While there are now a large range of Zero Trust solutions on the market, ones which scale down to the SMB well, and which are well suited for MSPs are rare, which leads Pax8 to think they have a winner with this new offering.
Jared Pangretic, SVP of Sales at Pax8
Cloud distributor Pax8 has announced a new global distribution deal with Isoolate, a New York City based security startup with a focus on Zero Trust and a technology that will scale down well into the MSP segment and to the SMB market.
Zero Trust – where access control beyond the network is limited by the assumption that everything is dangerous until proven innocent – has taken off within the IT security the last few years. It’s a concept, rather than a specific technology, so vendors’ solutions can be very different from each other, and companies with aggressive acquisition strategies can easily be offering multiple flavours of Zero Trust to their customers. These technologies are, however, something that were originally designed for the enterprise. Isoolate is no different there. However, Pax8 is intrigued that the Isoolate solution is simple enough to be used by SMBs, and to be deployed to them by Pax8’s MSP partners.
“We keep our eyes out for modern tools,” said Jared Pangretic, SVP of Sales at Pax8. “This is one of those areas where we haven’t had a great option to protect users in our markets.”
Ryan Burton, Pax8’s VP of Product Strategy
“This kind of technology has only been reserved for the enterprise until now, and never scaled down well to the SMB,” said Ryan Burton, Pax8’s VP of Product Strategy. “Isoolate had not been selling into this space before, or selling to MSPs, so they approached us.”
Burton said that both the timing and the nature of Isoolate’s technology optimized the chances of a successful partnership.
“The whole shift to remote work has been very significant, and this change really drove us to look for technologies that assist with this transformation,” Burton stated. “That has really changed the kinds of technologies we look at. In their Zero Trust, they protect the user through remote browser isolation. That’s idea for MSPs because it means that they don’t have to manage any agents, and so they don’t have to do any patching or updates around that.”
Pax8 is stressing that the Isoolate model is highly differentiated, and particularly valuable for MSPs.
“This is the new version of web security, flipped on its head with a different delivery model,” Burton said. “With their remote browser isolation technology, all the user traffic is processed and handled in their edge cloud environment. They also provide a context that is unique in the industry, in terms of the way they show the context of decisions for each user. They don’t just say that ‘your access to this site is blocked because we said so’, but will instead identify why, for example, that it’s a site that they have never visited before.”
Sophie Merrifield, VP of Vendor Product Management at Pax8
“It’s all simple and easy for the end customer to understand,” said Sophie Merrifield, VP of Vendor Product Management at Pax8. “It’s right there in the browser for them.”
‘’Awareness training tools only take us so far against phishing,” Pangretic indicated “Their technology stops the user from making a risky move, educates them, and provides them with a banner so they don’t enter credentials into an unknown site.”
The Isoolate solution is fully multi-tenanted, and protects all types of devices.
“It goes beyond traditional tools used for web security to fully protect the hybrid workforce,” Pangretic added. “It is targeted at clients at the edge and outside network that are traditionally protected, and protects all of their devices, including phones.”
Isoolate mobile interface
From the partner perspective, Pangretic said that the Isoolate portal is simple and easy to work with.
“The training for partners here is around how it differentiates from other web security products,” he noted.
“It’s also easy for partners to deploy downstream because Isoolate has a lot of integrations,” Merrifield pointed out.
While Isoolate is new to the channel with this deal, they have been eager to earn what partners want and need.
“We brought in some of our top partners from our Advisory Council to talk with them because the channel is a new experience for them,” Burton said.
“It’s been very positive working with Isoolate because they take our feedback and our partners’ feedback,” Merrifield indicated.
