There's a big market opportunity around third-party risk management (TPRM) -- $4 billion big, in fact. And earlier this month, Safe Security appointed Michael Nagao as the company's new channel chief to take advantage of that big opportunity.
Nagao, SVP of worldwide channel sales and alliances for Safe Security, told ChannelE2E that his goal for the next 24 months will be to keep the company's channel super simple and make it very easy for partners to go to market with the Safe Security solutions.
"We want to make the go-to-market for partners very easy from an enablement standpoint, and focus on driving strong margins with partners," Nagao said. "We really just want to create an attractive, profitable business line for our partners."
The company's portfolio reflects the shift in industry conversations from technology-focused to identifying, managing and mitigating risk, which also plays a role in helping Safe partners start conversations with customers, Nagao said.
Safe Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) is the latest addition to the SAFE One platform. Safe TPRM takes a risk-based approach using outside-in, questionnaire and inside-out telemetry to allow partners to quantify customer's risk using industry standards like FAIR and MITRE ATT&CK, all within the SAFE One platform, Nagao explained.
"Using this, Safe can put a dollar figure on the cyber risk exposure of customers' portfolios," Nagao said, and that can change the game as far as a partner gaining business and landing a customer. "Instead of our partners going out and trying to position technology, it's more about what our technology is going to do; to give a readout on where they are exposed, how to reduce that exposure and burn down risk quickest, which Safe can do," Nagao said. That positions the partner and Safe Security as an organization's trusted advisor and can become the foundation for an ongoing relationship.
Safe TPRM provides a risk-based approach that quantifies third-party cyber risk in financial terms and enables organizations to tier their vendors based on the potential loss to the business, prioritized risk mitigation actions based on the potential financial loss and likelihood of certain outcomes, an integrated risk management platform that supports outside-in, questionnaire, inside-out, zero-trust and first-party risk and generative AI-enabled automation to quickly apply solutions.
Nagao said the opportunity is so large because the addressable market extends to anyone who could be hit by a ransomware attack. And while that includes businesses of all sizes and across all industries, it is garnering attention from larger enterprises especially.
"It's piquing the curiosity of large enterprises and partners that work with large enterprises because, you know, we can pretty accurately dial-in their exposure," Nagao said. "We can say, 'With your current current cybersecurity posture, you have a 36% chance of being hit with ransomware. And if you were to get hit, that would cost you $100 million. Now, if you make these modifications across this area, these technologies, you can burn that risk down from 36% to say 25%. That you can bring down your cost to $50 million.' Obviously I am just making up those numbers, but that is how specific we can get," Nagao said.
For now, he said, Safe is working to identify the top four or five managed services providers and managed security services providers in each market to begin conversations. Thus far, the approach and the solutions have been really well received. Next, he said he will aim to drive about 50% of business through the company's top channel partners as he works to add more channel partners to the ranks.
"With the kind of enthusiastic response we're getting to this, it makes my job pretty easy," Nagao laughed. "So, I just need to keep making it just as easy for the partners to work with us, and keep doing what we're doing," he said.
