CRN Exclusive: Digital Shadows Launches First Partner Program, Looks To Bring New Services Opportunities To Channel

Digital Shadows launched its first partner program Thursday, part of what the digital risk management company called a "conscious strategic move" to focus on the channel.

The new program, called the Channel REV program, has one level and a partner portal that features deal registration, marketing, training, quoting, reports, opportunity tracking, MDF, and more.

CEO Alastair Paterson said the launch is part of a focus on the channel, which he called a "huge business driver." He said he expects partners will soon account for the majority of the Digital Shadows business. To that end, the company has been committing "a lot of resources" to its channel team, he said, including more than 10 dedicated employees by the end of the year.

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"It's a strategic priority for the company," Paterson said. "Since the start of 2017, it's been one of the four pillars for the year."

Paterson said Digital Shadows opens up a new route to services for partners around the emerging field of digital risk management. The company offers a solution that determines a company's security risk by monitoring the Internet – including the dark web and social media – for leaked client information, such as IP, confidential documents, customer information, brand, defamation and more. The premise is to look outside the customer perimeter for breached data, then provide incident response services to identify risks to the company.

For partners, Paterson said that means a new subscription model for partners that isn't competitive to current offerings. He said partners can get recurring revenue from the subscription sale itself, as well as added professional services to fix gaps found and for incident response.

"It's a real first-mover advantage right now to get there and own the space," Paterson said. "We're focused on the channel to do that. I think that's going to scale the business going forward."

Tom Gobeille, president and CEO of Bellevue, Wash.-based Network Computing Architects, said his business partnered with Digital Shadows as the solution provider transitioned to a security model focused on holistic business risk instead of security controls. He said that approach is key for helping clients keep up with the next wave of threats. He said the Digital Shadows solution adds a key piece to that holistic solution around data leakage and digital risk management.

"The hope is by getting this right … that we can put clients in a really positive position where it will be hard to compromise a business if they have the newer controls in place and some controls to make sure their existing solutions are working," Gobeille said. "We expect this solution to be well-received in our larger clients who are most worried about and understanding about risk."

Gobeille said the new Digital Shadows partner program is key, as his business evaluates the quality of a program when evaluating a new partner. "Our experience so far is they started off with a pretty well-thought out program and it looks like they only have the intention to improve it at this point," Gobeille said. "Digital Shadows doesn't act like a startup and they don't feel like it [with this program]."

Paterson said Digital Shadows is looking to recruit MSSPs and boutique security regional and national resellers. He said the company will also form technology alliances with vendor partners. It is looking to primarily recruit partners in the U.S. and Europe for the time being.