CRN Exclusive: ForeScout Teams Up With CyberArk To Help Partners Bring Visibility to Privileged Account Management

ForeScout Technologies and CyberArk are teaming up, the companies announced Wednesday, looking to help partners make more sales in the rapidly growing privileged access management market.

The partnership brings together ForeScout's visibility platform with CyberArk's privileged account security solution. ForeScout's platform uses an agentless approach to provide visibility, classification, and monitoring of all devices connected to the network.

The new solution, the ForeScout Extended Module for CyberArk, allows users to gain visibility into all privileged accounts on the network and apply security controls and analytics to those accounts.

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There are three primary use cases for the solution, according to ForeScout Chief Strategy Officer Pedro Abreu. Customers can discover what privileged accounts are in the company's IT environment, then deploy the CyberArk solution to secure and manage those accounts. Partners can use the credentials already administered in the CyberArk vault to manage and automate the remediation of devices that violate IT policies. Finally, in more advanced cases, partners can use the solution for analytics and patterns of behavior on privileged accounts to create alerts.

Abreu said the solution responds to the growing recognition that most of the major data breaches today involve compromised data and stolen credentials to access different parts of the network. These incidents often use a vulnerability or device the company didn't even know was connected. He said bringing together the visibility from ForeScout and the security capabilities of CyberArk just "makes a ton of sense" in that context.

Adam Bosnian, executive vice president of global business development at CyberArk, said with those types of incidents, it is key for partners to be proactive and get in front of the privileged account challenge in the organization. To do that, he said partners need visibility into all of the privileged accounts in the environment. He said CyberArk has a tool to do that on its own, but he said the partnership with ForeScout allows for a much more comprehensive view of the privileged accounts in an environment, as well as a more efficient way to find and secure them.

"We continue to see privilege at the center of many of the attacks that are out there. When it comes to power access, it's imperative that you do it everywhere in the organization where that access exists … We're really excited about this partnership. We feel that this is an example of one of the deepest and broadest partnerships out there," Bosnian said.

For partners, Bosnian said the partnership offers a "strong combined story that channel partners can leverage to be a trusted advisor to customers."

Bosnian added: "This gives the opportunity to bring added value to customers by making them more secure."

Dave Doebler, vice president of sales at Mission Critical Systems, a Pompano Beach, Fla.-based partner of both CyberArk and ForeScout, said the new partnership allows for partners to build a more holistic security solution. Specifically, he said CyberArk on its own offers a "really cool technology for privileged access management" and detection of violations of privileged user accounts, but generally lacks a strong way to take actions to quarantine a device in violation. He said ForeScout adds that capability.

"With the value CyberArk has, and the value ForeScout can bring, you actually get a complete solution that is far more significant than the individual technology," Doebler said.

Doebler said he is also glad to see ForeScout continue to expand its partnerships with other technology vendors. He said that is key as partners look to drive automation and help customers take action against risks and threats, instead of just alerting them of a problem.

"I love what ForeScout has been doing about expanding their partnerships with other technologies. What has been lacking in security is the ability to automate a response to some kind of a breach or an attack of a device that is out of compliance … We have so many technologies that can alert us to a problem but then what?" Doebler said.

ForeScout's Abreu said partners will be key to taking the combined solution to market. He said partners have the key relationships to bring the added value of the joint solution to customers.

"In these situations, where we're bringing technology from the integration of ForeScout and CyberArk with others, we always involve the channel. We are trying to break the silos that exist in security departments, and the channel partners are the glue they helps break those silos," Abreu said.

Abreu said there is significant overlap in the install base of the two companies. He said there is an opportunity for partners to integrate the two technologies where customers have already bought both, as well as sell a more comprehensive solution into customers that have only bought one or the other.

"That becomes an easy next step for partners and really gives a reason to walk into customers as trusted partners with a way to bring more value to the investments they have already made," Abreu said.

The two executives said ForeScout and CyberArk will be taking the solution to market together, with partners and sales teams aligned on both sides. That includes engaging with sales teams around specific go to markets based on targets, sales teaming, marketing and the channel, Bosnian said.

ForeScout said the combined module solution is now generally available.