606 Cork Inc.: The Cyber Warranty Solution for MSPs

00:15 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT business podcast, the show for IT professionals. If you support business in any shape, form or fashion, we're here to help you do that better, smarter and faster. Today's show is brought to you by SuperOps SuperOps.com, the all-in-one RMM PSA AI-supported solution to help you supercharge your business. Check them out over at SuperOps.com or head over to our website, itbusinesspodcast.com, go to our sponsor section and click on them and you get yourself a little freebie trial that you can take it for a spin. So today's show we are joined by. Well, so he was on the show last year, but he's with the new company. So I've got Nick Wolf on here and we're going to talk about a company you may have heard of in the last year, cork Inc. But let me get him on here and we'll talk more about that. Nick, welcome to the show. 

01:25 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Hey Mark, thanks for having me on again. 

01:26 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Pleasure to be here. Good to see you again and, even though the listeners can't see or hear anything, sorry for your weather. 

01:37 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, here in Connecticut it's still cold and a little snowy here, yeah. 

01:42 - Uncle Marv (Host)
I will live and die in Florida. 

01:46 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Love Florida, love Disney, there you go. 

01:49 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So let's talk about Cork Inc. And, in short, it's a warranty coverage, so why don't we first start with how does that differ from cyber insurance? 

02:08 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, sure thing. So, Cork, we're a cyber warranty solution that MSPs can resell to their clients. This can act as alternative coverage or supplemental coverage to cyber insurance. The key thing here is that, with a cyber warranty, this is something that MSPs could resell to their clients and make a monthly recurring revenue on it, whereas typically, with cyber insurance, the MSPs don't make any money there. Typically, that relationship is going to be between the licensed insurance broker and the end user directly. With a cyber warranty, though, you could still provide financial coverage to the client without needing that broker, so we're cutting out the middleman, giving the MSPs the ability to resell a cyber warranty to their clients in real time. 

02:54 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, so something we can resell. But here's the question that I think, well, I'm going to have I don't know if other people will have it but what does a warranty actually cover? Because insurance, we know, will help in terms of a breach and data loss and that sort of stuff. But if we're providing a warranty, what are we saying to the customer? 

03:16 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, great question. So typically with cyber insurance, it's going to cover things like ransomware, payments, business interruption losses, incident response services and data recovery services, which are all great. However, one of the drawbacks of cyber insurance is that there is going to be high deductibles. In some cases it could be $5,000. In some cases it could be tens of thousands of dollars. So a lot of people are leveraging a cyber warranty in tandem with cyber insurance, mainly because a cyber warranty is going to offer to pay off that cyber insurance deductible. 

03:48
So, if, for example, you're utilizing Cork, we would pay off the cyber insurance deductible, whether it's $5,000, $15,000, et cetera. What a warranty is also doing is it's covering things that are not typically covered by cyber insurance, such as wire transfer losses, phishing, attack payments, gift card payments, as well as providing the added benefit of instant access to funds. So with a warranty platform, you're getting access to your funds in a matter of hours today's, whereas typically with cyber insurance, you might be waiting weeks to months to actually get that claim getting paid out. 

04:25 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Now would people choose this instead of insurance. 

04:30 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
I would say that ideally, all MSPs and their SMB customers should have both cyber insurance and a cyber warranty. If a customer has neither, I would recommend getting started with the cyber warranty first, mainly because coverage can start in a matter of minutes without any sort of lengthy security questionnaire or hoops that you have to jump through like you would with a cyber insurance policy, and the fact that you get the added benefit that we're paying out those claims in a matter of hours today's, as opposed to weeks to months. 

04:59 - Uncle Marv (Host)
I'm sure we're going to have to have some sort of disclosure statement that this isn't going to cover everything, folks. I mean, this is actually. There's a limit, right, ban? 241 bulletin. 

