Karim Abousleiman is the product manager for Myki which specialises in password management and this company may be new to many. Talking to IT Europa Editor John Garratt at the event last month in London, he has a message for sellers of security about avoiding the insurance model.
“Yes, we are new – we do password management for MSPs and are different – we don’t store data in the cloud. When MSPs come to us, they are often surprised when we say their clients might need a password manager; they think it is a personal issue. They are not used to having it as an enterprise issue. But we are finding more MSPs coming to us for solution because they want to get away from the server.”
What is the channel interested in at the Security event? “Surprisingly it is not technical – not the why or how, it is the sales issues – how do we get our customers to understand security and the need to prevent breaches and loss of data. Most of the time it is how to raise awareness.”
Awareness is the big issue, he says, with awareness always reactive rather than pro-active. That includes MSPs, government and individuals as a whole.
“I can tell you how to sell security and make customers more secure without them ‘freezing’ and doing nothing. It is to sell them convenience – trick them into being more secure. The initial purchase is the hardest part. In our line of work we have to draw the line between security and convenience, what we have discovered is that - for the sales department - if we don’t want to sound like an insurance company and sell fear, we have to sell on convenience. Not only are we gong to help you become safer online, but we will make your life easier when it comes to managing passwords. We have seen that going down the convenience route is easier than the security one.”
Skills are holding the market back. "As a whole, as a community we have not figured out how to sell security. In general we don’t know how to do it well. We can sell automation, RMMs etc. But when it comes down to security, the only thing we know is selling fear and we don’t want to do that," he says,
“This sort of event is that we get to meet like-minded people: other SaaS partners and discover how to make MSPs lives easier. It is quite exclusive as you don’t get to meet MSPs elsewhere.”
