Pax8 Boosts Security, Adds SentinelOne To Its ‘Arms Locker’ For MSPs

“In the virus world now, one line of defense is not enough,” said Pax8 partner Eddie Henderson, of ATS Communications. “SentinelOne gives us the functionality of the full (endpoint detect and response), but without the load that a full EDR puts on a machine ... The last things customers want to do is invest in something that’s going to slow down their hardware.”

Born-in-the-cloud distributor Pax8 has boosted its security line card with the addition of SentinelOne, an end point security and endpoint detect-and-response tool rolled into one.

The move expands the Pax8 security technology lineup the Denver-based distributor offers its MSP partners.

“It fits in the broader category of endpoint detection,” Ryan Walsh, chief of channel sales with Pax8, told CRN. “But this new category of security that’s coming up, its really associated with some of the advanced threat hunting capability, detect and response at the endpoint. So EDR, detect and response, you could have an endpoint detection product and you could buy a separate product for endpoint detect and response. [SentinelOne] put those two together in a single agent, which is unique.”

Walsh said partners are buying multiple endpoint products to cover what SentinelOne does as a single agent. He said partners don’t have to worry about integration or compatibility issues that can arise when using two separate pieces of software. Additionally, he said, the product is smart and does not need an internet connection to work.

[Related: SentinelOne Raises $120M To Battle CrowdStrike, Cylance]

“They put advanced machine learning algorithms in the endpoint, so their endpoint can seek threats based on behavioral artificial intelligence, and the endpoint doesn’t have to be connected to the internet to run and function,” Walsh said. “Many end points, if they detect something they check back home at command central to determine if it’s a threat or not. The machine learning, the automation, is on the end point itself, so even if you’re not connected it can identify behavior that they see as a threat, stop it, quarantine it, kill it.”

Eddie Henderson of Pax8 partner ATS Communications in Concord, Calif. , who recently began working with SentinelOne, was overjoyed at the news it would be offered through his distributor.

“That is phenomenal for us because Pax8 support is so great,” he said. “Their billing makes it really easy for us so we were thrilled when they announced they were going to be offering SentinelOne.”

Henderson said his office just evaluated five products including SentinelOne and landed on them to protect his company’s 1,200 endpoints, because “it had the best performance and best success rate” at thwarting security threats.

“Before I could finally get it to break, meaning allow a virus to come in, I had to hit it with 300 hits in 20 milliseconds. It did a phenomenal job of protecting. In the virus world now, one line of defense is not enough. SentinelOne gives us the functionality of the full EDR, but without the load that a full EDR puts on a machine. We’ve got a very low footprint in terms of resource utilization. The last things customers want to do is invest in something that’s going to slow down their hardware.”

Customers who buy SentinelOne also get a $1 million cyber warranty – or $1,000 per end point up to $1 million -- included in the price of the software.

“If you have a ransomware threat and you have to pay out of pocket, they’re going to cover it with their warranty,” Walsh said.

Walsh said Pax8 has about a dozen security products already on its line card with web security, email security, endpoint security and password protection.

“It is one area that continues to grow,” he said. “We have advanced phishing protection by IronScales, so we have different variants of security product. We have to keep our eye on it because when I hear the security companies describe the threats they’re trying to block, the sophistication just continues to evolve. What we’re hearing is, you need solutions that have AI baked into them, because the bad actors are using AI to find their victims, so you have to match that type of capability.”

Walsh said that Pax8 is always on the lookout for leading-edge security products, keeping track of the threats, watching new vendors and listening to partners to identify best-in-class security products.

“I feel confident in the arms locker that I have,” he said. “I feel like with the evolution of our security line card, I feel like we have a great locker. And we have something that we can suggest when an MSP says ‘I have something I need to secure.’” But he acknowledged that the security technology arms race never ends. “I do not rest on that locker as complete, because of how this is evolving. I don’t think we’ll ever take our eye off that ball.”