05:09 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Patent Correct. So the cyber warranty that we offer here at Cork has two plans available. We have $100,000 with the coverage and $500,000 with the coverage, whereas typically with cyber insurance you could have policies that are $1 million, hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the size of your business, whereas typically with cyber warranty, this is really designed for small businesses and to help bridge that gap, giving those SMBs the financial protection that they need during an incident. 

05:36 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Alright. So the only reason I'm asking that is I can see businesses saying to us well, we'll just use this instead and you know, especially if there's a plan up to 500,000, most companies that we work with, even though they may make, you know, 15, 20 million a year plus, they might say, well, we'll never have more than a $500,000 event and you're going to make sure of that, right. 

06:04 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Well, yeah, again, the goal comes down to the size of the business. If you're dealing with a small business customer that has, you know, five to 10 employees, you know what $500,000 would be adequate coverage. If you're dealing with an organization that has hundreds of employees, or you know, 50 plus employees, rather odds are they're probably going to need a multi-million-dollar cyber insurance plan and $500,000 just isn't going to cut it. 

06:25 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Alright, and I'm assuming that Cork is going to help us with explaining this to the customer, because I just, for some reason, I just get this sinking feeling that I don't want to say the wrong thing and then have them think that, yeah, everything's covered up to, whatever the number is. 

06:45 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So the relationship that we have is Cork does not sell directly to the end user. We sell it through MSPs such as yourself. However, the liability is, and the agreement is going to be, between Cork and the end user. They're the ones that are signing off on our warranty. We're the ones that are paying out the end user during an incident. That way, it removes the liability of anything that would fall on the MSP's shoulders. 

07:11
But yeah, we could absolutely join a do a co-selling session to help educate the end user of why they need this type of service. 

07:18
We do it all the time. As a matter of fact, a couple of weeks ago, we helped one of our clients with a school system and they had a $2 million cyber insurance policy that was coming up for a renewal and the MSP was actually able to help them renew their cyber insurance policy. But what they did was they bonded in Cork to their offering and said, hey, instead of renewing your cyber insurance policy with a $5,000 deductible, let's renew your cyber insurance policy with a $25,000 deductible. So their cyber insurance deductible went way up. However, because they raised their cyber insurance deductible, that resulted in the cyber insurance premium going down by several thousand dollars a year and the MSP was able to resell them Cork for a fraction of the cost of what that premium savings was. So the customer saved money, the MSP made money by reselling Cork and the end user was able to bridge their gap by having supplemental offering through a warranty and tend them with their insurance. 

08:16 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. So because this is a warranty, it's not necessarily insurance, so you're not backed by the Lloyds of London or anything like that. How are you? 

08:27 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Well, we are backed by our own reinsurer, so we do have Hiscox that backs us, just in case we run out of money, right? So we are, you know, selling you something that is actual, tangible and reinsured, but you're not necessarily reselling insurance. We're labeling it as a warranty. 

08:43 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, all right. So you mentioned if we run out of money. That's obviously the thing that everybody has to worry about In Florida. Down here we have insurance companies fleeing the state because of the hurricane stuff. So having something like this when it comes to cyber sounds pretty good. Now, when you say we let's go back and talk about who Cork is, or Cork here I am saying Cork like it's Star Trek deep space nine. It's Cork C-O-R-K, the website corkinck.com, and these are. These are people you know. You used to work with all the people here at Cork, yeah. 

09:27 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
It's a little. It's like a high school reunion. 

09:30 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Homecoming yeah. 

09:32 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
So we got Austin McCord. He's the one who founded Datto. He's our lead investor and the founder of Cork, so super excited to be working with him again and even the majority of our C-Suite here. For example, our CEO was the former chief digital information officer at Cork, our CTO Dan. He was Datto's VP of engineering, so really designed the original Datto backup appliances the Alto and the Cirrus devices 10 plus years ago. And we have our advisory group as well. So we're. Our advisors include Ryan Weeks, who is Datto's chief information security officer. Urvish, who was Datto's VP of sales for many years. And the man the myth, the legend, the one and only Rob Ray, who was Datto's channel chief for a number of years. 

