Gavin Osters, who designed SentinelOne’s original channel program, joined Randori as Head of Channel to drive the company to being 100% channel sales.
T.J. McDonough, VP of Global Sales at Randori
Randori, a 2018 startup out of Waltham MA which focuses on attack surface management [ASM], has announced its latest step in completing its evolution from a largely direct seller to a 100% channel company with the addition of a channel program. Gavin Osters, best known for building out SentinelOne’s original channel program, has been brought on board as Head of Channel to run the Randori program. The program’s goal is to be selling 100% of new sales through the channel by the end of the year.
“The company was started by Red Teamers,” said T.J. McDonough, VP of Global Sales at Randori. “The platform will emulate how an attacker will conduct attacks and thus provide a better opportunity to understanding opponents better.” That accounts for the company’s name, which is a judo reference in Japanese meaning essentially “practice how you would fight.”
The Randori Recon platform updates the logic of an adversary based on the results of real-world attacks. Their black box and continuous discovery engine identifies all internet-facing assets visible to an attacker—cloud assets or on-prem—and will alert on any changes discovered, prioritizing the most critical assets that need attention first.
Randori’s technology includes new patents, including algorithms around target temptations.
“These rate how tempting a customer target could be to an attacker,” McDonough said, “Our automated runbooks are also patented and unique to us.”
McDonough said that the channel entered the scene about a year ago.
“I’ve been here almost a year,” he indicated. “A lot of the sales people came from Carbon Black, which was channel only – and then we brought Gavin in to accelerate the channel three months ago. Channel sales have grown by 500% since I started, and 75% of sales this quarter so far will go through the channel.”
McDonough said that since Randori started selling ASM. It has gone in customers’ views from something interesting to look at to a dynamic growth area.
“When we started in late 2018 among a group of other companies who have now been acquired, this was a harder sell,” he stated. “Now there is budget, and people willing to invest. The response has gone from ‘maybe’ to ‘yes.’ We are even talking to people on the phone now who have ASM in their job title.”
The goal of the new partner program is to increase the number of quality partners without signing up loads of people who will just compete with each other.
“I certainly don’t want to sign up 500 partners,” McDonough said. “I want to sign up several within each region who will be go-to partners. That’s how I look at it. I want partners who are bleeding edge, based on their history of what they have sold in the past, and who have strong sales teams.”
The program will start out as a flat one, with the capability to be flexible later.
“The program is flat, with margins right now being the same across the board,” McDonough indicated. “We are currently putting in place an enablement program, which has things on the roadmap like getting solutions architects for partners doing demos for us.”
McDonough added that as of right now most of the enablement components would be considered table stakes, they do have one offering he thinks is unique.
“We bring value to a prospective customer on day one, by doing a demo of their attack surface to them,” he said. “The channel introduces us to their trusted customers by taking them through how their ASM looks through an adversary’s perspective. They get value regardless of whether they buy from us or not. That makes the channel partner look good, and the partner can use that information in their paid-for security assessments.”
Jackie Groark, CISO at Veristor
Veristor, which is focused on the south-eastern U.S., just recently signed with Randori, but is already seeing results.
“We have had a couple of deals already” said Jackie Groark, CISO at Veristor.
“ASM is pretty new, but there are already a lot of people jumping in, and we have gotten traction,” she said. “They have continuous pen testing with runbooks, but they also have people on the back end. Others don’t have the people. Before, we were reselling pen testing engagements, but Randori does more than that. The continuous nature of it is also appealing because pen testing just assesses a point in time.”
Groark said that Randori has resonance in all markets, from the SMB to the enterprise.
“It’s good for the enterprise if they don’t have their own red teams on site, and even those red teams could use this tool,” she said.
Michael Farnum, CTO of Set Solutions, a Houston-based company that serves the TOLA [Texas Oklahoma Louisiana Arkansas] area and is focused on larger enterprises, said that they have worked with Randori for about a year.
Michael Farnum, CTO of Set Solutions
“We are seeing interest in it grow on a weekly basis,” he indicated. “It’s very popular right now, especially where M&A is involved.”
While Set used to do the pen testing part themselves, they used to work on the ASM side with Expanse, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in late 2020.
“We previously worked with Gavin Osters with Sentinel One, and those relationships make a lot of difference,” Farnum said. “Gavin brought Randori to our attention. These guys bring ASM and external pen testing together in an interesting way.”
Farnum said that this relationship will also bring synergies around the channel program.
“Some startups don’t know the importance of the channel immediately,” he noted. “Gavin putting this program together has made this really easy for us. The level of enablement we get helps us grasp it fast.”
