NightDragon, a dedicated cybersecurity, safety, security and privacy (CSSP) investment and advisory firm, today announced a new strategic partnership with CyberKnight Technologies, the Middle East’s fastest-growing cybersecurity Value-Added Distributor (VAD) focusing on zero trust security, to continue the international expansion capabilities of its portfolio companies and bring the latest CSSP innovations to customers in the Middle East, Turkey, Africa (META) and other regions.

CyberKnight has rapidly grown into the largest pure-play cybersecurity VAD in the Middle East in just under four years. Through its strategic partner channel, it helps more than 500 enterprise and government customers implement leading solutions to simplify breach detection, prevention, and incident response, as well as implement regulatory compliance, zero trust practices, critical infrastructure protection, artificial intelligence (AI), threat intelligence, and more.

Through this partnership, NightDragon’s portfolio will get access to CyberKnight’s many customers in the region across banking, finance, telco, energy, government, and other sectors. Additionally, they will get access to more than 80 strategic partners and more than 400 channel partners across the region to further expand go-to-market capabilities internationally and deliver the latest innovations for mitigating risk from rising cyber threats around the world.

“NightDragon continues to align ourselves with leading partners around the world, such as CyberKnight, who can help drive new growth and go-to-market opportunities for our portfolio and bring their innovative CSSP solutions to customers that need them in the Middle East and around the world,” said Dave DeWalt, Founder and CEO, NightDragon. “We look forward to partnering closely with the CyberKnight team to advance a shared mission to secure our world for tomorrow and increase public-private partnerships globally.”

NightDragon companies will receive elevated levels of technical, sales, and business development support to ensure the successful roll-out of programs between the two organizations, including certifications and training for CyberKnight and channel partners as well as comprehensive pre- and post-sales services. CyberKnight will additionally support NightDragon portfolio companies to build robust global partner ecosystems through program consulting and access to its extensive reseller base of partners in the region. Finally, the companies will benefit from joint marketing activities and other efforts that will drive higher awareness, pipeline generation, and increased market penetration in the region.

Meanwhile, CyberKnight will benefit from privileged access to NightDragon companies to ensure increased access to their innovative technologies. Additionally, the partnership builds on an existing partnership with Macnica, a $10 billion global value-added distributor and solution provider, who is also a pre-existing NightDragon Master Service Agreement (MSA) partner and who recently announced its intent to acquire CyberKnight, as well as a shared commitment to increasing diversity and cyber talent efforts on a global scale.

“CyberKnight has a strong reputation for providing the most advanced, bleeding-edge technologies and cybersecurity solutions to our customers. We look forward to working closely with NightDragon and its portfolio companies as an innovation gateway to some of the latest technologies ready to break from the U.S. or other markets into the Middle East, Turkey and Africa and together have a profound effect on reducing cyber risk in the region and around the world,” said Avinash Advani, CEO and Founder, CyberKnight.

CyberKnight is the latest partnership added to the roster of Master Service Agreements as part of NightDragon’s NightScale platform, which provides a platform for growth to accelerate the go-to-market, talent, government services and marketing efforts of NightDragon portfolio companies. It is complementary to other preexisting NightDragon partnerships, including the recently announced Jones Group partnership, which provides strategic advisory in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

“Immuta is proud to work with a leading venture firm like NightDragon, which continues to forge innovative partnerships with prominent VADs and go-to-market organizations like CyberKnight that can help us bring our market-leading data access and security solutions to customers that need them into critical regions like the Middle East, Turkey and Africa,” said Scott Fuselier, Chief Revenue Officer at Immuta, a NightDragon portfolio company.

CrowdStrike has introduced Accelerate, a new partner program to usher in a modern, disruptive movement for CrowdStrike Falcon platform adoption and ecosystem growth. Accelerate is designed to empower the partner ecosystem to land and expand with CrowdStrike Falcon as well as collaborate on and through cybersecurity’s leading AI-native platform.