10:14
He's advising us from a go to market standpoint as well. So really excited to be rejoined with all the Datto alumni that I worked with during my nine year career at Datto in its early days. 

10:25 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Nothing like having the hand of the Godfather, Rob Ray involved. There is it. 

10:30 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yes, Kiss the ring right. 

10:33 - Uncle Marv (Host)
So I mean we talk about this as new it's, I mean it's technically new, we're, we're what? Less than a year old. 

10:43 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, so I helped Cork a couple of years ago when it was still in its stealth stage before I was an actual employee, but it came out of stealth mode in around May of 2023. So nine or so months ago and it became more publicly available to all MSPs beyond the waitlist around November of last year. So right now we are rocking and rolling. So we're onboarding new MSPs on a daily basis. You're going to be seeing us at a ton of shows. I was at the ASCII event in Costa Mesa last week. The team will be at right of boom in March and we'll be at more events in the future as well. 

11:17 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. So I mean this is marketed to MSPs, obviously. Are there any sort of requirements for us, Meaning, do we have to have, you know, a certain type of client, Do we have to have a minimum, or anything like that? 

11:31 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, great question. So the only minimum to become a Cork reseller is just one warranty license getting assigned to your account. So if you resell that license to any customer you want, we really don't care if it's a law firm or an accountant or whoever you want we're going to be able to help you provide that warranty to. I would say that the minimum there needs to be on the client side is that they need to have some form of RMM deployed, they need to have some form of EDR deployed. If they have on-prem servers, they need to be backed up, and the last layer of security is they need some form of MFA deployed on their network. Now we're vendor agnostic. 

12:06
We don't care who you're picking for MFA, who you're picking for backup, who you're picking for EDR or RMM. All we have to do is observe some of those solutions, and what makes Corks unique is because we're only selling this platform through MSPs is we're able to tie into the APIs of those tools that you're selling to your client. So I don't need to send you a 50-page questionnaire saying you know, are you using EDR, who are you using for MFA, and all those questions, because I'm seeing all that data in real time. I'm able to see in real time if your clients have Microsoft Authenticator or Duo or Evo installed for MFA. I'm able to see in real time if they have Sentinel-1 or Huntress installed for EDR. I'm able to get all that telemetry through the API keys that the MSP establishes when they set up their account. 

12:53 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, so there is something to install. Is it just an API through our stack, or is it an agent at the client side? What is it? 

13:01 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, so it's an API through your stack as the MSP. No hardware needs to get deployed, no software agent needs to get installed. You simply upload your API keys and we're able to see all the customers in one shot, as long as they're tied through your RMM or your EDR tool that you're leveraging. 

13:19 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, so I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on here and we didn't prep for this here but what if I don't want you to see all the rest of my customers? 

13:30 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
So that's a good question. So the only information that we're necessarily seeing is whatever you're labeling that customer in your RMM console. So if it's showing up as Bob's law firm, we're going to be able to see that Bob's law firm has 17 endpoints applied to your RMM and because we're getting that real-time visibility, that's how we're able to give Bob's law firm a cyber warranty in a matter of minutes because of that instant visibility. 

13:56 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, I'll take the hat off now. Let's go back to, in terms of how do you decide what the coverage is? Is it by end point? Is it by size, income, those typical things that are asked from an insurance standpoint. 

14:13 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
No, so it's generally easy. The price is the same. The only difference is how much coverage you want. If you want $500,000 with the coverage, that's going to be one price. If you want only $100,000 with the coverage, that's going to be another price. Both of those plans will protect the organization up to 50 endpoints, which is nearly 99% of the organizations we sell to as small businesses. If your client is larger and they have over 50 endpoints, we could support them. There just might be a little bit of a surcharge because they're a little bit bigger than that. But yeah, if it's a 25-person organization, the price is going to be the same whether they have a million dollars in revenue or a hundred million dollars in revenue. 

14:53
We like to make it very easy for MSPs to resell us. 

14:55 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Because the customers I'm thinking about are we're talking 150, 175 in endpoints. Is that a huge surcharge? Is it a tiny? 

