WatchGuard Technologies just released the results of a new survey that reveals what resellers think about the top threats to customers, as well as their customers’ ability to manage security alerts and overall understanding of the firewall market. The insights gathered in the survey offer a unique perspective on the industry challenges and trends that security solutions resellers are seeing today.
What threats do resellers think customers are most concerned about?
- 83 percent of resellers believe that ransomware will be their customers’ largest concern this year.
- 16 percent believe the majority of their customers would pay a cyber ransom.
- 65 percent believe at least some of their customers would pay.
As threats continue to grow, do resellers think customers have the proper resources in place to manage incoming alerts?
- 45 percent of reseller respondents believe that less than half their customers have the proper resources in place to adequately manage incoming security alerts.
- Only 5 percent of surveyed resellers believe all their customers have these resources in place, while 7 percent believe none of them do at all.
As customers try to address increasing security concerns, do resellers think they understand the difference between UTM and NGFW?
- 63 percent do not think the majority of their customers understand the difference between Unified Threat Management (UTM) appliances and Next Generation Firewalls (NGFW).
- Nearly 80% percent do not think their customers care about the difference between the two appliance categories at all – and only want to know that their business is protected by the latest threat prevention solutions.
“This survey further validates the importance of the reseller and service provider community for SMBs dealing with cyber security. Organizations rely heavily on the expertise of these channel partners to provide guidance that keeps employees and customers safe from the evolving threat landscape,” said WatchGuard CTO Corey Nachreiner. “For customers, it seems that the realistic impact or outcome is of more importance than the classification of threats or security solutions.”
The survey examined the views of more than 1,400 WatchGuard partner organizations across the globe and was conducted by independent market research firm, Vanson Bourne.
For more findings from this survey, read the full press release here.