Security Minute: Build, Buy or Partner- Choosing the Right Innovation Strategy

Many solution providers are caught between the choice of whether to build their team, buy a smaller company or partner with other seasoned businesses when it comes to managed security service.

“We’ve always really tried to build as much as we can and that’s important for our regulated clients. They want to know who they’re working with on everything, and they don’t want to resell necessarily,” says Peter Kujawa, division president at EO Johnson Locknet Managed IT Services.

But not every solution provider is a full-service MSP/MSSP hybrid like EO Johnson Locknet.

“There’s cases to be made for both aspects, right? And, really, what it breaks down to is how accessible is the talent? Because at the end of the day, it’s the engineering talent, it’s the smart humans that make an MSSP work,” says Stephan Tallent, senior director of managed security service provider and service enablement at Fortinet Security.

Fortinet security prides itself on having solutions for both traditional channel partners and MSSPs. The market is diverse. While large enterprises such as banks and government organizations would like to keep security under their own control, smaller companies simply don’t have enough resources.

“All organizations are driven by two masters, the business side and the security side and how do you go about balancing that,” says Jonathan Nguyen-Duy, vice president of strategy and analytics at Fortinet. “What’s driving most organizations today is the realization that they should partner with a service provider or managed security services provider and then manage that provider and become more governance rather than operational.”

Both EO Johnson Locknet and Fortinet security have filled different roles when it comes to security partnerships and success stories.

“We are the partner for some other MSPs, some large ones that use our managed security offerings. They’re partnering with us to bring the services to their clients,” says Kujawa.

Meanwhile, Fortinet offers tools such as bring your own license, a training program called NSE and a Cyber Threat Assessment known as C-TAP.