15:05 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
surcharge. No, it's going to be a minor surcharge, so very, very easy to deploy us there. 

15:13 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, then of course I'm going to assume just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not out there, but I've got to assume there's nobody else out there doing this in terms of providing a warranty that can be resold through us as solution providers. 

15:33 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, to my knowledge again, this is a sort of new. A cyber warranty specifically designed for MSPs is something that's brand new to the market. That's why we're sort of exploding so fast here at Quark. Unlike other solutions, you know, EDR there's a ton of great solutions for EDR. There's backup solutions. There's a ton of great solutions MSPs could buy for backup solutions. But when it comes to cyber warranty, you know what we're doing right now is really focusing on market education, alerting MSPs that, just like in the auto industry, there's car insurance and a car warranty. The same thing is happening in the cyber landscape for MSPs. There's cyber insurance, which has been around for a long, long time, as well as cyber warranty, which is really starting to emerge in the last year or so. 

16:18 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, let me go back and ask this question in a little different way. We talked about what it is and we talked about some good reasons to do it, but why specifically something like this? Why not just say to our clients you know what? Go get your cyber insurance. We'll provide you with all the support, but we don't want to be on that front line if something happens in terms of making sure you get paid. So why would we do that? 

16:43 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
So because now you're getting money off of it, right Now you're able to go to your clients and say, hey, I want you to buy this solution for backup, this solution for EDR, this solution for MFA and whatever your cybersecurity stack is, you're able to provide them with a warranty and basically say I'm so confident in the tools that I picked for you that I'm backing it by a hundred thousand dollar plus cyber warranty powered by Cork, should any of those components fail. 

17:08 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, so let me go back to how we provide this to our customers. I'm assuming that this is something that we're going to want full disclosure on, like we're not going to want to bundle this and say, hey, as part of our diamond package, you're getting this warranty coverage. Do they actually need to sign something for the coverage? 

17:29 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Actually, a lot of MSPs are bundling this into the diamond package, as it were, instead of selling it at a lot of cart, because, again, they're so confident in the cybersecurity tools that they're selling their client that they're backing it by a warranty. But to remove the liability on your shoulders as the MSP. Yes, the warranty itself is going to be signed and executed by the end user because, at the end of the day, we're the ones that are going to be paying out the end user during a breach or during attack. That way, they could pay off their bills, whether it's a bill to a remediation service provider or, heck, even their own MSP. You know they could instantly pay out their MSP because those funds are made available to them. 

18:05 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, I'm glad I asked it that way, because I could see a lot of people just doing that. We'll just bundle it in, but I have to assume that you have to identify the customer with a signed document before something happens, as opposed to after right. 

18:21 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Correct, correct. So what you're going to do is you're going to log into the Quark dashboard and you're going to be able to see all of your customers through one pin of glass assuming you set up your RMM integration right and then from there you could buy warranties for all the customers, or you could buy the warranties for just individual customers, and in order for you to even buy the warranty, we have to have those validations in place right. We have to see your EDR, see your MFA, see your backup solution. So, as long as those solutions are visible and tied in through the API, we're going to be able to buy it in a matter of minutes and you're good to go. No lengthy security questionnaires are needed. 

18:56 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. So those validations. Once again, let me go back to that. I'm assuming that most of the RMMs are covered. Yeah, Basically all of them. 

19:07 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
I mean, you got Enable Ninja Datto Connectwise, Kaseya VSA Syncro. We just did a Tera last week, so yeah. 

19:16 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay. Now, when it comes to I mean EDR fine Servers in terms of their backup and the MFA, let's see here I'm assuming that we're talking about a true BDR type solution for those servers. 

19:32 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, so ideally, as long as it's on-prem physical servers, we would like some sort of image-based backup. So a lot of the popular vendors we're seeing are Datto, of course, right, as well as Veeam, Acronis, and again, that list is constantly growing? 

19:49 - Uncle Marv (Host)
What about the cheap people that use something like a Synology? 

