Latest news with #MSSPs
TECHx
25-07-2025
- Business
- TECHx
META's Cyber Gap Shrinks: Managed Security Surges 71%
Home » Tech Market Insights » META's Cyber Gap Shrinks: Managed Security Surges 71% The META cybersecurity landscape is facing a critical inflection point. Organisations are under increasing pressure to safeguard growing digital assets, but the shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals is creating a widening protection gap. Now, new data from the CONTEXT META Monthly webinar reveals a 71% year-over-year increase in managed security services (MSS) adoption during the first half of 2025. It's a clear signal: businesses are shifting strategies, leaning into outsourced security expertise to meet today's escalating cyber risk with resilience and speed. The cybersecurity market in the META region is undergoing a substantial change, driven by an acute shortage of skilled professionals and the increasing sophistication of cyber threats. Drawing on the latest data from the CONTEXT META Monthly webinar, the first half of 2025 has seen a remarkable 71% YoY increase in the adoption of managed security services, a clear indication that organisations are increasingly turning to external providers to bridge their cybersecurity talent gaps and enhance their defensive capabilities. This growth not only highlights a critical regional challenge but also redefines how security is being delivered across these markets. Escalating costs of data breaches The imperative for robust cybersecurity measures in the Middle East and Africa is underscored by alarming statistics. The cost of a data breach in the Middle East reached an average of $8.75 million in early 2025, nearly double the global average of $4.88 million. This substantial financial impact accentuates the heightened targeting of the META region and the pressing need for investment in cybersecurity infrastructure and expertise. The pervasive skills gap Despite the evident need, organisations across META, much like their counterparts in Europe and America, are grappling with a pervasive cybersecurity skills gap. Building and maintaining an effective in-house Security Operations Centre (SOC) demands a commitment of resources, including the recruitment and retention of highly qualified cybersecurity professionals. This challenge is compounded by the unrelenting nature of cyberattacks, which operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, necessitating constant vigilance and immediate response capabilities. For many businesses, particularly those operating with limited resources or facing rapid expansion, assembling such a dedicated internal team is an increasingly unfeasible undertaking. The rise of managed security service providers This is precisely where Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) are proving to be indispensable. The 71% growth in managed services in 2025-H1 reflects a strategic shift by META organisations to outsource their cybersecurity requirements. MSSPs offer a compelling solution by providing access to a team of dedicated cybersecurity experts who can manage and monitor security operations around the clock. This approach is often faster, more cost-effective, and ultimately more secure than attempting to build an in-house team from scratch. The ability of MSSPs to offer continuous monitoring and rapid incident response without the burden of internal staffing and infrastructure concerns is a key driver of this rapid adoption. Changing market dynamics While the growth in managed services signals a proactive response to the skills crisis, other segments of the cybersecurity market reveal a more nuanced picture. Network security has seen a 19% increase in 2025, with security appliances also experiencing double-digit growth. This investment in next-generation firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and secure web gateways reflects the region's focus on securing network perimeters as digital transformation initiatives accelerate, particularly with the construction of new offices in the Middle East. Traditional infrastructure protection solutions, typically representing on-premise data centre security, have seen a 12% decline. This decrease aligns with the growing trend towards cloud adoption and hybrid models, as organisations migrate their infrastructure to public cloud platforms and leverage native security tools such as Azure Security Center and AWS GuardDuty. This dual movement, robust investment in managed services and network security alongside a decline in traditional on-premise infrastructure protection, illustrates a market in transition, adapting to new operational models and threat landscapes. Future outlook The substantial uptake of managed security services in the META region is a clear indicator of a mature approach to addressing contemporary cybersecurity challenges. It demonstrates that organisations are prioritising effective security outcomes over in-house resource constraints, embracing a model that leverages external expertise for sustained protection. As cyber threats continue to increase in complexity and frequency, the role of MSSPs will undoubtedly become even more central to the cybersecurity strategies of businesses across the Middle East and Africa.
