Browser Security: Why MSPs Need It (EP 844)

Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, the show for IT professionals, where we help you run your business better, smarter and faster. And we are once again, live here at PAX 8 Beyond on Radio Row outside of the Vendor Hall. And I am joined right now by Dave Maik, Channel Director for DefensX. That's correct.

Yes. A little pause there, right? I was like, okay, I heard one title and then this title. You know, I wear many hats.

How about that? Yep, you do. So Dave, you were last with us last summer as part of Pitch It. Correct.

And we got to hear all about that. But I did not get to talk with you the year before that. Did not make it to Orlando.

No, I did not, unfortunately. You're still here. Things are going well.

And you guys have been active at your booth. Absolutely. Yeah.

Just maybe to touch on Pitch It for a bit, you know, we were allowed for two years to go in there. Just what a great program, you know, being free and whatnot, just to get, you know, eyes on us. And yeah, now we're kind of graduating.

I like to say we're in the mature stage of our startup now. So yeah, things are going very well. And yesterday, booth time was tremendous.

Okay. Yeah. For those that don't know, I think the easiest thing that people remember is, you know, the browser isolation and cleanup and stuff.

But you guys are so much more than that now. 100%. Yeah.

In fact, we just did a press announcement yesterday, which they can catch on our web LinkedIn page. We just announced a ZTNA product that we're going to be incorporating it into our, potentially into our SKUs or separate SKU, we're just not quite there yet deciding that. But this is an opportunity for MSPs now to start removing the cost for a VPN or a thin client at a much cheaper cost.

So yeah, that and obviously with the credential protection, DLP, print protection, you know, obviously taking a, I like to say DNS on steroids, being able to be much more granular on how you protect. It's not as intrusive of a product like a standard DNS product is because you are able to be very flexible and not going into every feature, obviously we'd be here for a while, but just how much granularity you can get out of it, which removes a lot of that negativity that the user gets normally with a DNS product. Okay.

Well, let me ask about the ZTNA, because that of course, a lot of people are doing that. Some of them are, you know, calling it sassy to some degree, and there's a little bit of overlap. So specifically, what are you doing with your ZTNA? And does it work for companies that are on-prem or is it completely cloud? What's all this stuff? It is really more into the enterprise space.

This is where that popularity of this product is going to be, you know, probably more regularly wanting to be used, but not to discount the MSP space 100%. This is still, we are a company that is based on MSP requirements. The product essentially has been developed from MSP suggestions.

So everything that we've done from day one has really been based on what MSPs are looking for. Okay. So this is definitely a crossover for both the enterprise side and the MSP side.

And because our products, you do not have to use all or nothing. This can be split up into what we call a mix and match. Okay.

Yeah. So just because some people need that ZTNA type of solution, it doesn't mean that everybody in the organization is going to need it. Right.

Okay. Very nice. Very nice.

Is it something where people would just say, Hey, I just want to secure remote access into my space. They can do that? Yeah, absolutely. And that goes back to where we were talking about our feature set, right? We're very flexible in how we allow the MSPs to sell our product.

It's not this, Oh, I have 10 users in a company that need X. That means do I have to move all hundred license or all hundred endpoints up and charge everybody for it, even though there's only five or 10 or 20 people that need certain features. So it helps balance the costs out for them. So as you mentioned, this is definitely not really an on-prem.

It's definitely remote access to controlling that and protecting any type of attacks on that side. And that's where we've been focused on. Right.

It's the external. It's the browser. It's everything that's out there.

Okay. Well, let me ask you this because, of course, PitchIT is part of the ConnectWise family. So you're here at Pax8.

Pax8 has its marketplace. Are you guys in the Pax8 marketplace? We absolutely are. Yeah.

We've been a partner of Pax8 for, I want to say, going over four years now. So we were back with Pax8 when they were, oh, about 40 vendors. Now obviously Pax8's graduated and they have a tremendous line card.

So yes, they can find us in the marketplace. Obviously, if they're a Pax8 partner, they have access to all the pricings there, documentation and so on and so forth. Okay.

Very nice. Don't know why I didn't think to check that myself. No worries.

It's a lot of work to keep up with everything here. So that's nice. So you're announcing all of that stuff.

This will be released after the show. So we're not giving away any information. The press release has been done.

So on our LinkedIn page, you can find the press release to get some more details. The product is not quite to market yet because there's some work to be done with like a Pax8 to get that skewed up and whatnot. So definitely a conversation piece that we can already have with the MSPs.

They can test the product. That's not a problem. So if they own the $0, what we call the $0 SKU with Pax8, which is the trial, and if our license is, they would be able to have access to test it out in that environment.

Are you doing any testing at the booth? Because I'm trying to figure out why. I mean, it was crowded. Yes.

I tried to grab some swag. I couldn't get in. That's because we got great swag.

That's why. Yeah. No, there's no, we're not doing really any demos or anything at the booth.

We're actually promoting the fact to book a demo after the show. You know, we're kind of just talking points and then booking those demos. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. All right.

