Partnering With Sophos: Industry-leading MDR Solutions For Security Teams Of All Sizes

As cyberattacks grow more sophisticated, security teams are under pressure to do more with fewer resources. Sophos is helping solve that challenge by equipping organizations of all sizes with advanced managed detection and response (MDR) solutions that simplify security, reduce complexity and deliver stronger protection.

For partners, this presents a powerful opportunity—not only to drive better security outcomes for customers but also to grow revenue, increase win rates and improve profitability.

CRNtv host Sydney Neely speaks with Kyle Falkenhagen and Chris Bell of Sophos, both of whom have taken on expanded roles following the company’s acquisition of Secureworks earlier this year. Together, they explore how Sophos is delivering enterprise-grade security, scaled for today’s fast-changing threat landscape—and built with the channel in mind.

Segment 1: Why Sophos Is a Trusted Cybersecurity Leader

Sydney Neely: How does Sophos help partners deliver stronger security outcomes for their customers?

Kyle Falkenhagen: It’s really a few different things. The first is the breadth of the portfolio. So being able to bring market-leading solutions across endpoint, network, cloud, email, identity, XDR and MDR—all seamlessly integrated to deliver the best outcomes for our customers—that’s really the first.

The second is the industry accolades that we have. If you look, we have Gartner Customer Choice Awards across endpoint, firewall, XDR and MDR. What that means for partners and their customers is that customers see the value in our solutions. They choose not only to renew with us but to share their experiences and the value they’re seeing from the products and services we deliver.

And then the third is our expertise, which is captured within our X-Ops organization. We bring all of that intelligence and the services we can provide to help not only partners, but customers stay ahead of threats in this ever-evolving landscape.

Segment 2: How Sophos MDR Solutions Deliver Value to Security Teams

Sophos continues to strengthen its MDR portfolio with a prevention-first philosophy, automation and AI-powered insights—delivering meaningful results for customers and competitive differentiation for partners.

Sydney Neely: Let’s talk about other impactful capabilities of Sophos MDR solutions. What else sets your MDR offerings apart?

Kyle Falkenhagen: First and foremost, we take a prevention-first approach.

What we mean by that is we want to block and stop attacks in their tracks so that we don’t have to get humans involved in the detection and response cycle. Anything we can prevent upfront, we want to do. That means helping customers better understand their security posture and attack surface and remediate misconfigurations or vulnerabilities within their environments.

At the firewall level, we provide a firewall that’s capable of blocking attacks at the perimeter. We have strong endpoint protection capabilities for anything that reaches an endpoint. So, we take a prevention-first approach because that’s the best time to stop attacks—right when they start.

The second is that we have the largest AI-based platform. We’re bringing in over 900 terabytes of data every single day from across our customer base and are able to leverage that data to power very effective AI models that help detect, triage, investigate and respond to security incidents.

The third is adaptability and openness. We can work with existing tools already present in the environment and help customers get more value from their existing investments.

And the fourth is what we call synchronized security. We have a broad portfolio of security offerings and controls that work seamlessly together. So, if we detect malicious activity on one endpoint that’s tied to a particular indicator, we can quickly respond by rolling out protection across all Sophos technologies—as well as third-party tools via our integrations.

The time from detection to response shrinks down significantly, and we want that to be as fast as possible. That’s what our technology enables.

Segment 3: How Sophos Supports Its Partners

Beyond the technology, Sophos is focused on enabling its partners to sell more, win more and grow profitably—with a support model built to serve the full sales cycle.

Sydney Neely: Chris, how does Sophos’ approach set partners up for success?

Chris Bell: The first point is you have to have a lead. Whether that’s a lead from a partner, our own sales team or our marketing engine, we’re 100 percent partner led. So, all of our leads go to our partners, and we’re here to support and help them win.

So, it all starts with the lead. The second piece is partner profitability. We want to make sure our partners are winning with us, and part of winning in their world means doing so profitably. If you look at our pricing structure, we’re positioned on the high end—so they’re going to get the right margin to win the deal.

Think about our back-end rebates, front-end incentives and MDF. We make sure our rebate, incentive and pricing structure allows partners to compete and win at a competitive price point.

The third is win rate. How do you help partners win more often? That’s where our support model comes into play. We have a channel team, sales engineers, proof of values, proof of concepts—all designed to showcase the value that Kyle has been highlighting around our MDR and endpoint offerings in a quick and seamless way.

Whether it’s a transactional sale focused on the commercial space or a more complex enterprise-scale opportunity, we provide demos, sales engineering support and the right tools so partners feel supported throughout the entire journey.

For more information, visit Secureworks.com/partners.