eSentire has always offered consulting services, but will now offer them as part of a formalized and holistic strategy, that is integrated with the MDR for the first time.
Sean Blenkhorn, VP, solutions engineering and services at eSentire
Cambridge ON-based Managed Detection and Response [MDR] provider eSentire has complemented that core MDR portfolio with the addition of new Risk Advisory and Managed Prevention [RAMP] services that broaden their core services and create a more holistic customer protection strategy. The new RAMP services are available in four bundles to address customer needs from introductory to advanced, and the bundles can be customized to meet the specific preferences of eSentire’s channel partners.
“We are very excited about the launch, which builds upon the element of services that were in our roots when we were founded, and brings them together with MDR more formally and in a more holistic way,” said Sean Blenkhorn, VP, solutions engineering and services at eSentire. “We were founded back in 2001 as a consulting organization, and in 2008 we pivoted to what became known as MDR. Yet we’ve always had that consultative component, and an advisory services group. What we haven’t done before is tie these services together with the MDR. That’s primarily because in MDR we focused on the midmarket space of 500 to 5000 seats. The focus in this space was on mitigating risk, not in strategic future planning. Today though, we are seeing a change in the mentality where this segment is now thinking more strategically, about things like NIST that they never considered trying to adapt to before.”
As a result, with RAMP, eSentire is bringing different data sets together in a single risk profile with the MDR data.
“The concept behind RAMP is that customers have been looking for us to take services which we have been delivering in a more ad hoc approach and bring them together – strategic consulting and tactical assessment services,” Blenkhorn said. “We can take our MDR data and the more holistic data around risk assessment to give customers a broader view of where their gaps are. RAMP is really a collection of services that isn’t just ‘here’s the threats we see in your environment,” but which is also what is happening in their whole industry, in terms of things like what intruders are going after. It’s what’s happening in the whole industry in a single risk profile, to give the customer a more holistic view and a complete risk profile to build out a cybersecurity roadmap for the next 6, 12 and 24 months – at a time when midsized organizations are ready for that.”
The RAMP services will be sold as customized bundles.
“All of our services have been sold a la carte, but with the RAMP launch we now have bundles,” Blenkhorn said. “They begin with a basic bundle, with things like penetration testing and gap analysis for companies low in maturity around security, to start them on their journey at a very affordable price. They extend to high level bundles for mature organizations, with services like Red Teaming and incident response.”
Blenkorn said the RAMP services are a new revenue opportunity for partners, which can also be customized if need be.
“We know that partners may have competitive services they are selling on things like vulnerability scanning and pen testing,” he noted. “We will make sure we design bundles for the specific profiles of individual partners, which we can do because we are agile enough to work with each partner independently. We can do things like take out the pen test, to let a partner deliver that on their own.”
eSentire indicated some new services will be launched in the new year.
They are launching Managed Endpoint Defense (Powered by Carbon Black) in January 2019, extending the partnership with Carbon Black that eSentire has had for three years around Endpoint Detection and Response [EDR].
“The EDR is more about deep forensic capabilities, and is very different proposition than managed prevention, which stops things from happening,” Blenkhorn said. “This will introduce the Carbon Black Endpoint Defense on the front end, to work with the EDR on the back, and gets us into the preventative space where we haven’t been in the past.”
eSentire also plans to launch the next-generation version of its esRECON service in the first quarter of 2019.
“esRECON gives visibility into assets and vulnerability monitoring,” Blenkhorn said. “Our current iteration is built on the Tenable.sc [formerly Security Center] platform. We are looking to take that to the next level, because there have been some gaps. With the new version, we are moving to a co-managed platform where we can help drive and own the day to day management.”
