OpenText Aims To Boost DNS Protection Growth With Upcoming Product Move

The company is seeking to widen the deployment of its DNS protection offering through partners, by making the product available separately from its Webroot endpoint protection platform.

OpenText is looking to spark major growth with channel partners for its intelligence-driven DNS protection offering through a forthcoming product announcement, OpenText executives told CRN.

Later this month, OpenText plans to make DNS (domain name system) protection available separately from its Webroot endpoint security platform, enabling the DNS protection offering to become relevant to a broader set of customers, said Jonathan Barnett, a senior product manager in network solutions at OpenText.

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While tying together DNS and endpoint protection made sense initially for the Webroot product line — which OpenText acquired through its acquisition of Webroot parent Carbonite in 2019 — doing so has prevented customers that run other vendors’ endpoint security tools from using the OpenText DNS protection technology, Barnett said.

OpenText plans to make DNS protection available as a standalone offering on March 28, allowing customers to standardize their DNS protection “without installing two [antivirus] solutions, which they’ve never really liked to do,” he said. “It’s something which we’ve been asked for a lot.”

One of the people who’d requested a standalone DNS protection offering from OpenText is John Hart, a consultant with IT services firm Nerds On Site who’s based in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.

Given that it’s common for customers to have existing licenses with other endpoint security vendors, but still have a need for DNS protection, it’s “very exciting” that OpenText is planning to offer standalone DNS protection, Hart said.

“It’ll allow us as an MSSP and MSP to broaden our horizons and our clientele,” he told CRN.

The OpenText offering provides strong visibility and protection around DNS by leveraging Webroot’s BrightCloud threat intelligence service — ultimately providing an assurance that “if something does get through one of the [other security] layers, that DNS protection could likely stop it at the web layer,” Hart said.

The standalone DNS protection offering from OpenText should be ideal for a range of channel partner types, said Justin Gilbert, senior director of MSP channel development at OpenText.

For MSPs and IT consultants, “they’re going to have the finger on the pulse of what their client wants and needs. And so those ones might be a little faster to act on this,” Gilbert said. “But the VAR community is going to need this just as much.”

Broad Portfolio

The forthcoming DNS protection move comes as OpenText is finding major traction with partners — especially those who favor vendors that can offer a broad portfolio of cybersecurity and data protection capabilities, CRN reported earlier this month.

In addition to endpoint security and threat intelligence from Webroot, and data protection from Carbonite, OpenText’s portfolio also includes products from email encryption software provider Zix and security software provider AppRiver.

In January, OpenText added more security capabilities to its portfolio with the $5.8 billion acquisition of enterprise software provider Micro Focus.