New ThreatDown GM Kendra Krause On Plans To ‘Scale Up’ With MSPs

Krause, the former global channel chief at Sophos, tells CRN she will now head Malwarebytes’ ThreatDown unit as it looks to accelerate channel efforts around endpoint security and MDR.

Kendra Krause, formerly the longtime global channel chief at Sophos, has been hired by ThreatDown as its first-ever general manager, she said in an interview with CRN.

ThreatDown, the business security division of Malwarebytes, told CRN exclusively that Krause will head up the entire ThreatDown unit including product and sales, with a focus on accelerating growth with MSPs and other channel partners.

ThreatDown’s security platform offers capabilities in endpoint security and MDR (managed and detection and response) that are tailored to midmarket and SMB customers. Most recently, the vendor expanded into offering email security through a partnership with IRONSCALES announced in July.

Meanwhile, ThreatDown launched new channel initiatives in April including a trial option for its OneView platform for MSPs along with a new partner certification program.

With ThreatDown, “the product is very effective,” Krause said. “I think just getting that channel working, and getting the marketing brand out there, are the two things that we need to really scale up. And that was one of the things that appealed to me about joining ThreatDown — it was kind of this hidden gem of technology.”

Krause joins ThreatDown after 12 years at cybersecurity giant Sophos, with the past decade spent serving as head of the company’s extensive worldwide channel. She departed Sophos as senior vice president of global channels and small business sales earlier this year, following the closure of the company’s merger with Secureworks in February.

Earlier in her career, Krause had spent nearly six years at Fortinet in channel leadership roles, including as vice president of channel sales and operations.

As general manager of ThreatDown, Krause will have the product, engineering marketing and sales teams reporting to her, and will herself report to Malwarebytes founder and CEO Marcin Kleczynski.

Malwarebytes announced the launch of its ThreatDown brand, formerly known as Malwarebytes for Business, in November 2023, focused on driving growth of the vendor’s EDR (endpoint detection and response) and MDR offerings. The company continues to offer consumer security products via the Malwarebytes brand.

What follows is an edited portion of CRN’s interview with Krause.

What were the biggest things that made you interested in taking the GM role at ThreatDown?

One is, I saw a big opportunity for ThreatDown and the position that they were in, [around] this strengthening and transformation to the channel. It is primed for the market that we're in, the midmarket, and servicing those business customers with cybersecurity. I felt like this really leans on my expertise and what I've done in pivoting companies to a true channel-first go-to-market strategy. This is a timeframe for ThreatDown to really be 100-percent focused on businesses, 100-percent focused on MSPs and partners that support them. I liked the excitement about the opportunity with ThreatDown. It’s a very fast-paced, really thriving company that has a lot of opportunity in that channel market.

What do you see as some of the biggest opportunities for ThreatDown when it comes to the channel?

I would say [it’s about] doubling down on that move to the channel- first model, and really doing it in a very quick way. We'll be doing that quickly with building out a channel territory sales model. We’re implementing that right now as we speak, and getting a team of people out there that are partnering with our partners to deliver these solutions and outcomes for our mutual end customers.

We're going to be working a lot on our brand awareness. I think historically, ThreatDown hasn't been a name that's been known very well. And so we’re working with demand generation and product marketing in that channel community, and getting our brand more well-known. We’re working on making it easier to transact for our partners and through distribution, so enabling distribution to be able to help our partners transact our products. [We’ll be] delivering a revised and super-competitive partner program. That really is centered around margin retention, enablement and support for our partners. And then I would say, we are strengthening our focus on those MDR outcomes. ThreatDown has an incredible portfolio of products that’s really focused on efficacy and focused on outcomes, [and on] bringing in that focus on simplicity. That simplicity is not only for the customer they're managing, but also for our MSPs and our partners that are partnering with them to provide that best solution and ease of operational efficiency there. So those are going to be the focus areas for that first year.

What message do you believe ThreatDown wants to send to the channel by hiring someone as GM who brings experience such as yours?

I think it speaks to two things. One is, a dedicated GM for ThreatDown is not a position that's been in place before. And so it really speaks to the company identifying its own strategy and goals, and operating rhythm for the company itself. And then secondly, yes, we want to go all-in [on channel] in our complete go-to-market. And this leads into how we do marketing. It leads into the product that we're delivering, especially as we are servicing MSPs and partners that are managing these security solutions for our customers. It's across our engineering, our product, our research and development, and really implementing that 100-percent, channel-focused way to go-to-market with our solutions.

What do you see as the major differentiators for the ThreatDown product?

One of the things that I think that ThreatDown does really well is what we call our Security Advisor. Within the platform, [the tool] surfaces up to the customer that risk assessment, and what they need to do differently in order to lower that risk assessment for them. Then it quickly provides what you might call “easy buttons” for them to be able to go in and change settings. It's just perfectly targeted for that small and medium-sized business. Then recently we also announced our email product.

What’s common in small businesses and midmarket businesses is that they want to be able to manage a lot of aspects of their cybersecurity from one management platform. And that's what we're building out with our Nebula platform and with OneView for MSPs — that they can now manage the endpoint, their servers, their mobile and now their email security from one platform.