Stellar Cyber this week is unveiling its Open Cybersecurity Alliance, which offers tight integration and interoperability between Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform and technology solutions from a growing range of security vendors that MSSPs and enterprises already use.
For the last few years, Stellar Cyber has partnered with a growing number of cybersecurity vendors that are integrating their security tools with its Open XDR platform, which is used by MSSPs and enterprises.
Recent partnerships include threat intelligence firm RedSense, Sophos for its endpoint and firewall products, identity security company LastPass, and, earlier this month, WithSecure and its endpoint protection and threat intelligence capabilities.
Such integrations give the San Jose, California-based company a growing range of security options for MSSPs, MSPs, and organizations that use its AI-powered security operations platform, which itself comes with such capabilities as SIEM, network detection and response (NDR), user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), and automated detection response.
Stellar Cyber is taking the next step this week, unveiling its Open Cybersecurity Alliance, which offers tight integration and interoperability via open APIs between Stellar Cyber’s Open XDR platform and technology solutions from a growing range of popular security vendors.
“We've been laying the groundwork for the last couple of years, developing not just integrations, but formalized partnerships with the leading cybersecurity ISVs across the entire landscape – identity, email, firewall, SASE, cloud – to the point where we have more integrations, from a SIEM [and] XDR [extended detection and response] standpoint, than any other of our competitors,” Andrew Homer, Stellar Cyber’s vice president of alliances, told MSSP Alert.
Open APIs are Key
The Open Cybersecurity Alliance to this point includes such vendors as Netskope, LastPass, Check Point, Mimecast, and ESET, and MSSPs like MSSP Top 250 companies Brite and CyFlare.
The program includes more than 400 active integration points from the security vendors through an open API toolkit and a request process, as well as testing tools, technical guidance, and documentation for alliance partners and organizations.
For those in the alliance, they get collaborative go-to-market programs like reciprocal branding, joint market initiatives, solution briefs, PR exposure, and new sales opportunities, according to Stellar Cyber.
From Point Products to Platforms
The alliance illustrates the ongoing migration among vendors, MSSPs, and organizations away from point products that users have to integrate and manage to tightly integrated security platforms, a shift driven by the rising sophistication of cyberattacks and their own growing security environments, which can include 70 or more products. Stellar Cyber is offering users and MSSPs a platform that gives them choice in cybersecurity tools, Homer said.
In addition, MSSPs, which already manage a wide range of products and models through their services, now don’t have to go into a customer’s environment and recommend they tear out what they’ve invested in for several years. With the multiple and growing number of integrations, they can work with what the customer has, he said.
“Most times, customers are bringing their own tools,” Homer said. “How does that MSSP accommodate a new enterprise customer that might be on another endpoint? … MSSPs support multiple variants of models,” Homer said. “It could be, 'I want you to do everything for me, so I pick my CrowdStrike, I pick by Okta, I pick Mimecast, my Check Points, my ESET,’ whatever it might be. Then they have Stellar Cyber as that central console.”
Choice is the Word
Trevor Smith, executive vice president at Victor, N.Y.-based Brite, told MSSP Alert that this is an important point for MSSPs.
“[Customers are] going to have completely different environments,” Smith said. “They have a different endpoint, they have a different firewall, they've got a different vulnerability scanner. Some are huge CrowdStrike fans and Palo [Alto Network] fans. … They've made that investment [and] that's the tool they're going to use. We want to be able to work in that open alliance, and the openness of Stellar gives us that flexibility to allow the customer to leverage the investments they've made and the technology at the best fit for their organization.”
MSSPs don’t have to tell customers they need to rip and replace those technologies they’ve put in and gotten comfortable with, he said.
Good for Vendors and MSSPs
For vendors like LastPass, open and integrated initiatives like Stellar Cyber’s alliance are a boon for both customers and partners.
“This unified approach enables faster and more accurate threat detection, simplifies administrative tasks, and improves operational efficiency,” Jessica Couto, vice president of global channel and alliances at LastPass, told MSSP Alert. “There arises a certain complexity when organizations must manage multiple standalone tools, so streamlining security management while reducing overall cost tends to be the superior solution.”
Couto said Boston-based LastPass is a channel-first company that last month enhanced its partner program, with improved reporting capabilities that streamline invoices, support prorated billing, and lets MSPs create executive summary reports, a centralized partner portal for training, support, marketing resources, and other tools, and benefits like standardized discounts when registering deals and integration with the partner portal.
Given that, joining Stellar Cyber’s alliance was an easy decision, she said.
“Now our partners and customers alike can take data from LastPass and make it actionable through the use of Stellar Cyber’s platform,” Couto said. “We can go to market as joint security partners, offering automation, scale, and time savings, all critical to providing a great experience for our MSP ecosystem.”
Stellar Cyber executives will be talking about its Open Cybersecurity Alliance program at the RSA Conference in San Francisco starting April 28.
