SKOUT Cybersecurity has hired Datto veteran Mike Hanauer as chief revenue officer (CRO). Hanauer will focus on MSP (managed IT services provider) relationships that drive small and midsize customer engagements.
At Datto, Hanauer managed and led a team of 100+ sales and success professionals and aided with the broader growth strategy -- including organic and M&A strategies, SKOUT says.
The career move surfaced during DattoCon19 in San Diego, a strong indication that he left Datto on good terms before resurfacing at SKOUT. In fact, ChannelE2E is set to meet Hanauer and SKOUT CEO Aidan Kehoe at the conference.
Predictably, cybersecurity is a hot topic at the MSP-focused conference. A lengthy list of cyber companies are first-time sponsors and attendees at the event, ChannelE2E believes.
Ahead of the conference, ChannelE2E reached out to Hanauer for additional details about his career move. Here's a sampling of our conversation over email.
ChannelE2E: How did you first hear about SKOUT?
Hanauer: I first heard about SKOUT last year at DattoCon18 in Austin, Texas.
ChannelE2E: What attracted you to the company?
Hanauer: There were two things that attracted me to SKOUT. First, the culture is second to none. Happy employees make happy partners. Secondly, the solution is a perfect fit for the MSP community. There is a surprisingly large gap in Cybersecurity in the SMB space, and SMBs are increasingly calling on MSPs to deliver their IT services as they get more complicated.
ChannelE2E: How many employees does SKOUT have?
Hanauer: SKOUT has 80 employees and we are continuing to hire every month.
Exactly where does SKOUT fit into the MSP and MSSP cybersecurity conversation?
- Which components of cybersecurity does SKOUT manage;
- what will the MSP and MSSP partners manage; and
- how does the SKOUT-MSP or SKOUT-MSSP relationship ultimately benefit end-customer?
Hanauer: We’re with our customers from beginning to end. We provide all the most important security capabilities that customers need from monitoring of your networks and systems to checking for vulnerabilities or looking for your data leaked on the dark web. The biggest area where we help is the bridging the knowledge gap. Threats in cyber are always evolving and we help our partners make sense of so they can knowledgeably help and protect their customers.
ChannelE2E: Are you essentially SOC as a Service for MSPs, helping the MSPs to vastly reduce and/or eliminate their need to hire a full-blown SOC analyst staff?
Hanauer: We're flexible in meeting our partners’ needs. Some partners have security components already and we can integrate to those solutions. Other partners want a full blown stack and we provide that as well. We do provide SOC as a service for our customers. In addition to helping our partners avoid the cost of hiring a 24x7 security staff, finding and retain that kind of staff is extremely challenging. Our pure focus on security and years in the business helps us attract and keep up and coming security practitioners.
ChannelE2E: What are your immediate priorities as CRO?
Hanauer: My first priorities as CRO will be twofold. First, if you’ve noticed the change on our website over the last week, you’ll see that our focus has shifted entirely to the MSP market. We will be doing extensive training for the existing sales team and aggressively hiring to ensure our partners have the best experience and support. Second, I will be focusing on content. We want to ensure we are delivering content that not only helps partners sell the SKOUT solution, but their full suite. We understand that we are just a small piece of the puzzle and our focus should be on growing the MSP community and helping more SMBs see the value in working with one of our partners for all of their IT needs.