Enough product talk. What else is going on? I think maybe one of the biggest things. You know, I've been with DefensX for over three years now and, you know, as a startup being in the Pitch It program and going through all that and, you know, sitting at these large events and sitting in the presentations of awards, I was always kind of a little, you know, jealous or kind of like, I wonder if we're ever going to get to that point where we might get an award.

And we will be, we are winning an award at this event from Pax8. Okay. We're going to be the Innovator Vendor of the Year.

So that just shows how much development we've put into our product, what we've done to create a product for this space. So yeah, we will be presented with that award here very shortly, actually within another hour, I think. Oh, very nice.

Yeah. Now, is this something where obviously you knew ahead of time before you came out? I'm assuming they wanted to make sure you were going to be here and all of that. But do you know, for instance, like the criteria with which you were selected? Do you know if you, you know, who was runner up or anything like that? I don't know the runner up details.

Maybe we were the only one chosen. I don't know. But it was definitely a decision made by the executive team of Pax8, a vote to pick somebody to receive this award.

I think we're in really good company because Roost won it last year. Roost is a fantastic product and I think we're, you know, being put up there with an award, you know, people like Microsoft is winning an award as well. So we're in good company here, winning something, yeah.

So that tells you that obviously everything's working. People are liking the product. Everything is just, I'm assuming, going better than expected? Yeah.

I have to tell you, like, if I go reflect back to January of 2024 and where we were at and where we are today, it's been a big, quick adoption now. And a lot of that had to do with just us teaching or educating the MSP market. What we came out with four years ago or five years ago was a product that was not quite, we were a bit ahead of the curve.

It was a unique product. It was ahead of the curve. People were not quite understanding why do we need to protect at the browser level, I'm just on the internet.

But now with all these sassy products that you're accessing through the browser now, changes everything. How much time you're actually on that browser? So hackers get smart, right? They're like, how do I get in? What's the easiest way and quickest way for me to infiltrate? And the browser today is, you know, we're seeing 80% increase in tax year to year on the browser level.

So I imagine that you talked about those first few years having to educate the MSP community about it. What feedback have you gotten from MSPs about any assistance they might want in helping to educate customers about it? Yeah. Great question.

A lot. So we actually, in our backend of our products, the MSP can actually put in a request for a feature or something they're looking for, or an integration, let's say. Great example was Halo came out of kind of nowhere and all of a sudden became this product that a lot of MSPs were starting to convert to.

And it was literally like, hey, we need you guys to be integrated with them. And we flipped that over and I think about a month and got that integration done. So we have a very interactive way for them to ask for feature sets.

Generally speaking, just the attitude towards our product and the MSPs, what they see, I know I'm a little bit biased, but there's always a lot of positive feedback when they see the demos. So let me ask this now in a more general cyber world question. Yes, the attacks are coming, they're increasing, stuff like that.

Where do you see either DefensX or anybody in that matter, where do you see us all having to deal with the way things are changing now, especially with AI aiding the third world, the hacker nations, all of that stuff? It is just ridiculous where it's gone the last six to eight months. Yeah, well, AI has helped the hackers, right? Because they don't have to do any work anymore. They don't have to sit behind their computer trying to find a way in.

They just send out the bots to go figure out ways in. And then when they see there's a hit, then they go to work, right? So it's totally changed for them. It's not the typical, we always put the guy in the hoodie type of thing, sitting in some remote area trying to hack into networks.

But that's changed now. So the AI has become an incredible tool but also going to be very dangerous for people using it and understanding there's a way that you're going to need to be protected. And we already actually are working with Microsoft.

We've came up with a protection for Copilot because Copilot, everybody gets it for free. So everybody's using it. I think it's a great tool.

But the minute you start dumping information in there, that is out there. So how do you stop them from putting out sensitive data onto the AI market or Copilot? Now, is that protection going to be something that would be on a tenant by tenant level to where MSPs can help their clients put the guardrails up in a sense? Absolutely. And that comes back to the feature sets, the flexibility of how to set up the features that we provide.

But yeah, it's multi-tenancy for the MSP. Really easy. Our back end is actually just dropdown menus and point and clicks.

So it's not, there's no coding, there's no anything to be done with our product, but yeah. Okay. Very nice.

All right. I want to make sure I give you time to go. You don't have to go dress up or anything for this award, do you? No, I don't.

Okay. As long as I've got the DefensX going, yeah, that's it. All right.

Well, David, it was great to catch up with you and good luck on everything. Very happy for the success you've had. Thank you.

Appreciate it. Proves you don't have to be a winner of the Pitch It program to do well. I totally agree.

I think this is something that I've always said in those Pitch It programs. I met a lot of great people and a lot of great companies and all the products that were involved were all amazing. Yeah.

Right? And that's where they're going there. They're going there to start off and show people and MSP specifically what we've got. Great way to showcase.

Yeah. So yeah, it helped us for sure, obviously. Very nice.

Very nice. All right. Well, we'll see you.

I'll try to make round two around to your booth and see if I can get in there. You will definitely get in. I'll get you a flask with some bourbon in it.

There you go. Now we're talking. Right on.

All right, folks. Dave Maik, DefensX, and check them out. Browser Protection and the new ZTNA.

Very nice. That's it, folks. We'll be back with more from Packs It Beyond.

We'll see you next time. Holla!