Techday NZ
01-07-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Exclusive: Qualys' Sam Salehi explains why ANZ firms are turning to risk platforms
Cybersecurity is changing fast - and Australian and New Zealand businesses are struggling to keep up. According to Sam Salehi, Managing Director of Qualys for Australia and New Zealand, the region is facing a combination of a skills crisis, evolving threat landscape and rising customer expectations. Salehi has led the ANZ arm of the cybersecurity company for just over a year. His number one focus is supporting customers while growing his team and expanding services through partners. "In the next 12 months, we will continue to develop our managed risk operation centre (mROC) services in partnership with MSSPs," he said. "I'll also focus on hiring more people and expanding the team in the ANZ region." However, talent is hard to come by. "My take on it is cybersecurity moves really fast," he said. "We haven't paid enough attention to educating the younger generation to enter this field. Also, many people are coming from other industries, which means it takes longer to upskill." He referenced a global estimate predicting over three million cybersecurity jobs will be vacant in 2025. While that figure is staggering, Salehi said it highlights the importance of building an ecosystem of partners and investing in automation. That thinking has led Qualys to embrace a "channel-first" strategy in ANZ. "My team is around seven people, so shifting to channel-first helps us expand market reach and accelerate growth," he said. "We now have more than 80 active partners in this region." The company also created a new role - channel account manager - to support those partners and ensure they're equipped to help customers. It's part of a wider effort to raise awareness of what Qualys actually offers. "Though we are a household brand when it comes to vulnerability management, we do 20 different things that people don't know about," Salehi said. "That really shocked me." He added that many customers still assume Qualys is only a VMDR vendor. "When I tell them we play in API security, AI, patching - they're surprised," he said. "Some of them ask, 'Since when are you doing this?' And I say, 'It's been five years.'" Salehi believes part of the issue lies in how the company traditionally went to market, and hopes the channel-first model will broaden its reach and change perceptions. That ties into another growing trend he sees: platformisation. "Companies are now looking for best of platforms, not best of breed," he said. "Instead of having ten vendors, they want to narrow it down to three and get better outcomes." Cloud security and remediation are also top requests from customers, alongside automation tools that help lean teams do more with less. To support that, Qualys recently launched TruRisk Eliminate - a platform offering patching, mitigation and isolation from a single console. It's aimed at overwhelmed security teams who need more efficient ways to reduce exposure. "There are ready-made playbooks so your team doesn't have to spend hours researching how to fix something," Salehi explained. "The isolation feature is also granular - you can lock a server to run just a few specific applications." Another recent addition is Policy Audit, an enhancement to the company's existing compliance tools. "This drastically cuts manual audit preparation time," he said. "It helps organisations stay audit-ready, especially with increasing regulations like the SOCI Act and mandatory data breach notifications." Qualys has also leaned into education and community building. Over the past year, Salehi and his team delivered 20 risk quantification workshops across ANZ, led by US-based expert Richard Seiersen. "When you give back to your community and enhance knowledge around a critical topic like risk management, it builds trust," he said. The workshops were free and well attended, each drawing 8 to 12 senior stakeholders from across industries. Salehi described Seiersen as "a celebrity in cybersecurity risk". "People want help communicating cyber risk in a business context," he said. "That's still missing in the market." Salehi says one of the most impactful developments for Qualys in this space is the company's Enterprise TruRisk Platform, which underpins its Risk Operations Centre (mROC) offering. It unifies cybersecurity, operational and financial risk insights into a single pane of glass. "It enables business context," he said. "Not all vulnerabilities matter equally - it depends on their impact. This helps customers focus on what matters first." That solution is also available via a managed version (mROC), delivered in partnership with MSSPs. "These partners become strategic advisors to customers," he said. "They help with risk advisory, onboarding, integration and continuous monitoring." "Reflecting on the past 13 months, Salehi said his focus was on bringing everyone together - being a small team, fostering a culture of support and collaboration was key". "It took time to bring everyone together and build a culture of support," he said. "We're a small team, and some functions like HR and legal are offshore, so collaboration is key." Despite being part of a publicly listed company, Salehi said Qualys has a family-like culture. Much of that comes from CEO Sumedh Thakar, who's been with the business for over two decades. "He's so approachable and empowering," he said. "It inspired me to lead the same way in ANZ." For Salehi, customer relationships remain a top priority. "I've had over 100 customer meetings this year," he said. "It's not about selling a product, it's about understanding the person in front of you."
