663 DefensX: Secure Browsing Made Easy

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast, and we are continuing with the 2024 Vendor Spotlight for the IT Nation Pitch It Accelerator Program. Today I have with me the company DefensX, they are back and joining me to talk about that. Dave Maik is the channel director for North America and DefensX, if you don't remember because they were in Pitch It last year, a cybersecurity company that provides a secure web browser solution to protect against cyber threats.

Dave, how are you? Not bad yourself. I'm doing pretty good.

So you're back, take two, and looking for better things this year. Let me first ask, what did you think of the program last year?

[Dave Maik]
It was great because I'm back. I've taken advantage of the two years that you're allowed to participate in the program for sure. So yeah, obviously coming back just is a signal of how much it was a help to us over the course of the year and up to now.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. And I know that I've talked with some people after the program, even the winners gained a lot from it and saw tremendous growth, tremendous response from the MSP community. And I assume it was the same for you as well, correct?

[Dave Maik]
Oh, absolutely. I think it was for everybody that participated last year. Just the exposure that we got, and really we're just coming out of the gate.

We're only probably a year and a half into our official final product launch and the timing was great. And I do contribute a lot of where we are today to the Pitch It program for sure.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So let me see if I can go back and kind of give a brief overview and you can correct me where I'm wrong and talk about where things are different. So I know that some of the features we talked about the secure web browser feature.

You guys also have DNS protection. Correct. Credential protection.

[Dave Maik]
Correct. And file protection.

[Uncle Marv]
And file protection.

[Dave Maik]
Kind of the four main things.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. All right. I remember seeing some stuff in there about employee monitoring and shadow IT.

Is that true? Was that talked about or was it put in, taken out? Where are we with that?

[Dave Maik]
No, that's been part of our core product. Really, the core product is the browsing protection of the browser. So protecting everybody as they browse the web on a day-to-day from an endpoint status.

And then the credential and file protection. So it's really against putting your credentials in the wrong spot, being able to stop any actions from an employee that these employees that don't really pay attention, we help pause them for a minute, if you will, before they just go ahead and do it. And then file downloads, we're able to scan those downloads.

And being able to understand the risk scoring of those individuals. So seeing where they're going on a day-to-day and grading their performance as they work to understand if there are risks to that organization.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I know that us as MSPs, we can implement that and monitor that. But when you talk about the score that they can see, is this something that they can see on their own from their own browser?

[Dave Maik]
Sorry, what do you mean by, do you mean the individual seeing on their browser? So the scoring is something that we evaluate based on their browsing throughout the day. So what type of sites they're going to, credentials, we're able to see the hash of the credentials, understanding what those credentials, if they've been pawned, or if they're maybe a simple, if you will, or multiple passwords are being used that are the same.

So through that hash, we're able to identify if their posture on their passwords is an effective one. So with that scoring, and we're able to tell the company throughout the company why, how they're doing in their risk scoring, how much of a risk is the company in general, and then how much or each individual they could look up and say, John Smith, he's in kind of a scoring that he probably needs a little help. So this is where you can start to bring in cyber training and have them do some training programs where they can start to understand how they can be more protecting their own credentials or creating credentials that are more lengthy or not pawned as often like a 123 or their name type of thing.

So yeah, this is where it's a helping hand for the company to make sure that everybody's doing the right things on a day-to-day basis.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay. So I guess the question now becomes the secure web browsing and the DNS protection. Are those married together?

Or can they be done separately?

[Dave Maik]
Right. Good question. So we've always had a complete package, which is DNS protection.

And then as we kind of like to call it our secret sauce, which is that browser and file credential protection. But something we did recently, just back in March, is we have now taken our DNS solution and created a fourth SKU, an entry level SKU, as we call it. We believe that DNS is an older technology.

It's been around a long time. It is a must have. It is a starting point.

It is a great protection to get started. However, attacks and vectors of where they're coming from today go beyond what DNS can do. The typical allow block, whitelist, blacklist type thing.

So we believe we're kind of that next gen of DNS. So we launched a DNS only solution at a very, very, I want to say, very cost effective price at 25 cents a license. And there's no min and there's no contract involved with that.

So anybody can use that. We did that to get them started. We want everybody to at least have that.

And then understand where our other products come into play and how it can be protecting them even, you know, even deeper, you know, having a full protection.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I got to ask this question. And you threw the price out there.

So I got to go with it. 25 cents a license. So is that, in a sense, 25 cents per user, per device?

How does that really break down?

[Dave Maik]
Yeah, it is. It's a per user. But we allow every user to have up to five devices for one license, because we know today's world, most people will at least have some sort of computer, laptop, and usually a phone or a tablet.

So we allow that to go on to, you know, up to five devices. So they're protected for that tiny 25 cents.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. And you mentioned it as kind of an entry type product. Now, how granular can it get?

Are we talking where we can do full categorization of what they're allowed to do and not to do? Can we schedule the protection? Can we do it location based?

I mean, that sounds pretty nice. How much can I do for 25 cents a license?

[Dave Maik]
Right. Well, without getting into too many details of the features, if everybody is relatively, you know, they're up to speed on what a DNS product does, allow block categorization. That's what it does.

So it is comparable to anything that's on the market today that you might be currently using. Hopefully, you're currently using with the MSPs and their clients. So we are using this as ability for the MSP to get into a product that does exactly what they're probably using or should be using and then have an upgrade path for their clients.

So it increases, obviously, the scalability of their protection policies and also increases their revenue path without having to look for another vendor. And let's be honest, we are here in the market today because their attacks are coming through the browser level. And that's where you obviously need to have the next level of protection beyond DNS.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So let's talk about some other stuff. I know that, obviously, that was a big change that you did since last year.

