Datto’s new SaaS Defense solution, which has been integrated within SaaS Protection product as an additional option, is an enterprise grade solution with a unique technology that produces a higher threat detection rate.
At their DattoCon NOW event this week, Datto made a major product announcement around the near-term availability of their new SaaS Defense advanced cyber threat protection product. The announcement, made live on stage during CEO Tim Weller’s opening keynote, indicated that those Datto SaaS Protection partners in attendance in the event would have a ready-to-use SaaS Defense product available in their Datto Partner Portal to protect both them and their clients. Global availability of Datto SaaS Defense for the rest of the MSP community is scheduled for November of 2021.
SaaS Defense is a rebranding of the product and technology acquired with Israeli-based BitDam earlier this year. BitDam was founded near the end of 2016 by executives who had served in the IDF in one of their elite cybersecurity units.
Liron Barak, Senior Director of Product at Datto
“Coming out of the IDF, we know cybersecurity and we knew the solutions that were available in the market very well,” said Liron Barak, who was BitDam co-founder and CEO, and who is now Senior Director of Product at Datto. “We came into the market with a very unique detection technology, which allows us to detect 35% more attacks compared to the leading Office 365 solutions in the market.”
Their advanced threat protection and spam-filtering solution blocks both known and unknown threats contained in any type of file or URL, including malicious malware, phishing, and Business Email Compromise [BEC] attacks without impacting the end user experience. It protects Microsoft Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
The signature-independent technology is designed to analyze the composition of a safe email, chat, or document rather than just scanning for already known security threats. This minimizes the time to detection and prevents zero-day threats as soon as they are encountered.
Ease of use features include reporting capabilities that clearly show why a threat was flagged as malicious, without needing a complex scoring matrix. The solution can also be set up at a new client in just minutes.
Barak emphasized that while this is an enterprise grade product, BitDam quickly positioned it as an SMB product however, because it has distinct advantages in that market.
“When we started, we were told enterprise was where the money is,” she said. “This is an enterprise grade solution, and the security level is very high. But it also appeals to SMBs because it is very easy to use. Two clicks, and a user is protected. That makes it very easy to see the value.”
SaaS Defense will be sold as an integrated solution to Datto’s established SaaS Protection product, for a multi-layered security approach, and utilizes the same per-license pricing model with month to month and annual commit options available.
“This kind of security has been available only as a premium option before,” Barak said. “MSPs and their customers know they need protection from known and unknown threats. This is something that can be sold to everyone, not just to a part of the market. Everyone needs it.”
Barak said that Datto has a lot of plans for SaaS Defense.
“We will continue to add collaboration channels, so that we support everything,” she indicated. “Everything at the end of the day should come together. We will also broaden out further to cover the full security stack, which also means generating more data and reporting it, to better understand trends.”