19:53 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, so I'm not sure if that's going to be supported. If they're backing up a physical server to a Synology NAS, that's something I'm going to have to double check on my team to see if we could provide a warranty for something like that. 

20:05 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, because I know a lot of people that use them. We do the active backup image to the NAS and then the NAS gets uploaded to the cloud. So it's I mean, listen, it doesn't have the bells and whistles of a Datto but, it's out there, all right. 

20:23 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
My gut says that we're going to be able to provide a warranty in those environments, but we're probably not going to be able to monitor them proactive for lapses of coverage, right? So one of the benefits of working with a vendor that we integrate with via API is we're able to tell you that, hey, someone has turned off your Datto backups over here. In order to qualify for the warranty, you have to have some form of backup, so make sure you turn your Datto back on, okay, whereas if it was an unsupported API or a solution like a Synology NAS, for example, you would still get the warranty, but there would be a little bit more manual effort on your part to ensure that those backups are still occurring. 

20:58 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, let's see here, and then the multi-factor authentication. Now are we talking remote access authentication or are you talking about authentication for other things? 

21:12 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
So remote access as well as email, for sure. Okay 365 stuff. Yeah, correct, yep. Now you could use Microsoft Authenticator, or you could use Duo, you could use Evo. You know really whoever you want. 

21:24 - Uncle Marv (Host)
Okay, sorry, I'm googling stuff because I'm like I wonder if my solutions are supported. I'm thinking, oh, maybe not. So alright, and to do, to do. And now you've done partnerships. I saw that you did a partnership with Lion Guard recently. 

21:43 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
We did one with Lion Guard, so we're available through Lion Guard, we're available through Barracuda Networks. We announced that last year as well, and there's probably going to be some more exciting announcements in the in the next few weeks as well, especially during the right of boom conference. But what I'll just say this is that while we'll be available in more areas for MSPs, again, our business model doesn't change right. We're only selling this platform through managed service providers, whether that managed service provider buys it through cork directly, or our friends over at Lion Guard, or friends over at Barracuda, or our future friends, which are yet to be announced. 

22:19 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right. Well, nick, this all sounds exciting, waiting for the car to go by. You probably didn't hear it, but I, so I should probably tell people. So I, we are a block away from one of those I don't even know what to call them. It's a. It's like a body shop that does souped up engines. You know those little Everybody that wants to throw the exhaust on the cars and all that stuff. So when they pull out of their parking lot and come down the street, they zoom by my office. So it's fun, all right. 

22:58
So, as I was saying, nick is all sounds wonderful and exciting and Gonna have to take a look at it. And this sounds absolutely fantastic that we can offer this to our customers and kind of get them over the hump that you know, as you mentioned, you had one that helped them renew because of that, like by reducing their premium. But for the ones that are kind of, eh, maybe I don't want to do all of that stuff for insurance, well, they're going to have to do something. And the fact that we can provide them with, you know, a warranty to get started, but you're still going to have to have, you know, our EDR in place and service got to be backed up. You're going to have multi-factor authentication, so got to do something. 

23:42 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Absolutely. 

23:43 - Uncle Marv (Host)
All right, nick. Well, thanks for you know coming on the show and congratulations on your High school reunion with the Datto folks. 

23:54 - Nick Wolf (Guest)
Yeah, it's been an absolute blast and look forward to engaging with a lot more MSPs over here at Cork. 

24:00 - Uncle Marv (Host)
And I'm sure we will be talking to you again here soon, because I'm going to go ahead over to the page and see what we can do and I'm going to have more questions, so I'd like to have you come back on and answer. 

24:10
I love it, let's make it happen. Thanks, Marvin Nick, thanks for coming on and thanks, folks, for downloading and listening to this episode of the podcast. Check out Many more podcasts over at it. Business podcast calm. Sign up before your favorite pod catcher. Check us out on YouTube, LinkedIn and the Facebook. That's going to do it. We'll see you soon and until next time, Holla.