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Skyhawk Security Launches Partner Program to Drive Growth And Deliver Preemptive AI-Driven Cloud Security at Scale
Program enables partners to meet escalating cloud threats with proactive solutions that eliminate alert fatigue and deliver tangible business outcomes TEL AVIV, Israel, June 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Skyhawk Security, the originator of cloud threat detection and response (CDR), today announced the official launch of its partner program. The global initiative reinforces Skyhawk's channel-first strategy, empowering value-added resellers (VARs), MSSPs and consultants to capitalize on rising cloud security demand by offering Skyhawk's cutting-edge, preemptive CDR platform. The program is designed to deliver a solution tailored to individual partner needs, emphasizing ROI while extending Skyhawk's reach across North America, Latin America and beyond. "Cloud attacks are doubling year-over-year, and today's security teams are struggling to juggle hundreds of alerts with reactive tools and siloed point solutions," said Jennifer Duman, channel director at Skyhawk Security. "Our partners want to deliver a trusted, innovative product that prevents breaches and prioritizes the cloud threats that really matter. With Skyhawk, they gain access to our battle-tested Synthesis Security Platform that detects threats before they happen. Imagine being able to offer your customers the power to see into the future, preemptively identifying weak points in their cloud environments to safeguard their company's crown jewels. We're making it simple for partners to drive new revenue streams and create lasting value for their customers." Skyhawk's partner program provides a flexible structure to meet partners where they are, no matter their size, go-to-market model or customer profile. At launch, it caters to: Referral Partners: Designed for consultants and boutique firms that prefer to introduce Skyhawk into customer opportunities without managing the sales process. Skyhawk handles the sales cycle end-to-end and partners receive a referral commission based on deal value. Reseller Partners (VARs): Regional, boutique and national resellers work in a co-sell model with Skyhawk today, gaining access to sales support and resources. By Q3 2025, the program will include a formal enablement curriculum to help these partners independently manage the sales cycle, improving deal velocity and unlocking recurring revenue streams. MSSPs: MSSPs embed Skyhawk into broader security service offerings for SMB and midmarket clients. These partners will benefit from scalable pricing tiers as their customer count grows and may deploy and support Skyhawk without direct involvement from the company, enabling true operational autonomy and long-term margin expansion. This adaptable model empowers partners to engage at the level that fits their business and scale at their own pace. Program Benefits That Fuel SuccessThe partner program is designed to accelerate time-to-revenue with the perfect balance of structure and malleability. Partners benefit from protected deal registration to safeguard opportunities, immediate access to a partner portal with marketing and sales enablement assets and consultative support from Skyhawk's technical and customer success teams. By Q3 2025, partners will also gain access to an on-demand training curriculum aimed at ramping sales and technical teams quickly and effectively. A Differentiated Security Solution, Built for What's NextSkyhawk is redefining what partners can expect from a cloud security platform. Rather than layering more tools onto already overburdened environments, Skyhawk consolidates visibility and insight into a single, cohesive view. By leveraging a real-time digital twin of each customer's cloud environment, Skyhawk seamlessly deploys into the existing security stack, offering continuous threat detection with zero disruption to production systems, even during high-stakes periods like seasonal lockdowns. Its context-driven alert reduction filters out noise and highlights the threats that pose the greatest risk, helping customers focus on protecting their most valuable assets. With the recent expansion of its AI-driven Autonomous Purple Team capabilities to the application layer, Skyhawk now simulates real-world attacker behavior deep in the stack, validating exposure proactively rather than reactively. This advanced capability positions partners, particularly MSSPs, to deliver differentiated, high-impact security services across cloud workloads, increasing customer trust and driving retention. 'Our partner program is more than a route to market. It's a force multiplier,' said Chen Burshan, CEO of Skyhawk Security. 'We've proven the power of our platform through early partner success, and now we're scaling with a broader community ready to lead the next phase of cloud security. Channel partners who align with Skyhawk aren't just adding another vendor, they're joining a mission to deliver smarter, preemptive protection where it matters most.' To learn more about the program, explore the partner portal or apply, visit: About Skyhawk SecuritySkyhawk Security is the originator of Cloud Threat Detection and Response (CDR), leveraging a multi-layer AI-based approach to identify and stop cloud threats before they become breaches. Skyhawk revolutionizes CDR with its Continuous Proactive Protection, an AI-powered Autonomous Purple Team, enabling security teams to take a proactive approach to cloud security for the very first time. Led by a team of cyber security and cloud professionals who built the original CSPM category, Skyhawk's platform evolves cloud security posture management far beyond scanning and static configuration analysis, continuously adapting and improving threat detection so that it is always aligned with the cloud architecture. Skyhawk Security is a spin-off of Radware® (NASDAQ:RDWR). Media Contact: Sherlyn Rijos-Altman Montner Tech PR srijos@ while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Techday NZ
03-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
SOCRadar boosts MSSP support with free AI training, new tools
