Warren has been in distribution since 2004, including a lengthy tenure running Westcon's security business, where FireMon was a vendor client.

Security intelligence platform provider FireMon has named Andrew Warren as their vice president of global channel sales. Unlike previous FireMon channel chief Kurt Mills, who had run channels at multiple security vendors and who moved on to Mimecast, Warren has a very different background. He has spent almost all of his career in distribution, starting at Avnet in 2004, and rising there to Director of Western Region Sales. He then moved to Westcon in 2010 as Vice President, Sales Leader and General Manager Cyber Security Solutions, a role he held for almost six years. FireMon was a key vendor client during that period. In 2016, Warren took on the role of running Westcon’s North American operations, where he remained following Westcon’s 2017 acquisition by Synnex until he left for the FireMon job.

So why switch to the vendor side of the house after almost two decades in distribution?

“I saw the opportunity with FireMon, knew some of the team, and it felt like a good time to make that move,” Warren told ChannelBuzz. “They are 100% channel, and they have technology that’s winning in an end user market that is changing significantly.”

FireMon began as a firewall ruleset tool developed by security integrator FishNet, which later merged into Optiv, for their own professional services. It provided a highly scalable and context-aware insight into network firewall configuration, policy and workflow, including predictive analytics, and with integrations into a broad array of industry-leading firewall, network security, and vulnerability assessment solutions. That tool was spun out in 2004 into the company that became FireMon.

“Since then, they have evolved significantly, especially with enterprise companies on their digital transformation journey, with the cloud really expanding,” Warren noted. “The product has also really evolved. It covers more firewall devices and the security devices that have virtualized in the cloud, and we work well with newer tools like SOARs. We have also focused on the technologies around automating a lot of that process, responding to what had been a huge shortage of automation in a marketplace that was very manual. Now, automation is becoming table stakes.”

FireMon’s sweet spot remains the enterprise.

“It is an enterprise play, and we do work best with larger networks with more complexity,” Warren said. “It does go downstream, depending on the use case, into compliance and regulatory use cases.”

Warren indicated that while no big channel changes are imminent, he will always be looking to make enhancements.

“Channel is in our DNA,” he said. “It’s one of the things that attracted me to the company. There’s plenty of transacting partners but it is a focused channel with strong network security partners. The channel will evolve more as more workloads go to the cloud.”

MSSPs are a growing play, he added.

“When you automate it plays very well in the MSSP market, and we support that market.

“I feel good that there is a program is in place already, but we need to look at things through a new lens to get additional leverage,” Warren concluded. “Channel programs always need tweaking and evolving. FireMon is also investing with additional resources, which will let us do more in the channel.”