is less lag time between threat identification and prevention...and greater protection for your customers.

Bottom line, the benefits of Webroot endpoint security solutions will provide persuasive and persistent proof to your customers of your ability to select highly effective and cost-efficient solutions:

• Superior AV protection
• Easier to deploy and manage
• Reduced bandwidth utilization
• Less AV disk space use
• Lighter resource loads on PCs
• Significantly lower TCO

Just as offering superior solutions to customers will earn you greater credibility and long-term loyalty, so too is Webroot committed to supporting your business success and becoming "the company you keep." Stay tuned for more...