Threat Intelligence Provider Recorded Future Launches Partner Program

Threat intelligence company Recorded Future is throwing open its sales channel to VARs with a partner program in which they can help give customers a heads-up on current and emerging security threats.

Recorded Future, based in the Boston area, announced the program on Wednesday. The program, Recorded Future Connect, will allow VARs to bundle their own solutions with Recorded Future's machine learning tool to help organizations automate how they process potential threats.

The tool collects threat intelligence from several sources in real-time and delivers customized alerts to bolster the defense of organizations' networks.

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Solution provider August Schell of Rockville, Md., a Recorded Future partner, welcomed the VAR program and said it would help its base of mostly public-sector organizations. Mike Thorp, Schell's vice president of sales, said his company had been a partner for about eight months.

"They’ve been a great company to work with," Thorp told CRN. "They’ll partner with us on deals, they'll co-sell … They're very good on the partnership side of things and accepting the channel."

In its statement, Recorded Future cited statistics from IT-Harvest and Gartner that showed a growing threat intelligence market. Last year, IT-Harvest said the market was growing at a combined annual growth rate of 84 percent and is expected to climb to $1.5 billion in 2018. Recorded Future also cited a Gartner estimate that 60 percent of enterprises will utilize threat intelligence services as part of their security strategies by next year.

David Sauer, director of global channels for Recorded Future, said the outreach to VARs allows them to "get in on the next big thing." The company has been building its partner ecosystem over the last two years, "working mostly with technical partners and slowly building" a stable of MSSP partners, he said in an emailed response to questions from CRN. Recorded Future has 35 VAR partners, 15 MSSPs and 30 technology partners around the world, Sauer said.

Sauer said half of Recorded Future's sales come in through North American partners.

Recorded Future's tool can also be used to enhance existing vulnerability management, incident response, and threat assessment services. It has integrations with Splunk's Enterprise/ES, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's ArcSight, and IBM's QRadar solutions, among others, allowing VARs to take advantage of technology they may already be selling to partners.

That's especially helpful to August Schell, which is also a Splunk partner. "Having a threat intelligence tool to offer to our customers is a really nice addition to complement what they're already doing with a tool like Splunk's," Thorp told CRN.

That applies in particular to Schell's public sector customers, especially intelligence agencies, according to Thorp.

"Security is always top of mind," he said. "Having a threat intelligence tool helps narrow [customers'] focus, so they're not looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s a great addition to what we're trying to do in keeping the customer secure."

As part of the program, Recorded Future said it would also provide VAR partners with intelligence briefings from analysts; access to research from the Insikt Group, the vendor's research arm; product trials; and technical and sales certifications. VAR partners will also be eligible for deal registration with higher margins for partners who source deals, according to Sauer.