CrowdStrike’s new Accelerate program unites cybersecurity partners of all types – consisting of VARs, MSPs, MSSPs, GSIs, SIs, cloud marketplaces, distributors, telcos, OEMs, insurers, incident responders, ISVs and more – around the joint mission of our mission of stopping breaches The modern threat landscape necessitates an open, collaborative approach to XDR, providing organizations flexibility and choice in their ever-evolving technology and services needs.

Similarly, today’s software supply chains necessitate new programs and systems to capitalize on modern SaaS consumption. Through solution-specific go-to-market tracks, new-age “edutainment,” gamified rewards, as well as a host of sales, marketing, and partner support tools, CrowdStrike partners can now accelerate their success like never before – helping customers reduce total cost of ownership (TCO), consolidate point products and stay protected.

“Cybersecurity is at an inflexion point, and the partner ecosystem is no different,” said Daniel Bernard, chief business officer at CrowdStrike. “Our new Accelerate program turns the page for partners of all types to supercharge their CrowdStrike practices – horizontally across the Falcon platform – and vertically into the depth of our solution capabilities. New education formats, new sales tools and new rewards are just a few of the investments we’re making to set the cybersecurity ecosystem standard. Our focus is unwavering: putting partners at the centre of the fight to defeat adversaries – and together – stop breaches.”

The new program delivers:

1. Education that entertains to accelerate action. Knowledge is power. The new Accelerate program introduces partners to CrowdClass, a disruptive educational series featuring CrowdStrike experts in bite-sized video formats. Available on-the-go and on-demand, sub-10-minute videos share CrowdStrike expertise, prove differentiation and show partners how to sell, demonstrate value and win.
2. Demand generation and sales tools to accelerate deal closure. Winning in cybersecurity is all about speed; business origination, collaboration, and closure is no different. New infrastructure and operational enhancements make it easier and faster for partners to create demand, register opportunities, run value-based sales campaigns and close deals. Accelerate also introduces The Grid, the CrowdStrike’ self-service marketing campaign platform providing landing pages, emails and social posts that help partners win with the CrowdStrike Falcon platform.
3. Rewards that accelerate and grow partner profitability. Partner results are opportunities to reward. Accelerate unveils CrowdCard, a first in cybersecurity, where individual sales and solution engineering professionals earn cashback rewards on a branded CrowdStrike debit card. Rewards incentivize new customer transactions as well as platform expansion across strategic solution areas. CrowdCard delivers reward payments within days, positively reinforcing behaviors and results. In addition, Accelerate rewards partners with attractive margins, discount tiers and back-end rebates to support building focused, profitable CrowdStrike practices.

Ingram Micro has announced a distribution agreement with Okta, a leading provider of cybersecurity solutions to cover Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. This collaboration enables Ingram Micro to expand its security solutions portfolio for resellers and managed service providers by providing access to a growing range of options for identity and access management solutions.

This includes solutions for authentication via SSO (single sign-on), adaptive MFA (multi-factor authentication), and the ability to easily manage user profiles for companies of all sizes. Okta’s solutions, combined with Ingram Micro’s technical expertise and services, can help make identity and access management easier for customers and provide a new level of reliability when connecting to any technology from any device, anywhere.

“Cybersecurity is one of Ingram Micro’s 2023 strategic priorities in the cloud, and I’m delighted we are now an Okta distributor. Together, we can offer managed security service providers and resellers the identity solutions they need to securely connect their teams, end customers, and enterprises to technology and work smarter to avoid ransomware attacks,” said Dr. Ali Baghdadi, SVP & Chief Country Executive – MEA Region, Ingram Micro.

“Identity is central to the biggest trends driving the IT industry – from cloud computing and digital transformation to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence,” said James Bradley, Regional Vice President of EMEA Partner and Alliances at Okta. “By teaming with Ingram Micro, we look forward to offering our mutual customers across the region with comprehensive digital identity and access management solutions.”