SonicWall launches SonicWall University and Marketing Programs for Channel

SonicWall has announced key milestones since it spun off as an independent cybersecurity company and introduced the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program. Over 10,000 partners have already registered as SonicWall resellers, and the SecureFirst Partner Program is now open to partners in Asia-Pacific. SonicWall has also introduced two initiatives designed to help these partners secure customers in the shifting cyber arms race – SonicWall University to train partners on cybersecurity, and global marketing programs and incentives to help the SonicWall channel deliver their cybersecurity solutions and services for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

In its first 150 days as an independent company, SonicWall has charted unprecedented growth in partner engagement across numerous metrics, including:

· Since launching the SecureFirst Partner Program, which provides expanded sales and technical enablement in addition to aggressive partner rewards and deal protection, over 10,000 partners have registered in 150 days.

· Partners have registered for SecureFirst from 90 countries, underscoring the global nature of the cyber arms race and the extensive reach of SonicWall’s channel. This number is expected to climb, as today the SecureFirst Partner Program launches in Asia-Pacific.

· Record numbers of partners have participated in SonicWall educational events, including attendance at SonicWall Virtual PEAK Performance in March 2017 which more than doubled year-over-year to over 1,300 partners.

“The response from SonicWall’s channel partners to our spin out far exceeded even our own expectations,” said Bill Conner, President and CEO, SonicWall. “We’re excited that 10,000 partners have already joined the SecureFirst Partner Program and pleased to welcome 2,000 new partners to SonicWall. Today, we are announcing major investments in education and marketing to help enable these 10,000 partners to assist their customers with securing their business. We know these cyber threats are shifting and small to medium-size businesses are increasingly becoming targets, but they often lack in-house expertise and rely on trusted partners to keep their infrastructure secure.”

SonicWall has also made unprecedented investments in mining and analyzing data collected by the SonicWall Global Response Intelligent Defense (GRID) Threat Network which collects real-time data from more than a million sensors worldwide. The key findings as reported in the SonicWall 2017 Annual Threat Report include that ransomware attack attempts, one of the most insidious new threats, grew by 167 times year-over-year to 638 million and in the majority of cases is launched via email. Additionally, SonicWall research shows that 62 per cent of Internet sessions are now encrypted with either SSL or TLS, providing greater data security but also building a dark channel that threat actors can leverage to launch encrypted attacks.

To address the lack of trained cybersecurity resources available to SMBs and enable SonicWall partners to provide the best real-time industry offerings to their customers, SonicWall unveiled SonicWall University. This channel enablement program is designed as an extension of the SecureFirst Partner Program, helping communicate insights SonicWall has gleaned from the SonicWall GRID Threat Network to the partner community in a structure they can learn from easily.

SonicWall University highlights include:

· Specialized, role-based training and accreditation tailored to the three different audiences of sales, systems engineers and support team members. This opens up training to new audiences beyond traditional post-sales technical certification.

· All of the training modules SonicWall uses to educate its own employees are now available to partners, and will be updated regularly with up-to-the-minute content based on the SonicWall GRID Threat Network.

· In addition to the curriculum developed by SonicWall, third-party content from industry sources as well as SonicWall partner-contributed content will be hosted. SonicWall expects this partner-to-partner collaboration and enablement to scale up significantly and accelerate knowledge transfer for all who participate.

SonicWall has unveiled a major marketing campaign in response to partner requests to help educate prospective and current customers on the most pressing cyber threats.The goal of the campaign is to help partners educate their customers on how to best protect their infrastructure from today’s cybersecurity threats.

SonicWall channel partners from around the globe have been supportive of all the partner enablement initiatives, including the launch of the SonicWall University and the global marketing campaign:

The SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program is open to partners in the Asia-Pacific region. The program introduces improved partner rewards, deal protection and expanded technical enablement on the SonicWall portfolio.

SonicWall University is available globally now at no cost to authorized partners participating in the SonicWall SecureFirst Partner Program.