Technology Reseller v36

01732 759725 20 NEWS : VENDORS Matt Riley Andy Bogdan Digital Wholesale Solutions (DWS) is demerging from Daisy Group, following a strategic partnership with private equity firm Inflexion, which has taken a significant minority share in the IT, communications and cloud platform business. The demerger, which values DWS at £1bn, is the final step in separating DWS from the Daisy Group, with most Daisy Group shareholders reinvesting directly into DWS. The channel-only software platform business provides IT, communications and cloud products and services on a wholesale basis to more than 6,000 UK partners serving the SME community. Vendor partners include Vodafone, O2, BT/EE, Microsoft, TTB and Virgin Media Business. DWS, which recently acquired cloud distributor Giacom, will continue to be led by its existing management team, including CEO Terry O’Brien and Chairman Matt Riley, founder of Daisy Group. Riley said: “In a fast moving, dynamic, highly competitive market, with customers demanding more from their partners, we made a strategic decision to separate our direct and indirect businesses to provide better focus and agility. The change has re-ignited the growth in all our businesses and today’s announcement is the next step on that journey.” www.digitalwholesalesolutions.com DWS demerges from Daisy Group following Inflexion investment Beware EDR silver bullet, warns Kaspersky Kaspersky is advising businesses to be wary of next-generation and firewall vendors promoting Endpoint Detection Response (EDR) solutions for the protection of dispersed device networks, warning that they might not provide the same level of protection against rising threats as a comprehensive Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). The cybersecurity expert says that while these players have strengthened their solutions through the acquisition of EDR companies, many don’t offer the ‘must have’ features of a full EPP solution, like device and application hardening, and can be heavily reliant upon behavioural detection, which should be just one part of a multi-layered EPP solution. Kaspersky says it is raising the problem now because the steep rise in remote working has seen incomplete solutions being sold as a silver bullet. It points out that prior to the onset of COVID-19, 61% of businesses cited staffing limitations as the reason they weren’t adopting EDR. Yet, just months later, Kaspersky research found that 73% of workers hadn’t received any additional IT security awareness training after a mass migration to homeworking and ‘panicked’ adoption of EDR. The risk, says Andy Bogdan, Head of UK Channel at Kaspersky, is that IT teams facing more alerts than ever won’t know how to filter them properly, resulting in wasted time and resources and heightened risk of a serious red flag being overlooked. He said: “Just because some vendors are shouting loudest doesn’t mean they’re looking after a business’ best interests, and that’s why it’s critical that businesses enter into a conversation that begins with discussing what they need. More often than not, they’ll find they need a solution built around, or integrated with, training and skills development.” To this end, Kapsersky offers the option of training with all its EDR solutions, including Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response, which will help to pinpoint threats to devices, and Kaspersky EDR Optimum, which provides customers that have limited expertise in cybersecurity with further EDR capabilities, including better visibility into endpoints, simplified root cause analysis and automated/manual response options. Where budgets, time and resources are limited, it suggests, a service provider model might be the best option. www.kaspersky.com Heimdal Security to grow UK revenues by 500% Danish cybersecurity company Heimdal Security is planning major expansion in the UK, with the opening of a second UK office, in Leeds, and the signing of a new long-term agreement with its UK and Ireland master distributor Brigantia. Over the next 12 months, it aims to grow UK revenues by 500% and increase the headcount in its Leeds and London offices, from 30 to 90, making its UK operations larger than those in Copenhagen and Romania. Heimdal’s expanded UK presence follows investment in the business by Marlin Equity Partners in March 2020 and the appointment of Ruth Schofield as Country Manager in September. As former MD of KnowBe4 in the UK and Ireland, Schofield was part of the team that helped the security awareness training platform achieve $1bn ‘unicorn’ status. Schofield describes the Heimdal endpoint protection platform, which unifies multiple products including threat prevention, software inventory, patching, next-generation endpoint detection, privileged access management, application control, fraud prevention and remote access, as ‘disruptive’. She said: “Heimdal is an exciting, disruptive company whose technology takes endpoint protection to the next level. Rather than just detecting and blocking threats, it seeks them out in advance. It’s like being on the door at a nightclub – we’re not just stopping the wrong people from entering but going outside to check who’s in the queue.” New funding for Airband, Truespeed and Wessex Internet fibre roll-outs Three companies have been selected to roll-out full fibre broadband networks on behalf of the Connecting Devon and Somerset (CDS) programme, backed by combined public and private sector investment of around £80 million. Airband, Truespeed and Wessex Internet, which together have already delivered connections to nearly 41,000 premises in the CDS region, have been contracted to install full fibre gigabit broadband to more than 56,000 hard- to-reach homes and businesses across Devon and Somerset over the next four years. The initiative is being funded by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Heart of the South West LEP, CDS local authorities, European Regional Development Fund and the Rural Development Programme for England. Nearly one million homes and businesses in Devon and Somerset now have access to superfast broadband thanks to the Government-supported CDS programme. Of these, over 300,000 have access to superfast broadband as a direct result of public funding. www.connectingdevonandsomerset.co.uk Ruth Schofield