The partnership, the first of its type for both participants, will give qualifying Augmentt MSP partners access to cyber insurance at preferred rates.
Derik Belair, CEO and co-founder of Augmentt
Augmentt, which makes a SaaS security and management platform for MSPs, has partnered with SeedPod Cyber around the SeedPod Cyber Insurance Program. The program provides comprehensive cyber insurance protection from data breaches, ransomware attacks, and cyber threats, as well as a loss of income due to cyber related incidents. SeedPod Cyber is now offering MSPs using Augmentt Discover and Augmentt Secure up to 40% off the cost of cyber insurance for the customers they serve.
“Cyberinsurance is not new but approaching it through this type of partnership is something that is fairly new,” said Derik Belair, CEO and co-founder of Ottawa-based Augmentt. “Vendors have been contemplating how to get into that space, and we are the first SaaS security and management vendor to do so. The value proposition we can offer MSPs is that if they use this, they will be better protected because there aren’t a lot of tools like this, where by partnering with Seedpod they can instantly see the rewards.”
SeedPod Cyber itself, which is a managing general agent, is very new as well.
“This is the first partnership of this type for us,” said Doug Kreitzberg, SeedPod Cyber’s CEO. “We just started business development at the end of last year. We spoke with Augmentt last year and circled back last spring. We now have five relationships with MSPs as well, and we are developing our strategy of leveraging MSPs.”
The companies originally connected through Augmentt’s customer advisory board.
“SeedPod doesn’t just give a crazy rate that gives a partner a good hope they will get covered,” Belair said. “They provide a valuable solution that lots of MSPs are looking for.”
While SeedPod provides the service, the principal insurance carrier that they use is the Hanover Insurance Group, a long-established Massachusetts-based firm.
Doug Kreitzberg, SeedPod Cyber’s CEO
“We provide the service, while Hanover provides the paper, although we do have other partners that we go to if a specific customer doesn’t fit their strike zone,” Kreitzberg said. “Insurance companies are still trying to figure out how to do this. So far they haven’t, at least in the SMB market.” Augmentt’s Partner Advisory Board emphasized the most insurance agencies lacked both a solid understanding of the MSP model and the business and technical needs of their clients around cybersecurity.
Kreitzberg said this is the kind of solution that sells itself, because the explosion of high profile hacks has driven up the cost of cyberinsurance to make it barely affordable for SMB-focused MSPs, and has made it unavailable at all in some instances.
“This is one of the rare times where I would talk with people and they wanted to buy right away before we even had a product to take to market,” he noted.
He also emphasized how providing MSPs with cyberinsurance helps MSPs with other goals as well.
“They can focus on moving clients up the tech stack, and also derisking themselves, Kreitzberg said. “The MSP may not be out of the woods if an incident is due to their action, but it still does help them from a risk management perspective and they will also still have a client after the incident is resolved.”
To qualify for the Seedpod insurance, MSPs are required to use both Augmentt Discover, which quickly identifies every SaaS application being used across a customer’s organization, and Augmentt Secure, which provides MFA alerting, remediation, and threat reports. The logic is that these solutions will make it easier to satisfy cyber insurance criteria. Augmentt is offering 100 free seats of Augmentt Discover as part of this package.
