Safend Turns To Channel To Lock Down USB Ports

“From day one, it has been our plan to be 100 percent channel,” said channel manager Ari Fruchter.

The Israeli company, with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, offers USB Port Protector, which stops data theft or virus introduction from external storage devices that connect via USB ports, said Safend vice president Dor Skuler. The product allows administrators to define policies that control what kind of USB devices can be plugged in to corporate computers.

The company next month will launch a new version of the product, Safend Protector, that extends protection to all local access interfaces, Skuler said.

The new channel program, launched at XChange in Orlando this week, creates an authorized reseller category, which allows participating VARs access to sales and technical training and defined margins, Fruchter said.

The Safend product line is a good fit for solution providers that already have a security practice, he said. “This gives them a good reason to go back out to their customers and reconnect,” he said.

Partners also have exclusive access to any leads generated from the company&'s Safend Auditor, a downloadable application that lets administrators see “every single device that&'s ever connected” to the network, Skuler said. Auditor is downloaded by several hundred companies monthly, he added.

The Auditor application “works as a great sales tool,” said Dennis Cichelli, president of LANtek, a solution provider in Kutztown, Pa., one of Safend&'s first resellers in the United States.

USB ports don&'t have any protection, Cichelli explained. “It&'s a sneaky backdoor that IT people are aware of, but they haven&'t done anything to nail it down. With Auditor, you can confirm that it really is a wide open hole for a security breech.”

USB Protector&'s list price ranges from $10 to $25 per seat per year, depending on volume. The new Safend Protector, which extends protection to other access interfaces, is slated to be priced at $32 per seat, with discounts related to volume.

The company's products are handled through Centreville, Va.-based distributor e-Convergence Solutions.