MSPs can become Worry-Free with Trend Micro, Westcon-Comstor

Westcon-Comstor Sub-Saharan Africa, a leading global distributor, today announced the introduction of the Trend Micro Worry-Free programme, designed to enhance the ability of managed service providers (MSPs) to safeguard the data and systems of their customers. This co-managed extended detection and response (XDR) service is cross-product, cross-customer and cross-partner to help mitigate the threats faced by businesses today.

As the only distributor of this offering across sub-Sahara Africa, Westcon-Comstor leverages the expertise of Trend Micro to provide an enhanced security offering to MSPs without requiring additional resources or investments from customers. Using Trend Micro’s MSP solutions, Westcon-Comstor partners not only get central visibility across all their security controls, layers and customers. But they can also improve business efficiency by centralising key functions, such as licence and billing management.

“Trend Micro MSP solutions automate security management, allowing our partners to focus on key priorities like increasing value to their customers and growing their business. While some endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions may offer automated processes, this does little to help in the broader context of detection and response when companies need to consider more than the endpoint, especially given how e-mail is the top threat vector,” says Rhea Sarmis, Channel Manager at Westcon-Comstor.

Westcon-Comstor has partnered with Trend Micro to bring a host of solutions that will see partners become more profitable by lowering their costs and increasing their productivity and recurring revenue stream from a single Web-based management console. The Worry-Free programme is offered on a monthly pay-as-you-go billing option. Partners require no upfront investment in unnecessary product licences and there are zero start-up costs to get going.

“The announcement of Co-Managed XDR is a significant event in the evolution of how we take our products and services to market across sub-Saharan Africa. It’s been a while since we started down this road with Westcon, but now the products, tools and processes are in place. We encourage all MSPs to take advantage of this new offering available exclusively through Westcon-Comstor,” says Kimmo Heldan, Channel Lead at Trend Micro sub-Saharan Africa.

The service offering comprises three elements – detection, investigation and response and remediation.

• Detection. Endpoint sensors record system activities and behaviours inside a company and send metadata about these recordings and endpoint alerts and detections to the service. Using AI, these alerts are correlated and analysed through the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network. The resulting correlated alerts are prioritised, while notifications are sent to the Trend Micro threat analysts.
• Investigation. A threat analyst investigates the specific threats by gathering additional information (with MSP approval) to determine vulnerabilities, understand what else may have been downloaded, or if the original threat has mutated and spread.
• Response and remediation. A report is provided to MSPs about the incident, including recommendations on how to respond and remediate from the attack where appropriate. Trend Micro threat experts can do mitigation actions on behalf of the MSP if previously authorised.

The offering integrates with customer systems through advanced API sets. The Trend Micro MSP ecosystem easily integrates into third-party IT system management tools, creating a powerful, connected managed security services platform with round the clock detection and response services.

“Worry-Free services give our partners and their customers a complete endpoint protection platform with threat detection, response and investigation via a single agent. Maximise user protection with a comprehensive set of security controls, such as application control, DLP, encryption and behaviour analysis. As an all-in-one solution, it eliminates multiple vendors and simplifies management,” says Sarmis.