Pax8 is now looking to do the same for CrowdStrike, the dis- tributor’s executives said. Given that CrowdStrike is “the gold standard in the enterprise cybersecurity space,” it’s a very big deal that MSPs are now gaining access to the technology in a way that’s tuned to their needs, said David Powell, vice president of sales strategy at Pax8. Looking ahead, MSPs will have access not just to CrowdStrike’s flagship endpoint security product but also to its tools for protecting identity, data, cloud workloads and more—all of which are capabili- ties that it offers as easy-to-deploy “modules” on its cloud-native, single-agent platform, according to company executives. CrowdStrike currently offers 23 different modules covering an array of security categories, and the plan is to make all of them available to Pax8 partners as soon as possible, said CrowdStrike Chief Business Officer Daniel Bernard. In short, the battle is on for the SMB customer among Crowd- Strike and other security vendors that focus on the smaller end of the market. But there’s one competitor in particular that’s on Kurtz’s mind: Microsoft. ‘The Clear Winner’ Starting in late 2020, multiple global financial service firms sought out solution provider powerhouse World Wide Technology for some badly needed assistance. Amid the explosion in cyberattacks prompted by the pandemic, the financial giants were looking to find the best endpoint security tool for securing worker laptops against the throng of hackers seeking to steal data and deploy ransomware. WWT’s Advanced Technology Center—a physical and vir- tualized tech lab with more than 200 specialists and six data centers, capable of performing exhaustive tests on IT technolo- gies—seemed like an ideal place to get the rigorous testing they were looking for. And so throughout much of 2021,WWT’sAdvancedTechnology Center team performed a battery of tests on endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools from top vendors including CrowdStrike and Microsoft, recalled Chris Konrad, area vice president for global cyber at WWT. The teams tested for security effectiveness, performance on endpoint devices and network utilization. The financial service firms also brought in their own penetration testers to launch simulated cyberattacks against the EDR tools. “This was very holistic testing across the board,” Konrad said, noting one firm’s assessment was so thorough it lasted 11 months. In the end, according to Konrad, every one of the financial service firms came to the same conclusion: “CrowdStrike came out as the clear winner.” For major enterprise-focused channel players like St. Louis- based WWT, No. 9 on CRN ’s 2023 Solution Provider 500, successes like these have cemented CrowdStrike’s reputation in endpoint protection technology.
In talking to CISOs who have used CrowdStrike, they consistently report a high level of satisfaction with the company’s product, said Lee Waskevich, vice president of security at Herndon, Va.-based ePlus Technology, No. 28 on CRN ’s 2023 Solution Provider 500. “Some of the largest companies have felt that the investment they made in CrowdStrike was a worthy investment,”Waskevich said. “I think where people see the value, they’re going to pay that price. And I don’t see a lot of people switching away from CrowdStrike.” During the second quarter of CrowdStrike’s fiscal 2024, ended July 31, revenue climbed 37 percent from the same period a year earlier to reach $731.6 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates despite the challenging macroeconomic conditions. In the fiercely competitive endpoint security market, Crowd- Strike holds the largest share at 17.7 percent, according to the latest available figures from IDC for July 2021 through June 2022. That put the Austin, Texas-based company ahead of No. 2 Microsoft, whose market share was 16.4 percent. Now, as CrowdStrike looks to replicate its enterprise success at the SMB level, the company is once again coming up against its familiar rival from Redmond. Like CrowdStrike, Microsoft is on a mission to win over SMBs on endpoint security with its Defender products that are bundled into many of its Microsoft 365 software licenses. Microsoft’s massive presence in the business world and its bun- dling strategy remain a serious challenge for CrowdStrike, solution provider executives noted, particularly as many customers look to save wherever possible amid the uncertain economic environment. At the same time, the list of customers that have adopted CrowdStrike after suffering a breach even with Microsoft security technologies in place is growing, Kurtz told CRN . He points to CrowdStrike’s own findings: In three out of four breaches of Microsoft customers that CrowdStrike’s incident response team has investigated over the years, Defender had been in use but had been bypassed by attackers. It’s a major lead generator for CrowdStrike, according to Kurtz. “We routinely convert Microsoft customers that have been breached using Microsoft security technologies into CrowdStrike customers,” he said. Ultimately, he contends that Microsoft is seeing a diminishing opportunity to convince businesses to adopt its security products with its sales pitch of, “‘You get it for free, use it.’” “[Customers] are saying, ‘Well, you’re putting us at risk,’” Kurtz said. “That’s really what we’re hearing from customers—Microsoft is putting them at risk.” IDC figures show that CrowdStrike’s endpoint security rev- enue grew faster than Microsoft’s during the period of July 2021 through June 2022, by 62.4 percent, compared with Microsoft’s growth of 59.2 percent during the period. That was a reversal from the previous 12-month period’s figures, when Microsoft had grown significantly faster on endpoint security revenue than CrowdStrike, according to IDC.
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