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Australian cyber security partner, Tesserent (ASX:TNT), is making a push into the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market after striking a new channel deal with a Sydney-based Telstra licencee.
Tesserent, which is publicly-listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), told shareholders on 28 June that it had signed a memorandum of understanding MoU to pilot its new managed service offering with select Telstra Business Centres, initially in Sydney.
The MoU agreement itself was inked with Mook Investments, A Telstra licencee trading as Telstra Business Centre Homebush.
The deal sees the Melbourne-based cyber security company partner with the licencee in a bid to launch the new managed security service offering, CyberBIZ, via the company's business services operation.
According to Tesserent, the partnership represents the first step towards delivering a management SMB cybersecurity offering nationally via a major telco channel partner.
The SMB market represents a largely untapped segment, the company told investors, saying that, while SMBs are a key target for cyber criminals, it remains poorly services when it comes to top shelf cyber security infrastructure.
With the new deal under its belt, Tesserent is angling to have “first-player” advantage in the SMB market by offering a comprehensive managed security service designed for local SMBs.
The deal comes as the company launches its CyberBIZ enterprise-grade managed cyber security service, which takes much of what the company has historically offered its larger customers, and packages into a form that is more easily accessible to SMBs.
The CyberBIZ package combines monitoring, anti-malware, VPN and remote access, SPAM filtering, web filtering and a compliance suite of services.
Tesserent, which counts Palo Alto Networks, AlienVault, Kaspersky Lab and Cisco among its vendor partners, said that the new offering emerged, in part, thanks to a partnership with Dell.
“Our partnership with Dell on this project has been instrumental in us being able to robustly deliver small yet powerful security appliances around the country, which will connect back to our state-of-the-art security operations centre for 24x7 monitoring and management, without us having to worry about hardware logistics,” Tesserent CEO, Keith Glennan, said.
Tesserent's announcement comes at a particularly opportune moment, as Australian businesses face the prospect of being hit in a global ransomware outbreak.
The global attack, which quickly spread to Russia, parts of Europe the US and India, reached Australian shores by 28 June, impacting both Cadbury and DLA Piper, a global law firm with local offices.
The Petya or GoldenEye ransomware strain, which is at the centre of the attack, exploits a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows which was exposed in the recent Wannacry outbreak.
This article was updated on 11 July to clarify that the MoU was signed between Tesserent and Mook Investments.
