Horizon3’s Tim Mackie On Its $20M Partner Investment And Security Services Opportunity

Solution providers looking to build more profitable security practices face pressure to help customers identify vulnerabilities that pose a genuine threat, remediate those risks and respond to expanding compliance requirements.

Horizon3 is positioning its partner ecosystem to capitalize on that demand by significantly expanding its channel and sales resources, reworking its partner program and portal, and introducing rebates tied to partner certifications and performance.

Tim Mackie, global vice president, worldwide channels at Horizon3, said partners are essential to the cybersecurity vendor’s ability to scale. Horizon3 sees opportunities for solution providers to develop services around penetration testing, remediation, compliance, M&A and security advisory engagements. Get all the details in the full CRNtv conversation.

Kena Johnson: What market trends made this the right time to increase your investment in partners?

Tim Mackie: Partners have always been the focal point of our go-to-market strategy. One of the things driving this investment is that our growth rates have been phenomenal. We’ve been doubling or tripling the size of the business over the last couple of years. We realized that if we’re going to continue to scale, we cannot do it without the partner community.

I’ve been on board for a year, and I was brought on to take it to the next level. Part of that is making sure we invest in the right things and in the partner community. We’re now around the $100 million range. You can get there by sheer will alone, but we’re not going to get to half a billion or a billion dollars without the partner community. That requires investment, and it requires investment today.

Kena Johnson: With that in mind, where will partners see the biggest impact from this investment?

Tim Mackie: We are doubling the size of our channel and partner teams. That includes alliances, MSSP teams and our traditional geographic territory teams. There will be more channel and partner business managers in the territories to make sure partners get the right enablement and account management.

We’re also doubling and tripling the size of our sales teams. Those teams work with our partners on a day-to-day basis. We have sellers working alongside partner sellers on opportunities, which is also very important to me.

We’re also investing in our processes. We’ve redone the portal. We now give partners the right visibility into their business metrics. Partners can track the pipeline they’re building, the deals they’re registering, what’s in flight, and their training and enablement certifications, all at their fingertips. That helps them manage their business and lets us help manage it on their behalf.

The last area is investing heavily in a new rebate program. We issued a press release about three or four weeks ago announcing a $20 million investment in the partner community. That is a significant investment. A big chunk of that will go toward a rebate program for our partners, with a couple of different categories.

First, we want to make sure partners get the right certifications. We want to reward them for being certified and developing certain capabilities on our behalf, as well as for their performance. The bottom line is that the more a partner invests in us, learns how to position Horizon3 in the marketplace and succeeds in selling the solution, the more they’re going to make.

That will involve a combination of discounts and rebates. There will be a fantastic opportunity for partners to make money, which is important as they consider the most profitable vendors on their line card.

Kena Johnson: As partners look to grow their security practices, where are the strongest opportunities today?

Tim Mackie: The easiest entry point is penetration testing. Most partners come in by replacing traditional manual penetration testing, then introducing penetration testing as a service and continuous penetration testing as a service.

There are other service opportunities, such as remediation and compliance as a service, especially in Europe with DORA and in countries with strong regulations.

Then there are offerings like M&A as a service. If you’re acquiring another company, what better way to determine its security posture than running NodeZero to identify vulnerabilities and exploitable areas that need to be fixed?

Advisory services focused on risk reduction are also important. Many of our consulting partners start with a risk snapshot at the beginning of the process. As they implement fixes, we show a reduction in risk. That is a powerful tool for discussions with board members and the C-suite. Together with our partners, we can show the impact that the customer’s team, our partners and our solution are having on reducing security risk. That’s what it’s all about.

There’s also a shift from traditional vulnerability management toward identifying what is truly exploitable in the market and in your environment. Many partners see that shift as an opportunity to show more value to customers, not just provide another list of CVEs or potential vulnerabilities. Here are the exploitable issues you need to fix. And here are the things you don’t need to address, which is almost as important as identifying what you do need to fix.

Kena Johnson: Tim, looking ahead, what would make the next year a success for Horizon3 and its partners?

Tim Mackie: It starts with the customer. We and our partners won’t be successful unless customers feel we’ve made an impact and that they’re safer as a result of deploying Horizon3 and NodeZero.

That’s already happening. We’re talking about 300,000 penetration tests over the last several years and 8,000 customers saying yes to NodeZero. We’ve created an ecosystem of passionate fans who love the solution. Why? Because they’re seeing value and a reduction in their risk profile.

That’s what this is all about. We live in dangerous times, and we fight AI with AI. The bad guys are using AI to target your environment. Why not use the world’s greatest AI hacker in Horizon3 to do what the bad guys would do? Why wouldn’t you want to use the same tools they’re using? That’s what we allow you to do before they do it to you.

Success means having an ecosystem of happy customers and partners who are successful in selling our solution.

Discover how to expand your business with advisory services in with Horizon3 and NodeZero.