Distology has “never seen traction like this” for new ransomware-busting vendor signing Halcyon, its Solutions Engineering Manager Kobi Hunn has asserted.
Fresh from raising $100m in Series C funding in November, Halcyon last month appointed Distology as its exclusive UK value-added distributor.
Already valued at $1bn, the Austin-headquartered start-up claims to be the only cybersecurity company that eliminates the business impact of ransomware.
‘We’ve never seen this’
The noise around Halcyon means the Stockport-based VAD is already having to “juggle” incoming registered deals from its partners, Hunn said.
“We’ve never seen this amount of inbound queries,” Hunn told IT Channel Oxygen.
“Our partner account managers are almost swamped, which they enjoy because they’re engaging with more partners than they ever have before.”
Halcyon is designed to work alongside, rather than replace, endpoint security tools such as CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender, Hunn stressed.
“A lot of technologies out there will alert you when a ransomware event has happened,” Hunn said.
“The real USP here is Halycon’s ability to capture encryption keys as the ransomware event is taking place. What that means is you won’t be held to ransom to get those keys back, because Halcyon is able to capture them in real time. This means you can recover data a lot quicker and don’t have to rely on backups.”
UK traction
Having swiftly assembled an EMEA team led by Regional VP Justin Shaw-Gray and EMEA Channels Manager Simon Haylock, Halcyon – which has raised a total of $190m since it was founded in 2021 – held its first EMEA partner event last month.
It was attended by a number of larger resellers, who Hunn said are already interested and investing in the technology.
“We haven’t seen traction like this,” Hunn said.
“Normally, if you take a new technology to market, it can take a good few months just to get to that level of engagement. We’re seeing a very quick onboarding of new partners, and they’re already bringing customers to us as we speak.”
Distology’s role is to provide partners with sales and technical enablement around Halcyon, as well as marketing support, Hunn said.
“If the partner has a handful of customers they want to get to a roundtable to bring Halcyon on board, we can do that,” he said.
Although the healthcare and finance verticals have emerged as particularly fruitful targets for cybercriminals seeking to extort ransoms, ransomware is a “genuine concern for all industries”, Hunn emphasised.
Halcyon is suited to partners who possess a “genuine understanding of the threat of ransomware and how to approach that conversation”, he added.
“When partners approach their end users to ask them ‘what’s you concern around ransomware?’, they’ll say they do have concerns, but that they have endpoint security. And typically they’ll say ‘I’m fairly confident with that’,” Hunn explained.
“But in this climate, is ‘fairly confident’ enough? Probably not. And that’s where Halcyon can step in and offer that overall protection.”
“The channel opportunity is massive”
Distology has become more “deliberate” about the vendors it takes on, ensuring the “coolness” of their technology is matched by market demand, Hunn said.
On this front, Halcyon was last month given a boost when Oliver Newbury, a former Barclays Global CISO seen as one of the world’s most renowned security leaders, joined as Strategic Advisor.
So is there really a market for Halcyon in the UK?
“When I first saw the demo, it almost looked too good to be true. Stopping ransomware – that’s a bold statement to make. But it does exactly what it says on the tin,” Hunn responded.
“It’s a technique that excites me, but the channel opportunity is also massive.”
This article was produced in association with Halcyon and is classified as partner content. What is partner content? See more here.