What other, you know, feature enhancements or changes have you guys done?

[Dave Maik]
Oh, wow, there's a lot. We are actually constantly adding different feature sets to the product, mostly to increase or enhance the already features that we have. So we are always working on new releases and new updates.

One of the beauty things that we do is we actually use all of our MSP or clients today to provide suggestions, things that they would like to see in the product. And I know a lot of companies do this, but honestly, we actually go forward and actually put these into play very quickly. It's not one of these kind of roadmap things like, yeah, we'll get to it, we'll put it into the roadmap and we'll kind of get to it when we can.

If it's a solid addition that we need, we actually ramp up and roll these things out within weeks to even days, depending on what the request is.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Now, of course, the elephant in everybody's room. How much AI are you guys using?

[Dave Maik]
Yes, we're definitely going down that road. So this is a work in progress for sure. We know AI is going to need some sort of or form of protection.

We are definitely working on going down that road 100%.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So I guess the one question I try to ask everybody and I try to do it in a little different way. We talked about the fact that everybody is using some sort of DNS protection or they should be.

A lot of our RMM products already come with it and stuff like that. So what is going to make DefensX  unique enough for us to make that change?

[Dave Maik]
Well, I think that obviously there's a lot of DNS products. Baked into other products, but they really probably don't have the same feature set as a true DNS solution out there. And I'll speak for even people that other companies that are providing DNS.

So that's one up you're going to get for us. Like I mentioned before, it gives you the upgrade path with your clients to be able to move into some other features, other protection policies, increasing that stack, increasing that protection, and being able to obviously increase your revenue, which is probably the most important thing for really any MSP out there. And then when it comes to things like RMM and PSA tools, we're integrated with a ton of different products out there.

ConnectWise being one of them. I know that's a big one on the market. Ninja, Datto, and we're working on a slew of others to be integrated with for that purpose.

[Uncle Marv]
Did I see that you guys were looking to be a part of Microsoft Intune?

[Dave Maik]
Yes. Okay.

[Uncle Marv]
Was I not supposed to ask that?

[Dave Maik]
Well, it's through another segment of the market, I guess. We're coming in through our partner.

[Uncle Marv]
Okay.

[Dave Maik]
Distribution partner. Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So, Mark, tell me something else outside of the program itself. I know that you've kind of been here from the beginning.

Tell me how the journey has been and where you guys are looking to go.

[Dave Maik]
Well, it obviously is a startup. It's all about getting out there and getting the name out there. So we're obviously doing a lot of events, trying to educate people.

We know, if we go back two years ago, the product is definitely an up-and-coming product. It's a product that people really weren't thinking of back then. But now it's on the front of their minds now.

They're understanding. MSPs are understanding the new threat levels and realize that this is going to be a pretty valuable product for them and their clients and should be essentially added to their stack. So right now, I mean, our growth right now is doing very well.

And obviously, like I said, we're adding features constantly. And we are trying to move with the market and adapt to the market and what's required in the market, especially at this level of web browsing and credentials. We know the amount of phishing attacks that are happening out there.

And that's what we're trying to minimize and obviously protect the clients from all those different types of attacks that are happening on all different levels, be it through WhatsApp or just text messaging or just generally through email.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Let me go back and ask for a use case scenario. We talked about the fact that, yes, users can have multiple devices and stuff.

When we're doing the DNS filtering and stuff, and I had started to ask about location-based stuff like that, is there an agent that needs to be deployed? Or is this something that users actually will log in to a browser session to be tracked?

[Dave Maik]
This is a great question. So it is an agent-based product. It is loaded on the device.

And once that's loaded on the device, and once the policies are created, this is what's protecting the individual no matter where they are, what location they're at, as you asked. And they can use any browser. So this is the beauty.

We're not creating a browser for the individuals to go through to be protected. They can use any browser. So be it Firefox, be it Chrome, they go to those browsers.

They are protected with that agent installed. It's multi-tenancy. And obviously, there's no way to circumvent once the agent is loaded.

They cannot delete it or circumvent it in any way.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. That was going to be part two of my question. And you already answered it because that is the thing.

These kids today, they're learning how to put in their own DNS and do that stuff like that. Oh, that made me think of something else because my nephew even asked me about getting NordVPN. I said, it's going to slow down your gaming.

That's all he needed to hear.

[Dave Maik]
Exactly. Yeah. And one of the other questions we get from MSPs when they look at the product is, you know, I've already got four or five agents running on systems.

What is this going to do as another agent? This is a very typical question today because so many things are agent-based. We're extremely light.

Extremely light. Anytime we've been on systems where there's six other agents loaded and they don't see any effect to their performance on their computers. So that's one of the strong points, again, from us is that we're very light and able to play nice, I guess, with all the other agents on there.

And actually, we play nice with a lot of other different products, like a CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Proofpoint. These are all great products that we actually layer on top of what they do. We add that extra layer of protection.

[Uncle Marv]
Very nice. Very nice. Glad to hear that.

All right, Dave. So here we are going through round two. I wish you good luck.

And whether you get the top prize or the set of steak knives, we're hoping to see you on the stage in Orlando for IT Nation Connect.

[Dave Maik]
Yes, absolutely. And I'll be okay with the steak knives because I do like steak. So I'll use them.

[Uncle Marv]
I'll make sure they're really nice and robust this year. So all right, there you have it, folks. Dave with DefensX  and DefensX .com.

I'll have the link in the show notes. Check them out and follow them and vote very nicely for this secure DNS and web browsing solution. Thank you, Dave.

[Dave Maik]
Dave, thank you.

[Uncle Marv]
Appreciate it. Folks, we'll be back with another vendor profile soon. Check out everything over at ITBusinessPodcast.com.

We'll see you out there. Holla!