SOCRadar has announced an expansion of its Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) programme designed to support partners in scaling operations, automating threat workflows, and improving service delivery. As part of the enhanced programme, SOCRadar will provide free AI Agent and Automation Training to its partners. This training aims to educate MSSPs on the use of AI agents and generative AI (GenAI) technologies to streamline security operations centre (SOC), threat intelligence, and vulnerability management processes. The training is described as platform-agnostic, equipping MSSP partners with hands-on experience to build their own AI-powered workflows, irrespective of the specific tools they currently deploy. Alongside the introduction of free training, SOCRadar has implemented several enhancements to its MSSP programme, including multi-tenant licensing, threat intelligence use cases designed specifically for MSSPs, a Multi-Tenant Management Console, and configurable External Threat Assessment Reports. "Our enhanced MSSP program enables partners to scale smartly and serve clients more effectively. By combining AI Agents with our extended threat intelligence capabilities, MSSPs can double their operational efficiency—automating routine workflows, accelerating incident response, and delivering tailored intelligence without adding headcount. We believe AI Agents and GenAI will be foundational to the future of MSSPs, and we're committed to helping our partners lead that transformation," Huzeyfe Onal, Chief Executive Officer of SOCRadar, said. According to SOCRadar, its AI agents are intelligent automation components embedded within the company's Extended Threat Intelligence (XTI) platform. These agents utilise Large Language Models (LLMs) and automation scripts with the ability to execute complex, multi-stage cybersecurity workflows. Unlike traditional scripts or static rules, SOCRadar's AI agents can analyse contextual information, make decisions based on data, and take actions across multiple IT systems. This approach is intended to reduce the manual workload for analysts, while increasing both the speed and accuracy of threat detection and response. MSSPs can create what SOCRadar refers to as "smart workflows" by establishing specific goals and operational boundaries for each AI agent. The agents then apply planning, reasoning, and learning methods to support tasks such as identifying threats, enriching data, correlating alerts, or prioritising vulnerabilities for remediation. The company listed several key benefits of its framework for MSSPs, including the automation of threat intelligence, SOC, and vulnerability management tasks; reduction in analyst workload while accelerating detection and response times; improvement in decision accuracy with a reduction in false positives; enablement of continuous monitoring across multiple clients without increasing staffing; and the potential to increase both scalability and profitability whilst preserving service quality. SOCRadar reports that it serves over 800 customers in 70 countries. Its Extended Threat Intelligence Platform makes use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for threat detection and to deliver actionable intelligence against cyber threats. The suite of offerings includes Cyber Threat Intelligence, External Attack Surface Management, Brand Protection, Dark Web Monitoring, and Supply Chain Threat Intelligence.
Business Wire
03-06-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
SOCRadar Strengthens MSSP Program with Free AI Agent & Automation Training
NEWARK, Del.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SOCRadar, a global leader in extended threat intelligence and cybersecurity, announced an expansion of its MSSP program to help partners scale operations, automate threat workflows, and improve service delivery. As part of its program, SOCRadar is now offering free AI Agent and Automation Training to educate partners about AI agents and GenAI technologies to help streamline their SOC, threat intelligence and vulnerability management processes. Platform-agnostic, the training equips MSSP partners with hands-on skills to build their own AI-powered workflows regardless of the tools they currently use. 'Our enhanced MSSP program enables partners to scale smartly and serve clients more effectively,' said Huzeyfe Onal, CEO of SOCRadar. Share Additional program enhancements include multi-tenant licensing, MSSP-specific threat intelligence use cases, a Multi-Tenant Management Console, and customizable External Threat Assessment Reports. The expanded program was officially launched at Infosecurity Europe. 'Our enhanced MSSP program enables partners to scale smartly and serve clients more effectively,' said Huzeyfe Onal, CEO of SOCRadar. 'By combining AI Agents with our extended threat intelligence capabilities, MSSPs can double their operational efficiency—automating routine workflows, accelerating incident response, and delivering tailored intelligence without adding headcount. We believe AI Agents and GenAI will be foundational to the future of MSSPs, and we're committed to helping our partners lead that transformation.' SOCRadar's AI agents are intelligent automation components embedded in its Extended Threat Intelligence (XTI) platform. These agents use Large Language Models (LLMs) and automation scripts to perform complex, multi-step cybersecurity workflows. Unlike traditional scripts or static rules, SOCRadar's AI agents can dynamically analyze data, make contextual decisions, and execute actions across multiple systems—reducing analyst workload while increasing speed and accuracy. MSSPs can create 'smart workflows' by defining goals and guardrails for each agent. The agents then use planning, reasoning, and learning techniques to carry out tasks such as threat detection, enrichment, alert correlation, or vulnerability prioritization. Key Benefits of SOCRadar's Framework for MSSPs include: Automate threat intelligence, SOC, and vulnerability management tasks Reduce analyst workload while accelerating detection and response Improve decision accuracy and reduce false positives Enable continuous monitoring across clients without growing headcount Increase scalability and profitability while maintaining service quality About SOCRadar SOCRadar is a global threat intelligence cybersecurity company with over 800 customers in 70 countries. The company's Extended Threat Intelligence Platform leverages AI and machine learning to enhance threat detection and deliver actionable intelligence to help businesses proactively defend against cyber attacks. The comprehensive suite of XTI products include: Cyber Threat Intelligence, External Attack Surface Management, Brand Protection, Dark Web Monitoring, and Supply Chain Threat Intelligence. For more information about SOCRadar, visit
