Small and mid-size businesses have the same issues with data protection and remote access to files and apps as Fortune 500 organizations. The only difference is SMBs can ill afford to get hacked and lose valuable data.
More than half of American-based small businesses suffered some kind of breach in 2016. And, 60 per cent of small businesses who suffer a data breach were out of business within six months.
According to Karen Mesoznik, the head of marketing for Perimeter 81, a security vendor with a cloud enabled virtual private network (VPN) protection solution, very few SMB-type organizations make any effort to protect themselves. “The reasons are pretty simple. They are looking for an easy to use software with visibility to see if there is anything unusual,” she said.
The Israel-based Perimeter 81 has entered the North American market with a focus on the SMB.
Mesoznik said Perimeter 81 is being offered in a software-as-a-service model specifically for SMB. The strategy behind this offering is that SMBs are not interested in going through long, complicated sales cycles. In a SaaS model, an SMB just has to sign up online to deploy the solution.
“SMBs do not have the time for a long, on-boarding process. SaaS is straightforward and does not require a great deal of commitment,” she said.
Perimeter 81 CEO and co-founder Amit Bareket, said he is seeing two different types of workspaces in the SMB. The first is for an office network and the other is for workers on the go.
“Since this is a SaaS service, workers are no longer confined to an office but they still need secure access to cloud resources such as AWS, Office 365, Salesforce and the Google Cloud,” he said.
A key part of Perimeter 81’s SMB strategy is to work with managed services providers (MSPs).
Bareket has positioned Perimeter 81 to be less than half the price of traditional VPNs on the market, while also reducing the time in supporting VPNs with installation and configurations since it’s a single sign-on solution.
VPNs, especially those with the capability of providing safe data transfers, has the potential to be a new business opportunity for MSPs looking to augment its security practice. MSPs are also interested in solutions with no hardware to integrate.
One MSP servicing the greater Virginia area was challenged with the many disparate solutions inside a key customer. Matthew Demaree, the CEO of web hosting and design MSP HTDNET LLC of Catlett, Va., said his team needed to shift physical servers to hosted Exchange along with installing other apps to complete the cloud-based solution for this customer.
The Perimeter 81 solution enabled HTDNET to provide a point-to-point VPN for customers with a requirement for secure access to local network data. A cloud-based VPN provides his customer with always-on access to data no matter the location enabling the customer to have a more reliable service, while also not having to worry about updates and maintenance.
“As an MSP, we can now manage it through Web interfaces and assist customers quicker than before. We also no longer have to remember specific company configurations and passwords,” Demaree said.
He added that set up of the Perimeter 81 solution consists of just two tasks: a private VPN server and the creation of groups and users. Adding or removing a new user can be done by logging into the interface from any browsers and making those changes.
“No more complicated VPN setups or outages; it just works,” Demaree said.
