SyncDog’s technology, which focuses on protecting data on devices rather than the device itself, is particularly strong in BYOD cases because it doesn’t impact personal data on a device.

Mobile security specialist SyncDog has announced a partnership with cybersecurity giant Symantec, which is presently in the process of both being acquired by Broadcom and selling off its consumer portfolio to focus on its enterprise business. The partnership will integrate Symantec’s Endpoint Protection [SEP] product into SyncDog’s Secure.Systems platform, and will protect both managed and unmanaged devices with anti-virus protection, mobile threat detection and Data Loss Prevention. Symantec customers will benefit from having SEP’s detection capabilities made actionable by SyncDog technology that has a particular focus on the BYOD market.

Reston VA-based SyncDog makes Secure.Systems, a mobile security platform, and has been around since 2013. They emphasize, however, that they are neither an MDM [Mobile Device Management] not a MAM [Mobile Application Management] provider.

“We position ourselves as trying to become the next generation of mobile security,” said Brian Egenrieder, SyncDog’s CRO. “The focus in MDM is on the protection of the device. Ours is not on protecting the device, but protecting the data on it. We offer a secure sandbox container that isolates the corporate data on a device in what we call a workspace, and encrypts it at rest or in transit. We don’t touch the personal data on a device at all, which makes this an elegant solution for BYOD environments. We don’t threaten people’s personal data.

“MAM on the other hand has a similar concept as us – data on the device – but it protects a single application,” Egenrieder continued. “We are MAM across a whole suite of applications. Our goal at SyncDog is not to say everyone else is doing it wrong, but to come to us because we do it right. Our objective is to put an end to the seesaw between security and productivity, and to create a better user experience.”

Perceptions of where they fit into the market depends on the end customer’s level of tech knowledge, Egenrieder noted.

“AirWatch and MobileIron are seen as competitors – but MobileIron resells us,” he said. “We don’t care about the device. We are device-agnostic. MDM was originally for provisioning, so we work just as well with a device that is managed as one that isn’t. Our closest real competitor would be Samsung Knox, which puts things together in a secure environment. They are good for the market, because they bring attention and good press, but they are of no use if you also have devices other than Samsung Android.”

SyncDog has a hybrid Go-to-Market model.

“The channel is between 80 and 90 per cent of the business,” Egenrieder indicated. “It is our primary Go-to-Market, but we also want to keep it controlled. We are looking for additional channel partners who sell where we sell direct. We have a lot of MDM partners who get asked about securing data on unmanaged devices, and we are an elegant solution for that.”

Key vendor partners, like Symantec has now become, are relatively rare.

“We have four or five vendor partners who embed our technology, and maybe four or five others who we would classify as strategic partners,” Egenrieder indicated.

Symantec becomes the most significant of these relationships.

“It’s not our first, but it is certainly our biggest,” Egenrieder said. “It is significant for more than their market share. Symantec has millions of customers and with this many users, they tend to lag to the middle and back of the technology curve. Symantec has also tried MDM in the past and it hasn’t worked for them. We bring a different approach, and we think it will appeal to many of their customers.”

Egenrieder said that SyncDog’s platform is ideally suited for BYOD situations, particularly around these less technologically advanced customers.

“The very first step we take is that we make sure the device is clean,” he indicated. “When talking with prospects who are more in the middle to the back of the technology curve, who are a bit more hesitant about going to BYOD, we can now go to them and check and make sure it is clean and not compromised

Egenrieder said that the Symantec SEP solution was also a good complement to SyncDog’s strengths,

“The origin of the partnership was when our founder and CEO came to me and said that Symantec has mobile solutions around threat detection, but that they were not actionable. They just gave a warning light. We turn mobile threat detection into something actionable. So we connected, and got the right introductions made, and this partnership is the result.”

While Symantec has by far the largest distribution channel, SyncDog and their partners will also be able to sell the joint solution.

“It will be sold by both companies,” Egenrieder said.