RapidFire Tools Inc. has shipped an updated edition of its Detector Service Delivery System product with new capabilities designed to make structuring, marketing, and delivering insider security threat mitigation service packages easier for MSPs.
Introduced last May, Detector is an appliance-based solution deployed inside the firewall that checks for suspicious user behaviors, insecure network configuration changes, and other potentially dangerous anomalies that externally focused security technologies can overlook. Redubbed the Detector Service Delivery System (SDS) by Atlanta-based RapidFire Tools in April, the system now provides tools MSPs can use to package and promote complete internal threat security service offerings.
Version 2.0 of Detector SDS, which the company officially shipped today, includes an enhanced management portal with increased functionality for defining service plans. Users can now quickly specify the exact combination of security policies they want each of their plans to enforce. An additional newly introduced feature then allows MSPs with multiple plans to generate professionally formatted catalog documents that summarize their benefits.
“It’s basically a document just like when you’re trying to get health insurance coverage and have different plans, allowing the consumer to shop and look at them and compare the differences,” says Win Pham, who is vice president of development at RapidFire Tools.
The new version of Detector comes with a library of additional collateral items as well that MSPs can customize with their own brand.
“We’re not only giving them the tools to put the technology in but providing the marketing material and sales material that they need in order to sell it,” says RapidFire Tools President Michael Mittel.
Users whose marketing effort prove successful can employ new functionality in Detector to generate contracts for their services. The system comes with a generic contract template that MSPs can use as a starting point and then customize as needed on a client-by-client basis.
Other enhancements in the new edition of Detector include redesigned versions of the emails the system automatically sends when it spots an issue worth investigating, like an unusual overnight login on a computer used for accounting or a user acquiring administrator privileges. Addressed directly to an MSP’s client, those messages alert recipients about potential problems and tell them how to respond. The revamped ones are designed to be easier for non-technical people to understand.
“We’ve simplified it down to make it look more like a credit card alert, because we figured that’s a better paradigm,” Pham says. “Before, we were making the business owner make more decisions.”
Detector SDS 2.0 also includes “resolution list” functionality designed to simplify decision-making for technicians.
“When the MSP gets notified of a threat, we actually tell them ‘here’s kind of a task list or a list of things you need to do to solve the problem,’” Mittel says.
New as well in Detector is PSA integration functionality that automatically opens a service ticket every time the system identifies a security risk requiring action. Users can click directly through from those to the Detector portal to resolve the issue.
At present, that feature supports PSA software from ConnectWise, of Tampa, Fla., and Autotask Corp., the East Greenbush, N.Y.-based managed services software vendor that recently merged with business continuity vendor Datto Inc., of Norwalk, Conn.
MSPs can now configure Detector to respond to different alerts in different ways. Besides sending automated business owner emails and creating PSA tickets, other options include routing the alert to a technician for resolution and simply logging the alert if no further response is required.
Though pricing on Detector remains unchanged in version 2.0, channel pros can acquire it more cheaply than before, Pham notes, thanks to new functionality that lets users run virtual editions of the product on the Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows.
“That’s really huge, because previously for every instance that you put out you would have to give an extra $90 to cover the Windows licenses,” Pham says. “If you had 10 customers sites, you’d be paying $900 in Microsoft licenses along with the $500 a month that you pay for SDS. Now you’re paying just $500 a month and can deploy to 200 sites if you want.”
That low entry cost now makes Detector a practical deployment option at break-fix sites for the first time, Pham continues. Fee-for-service customers are typically unwilling to cover appliance licensing expenses on a solution like Detector. The new Linux-based version of the system eliminates that purchasing barrier.
According to Mittel, Detector allows MSPs to avoid commoditization by differentiating themselves from competitors who focus only on outside security threats while collecting an incremental revenue stream.
“At the end of the day, it’s a really big deal to the MSP if we can layer on an additional 20 percent of revenue on top of what they’re getting from the services contracts,” he says. “It filters down to the bottom line very quickly.”
The new edition of Detector SDS is available immediately.
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