Westcon expands FireMon distribution to North America

FireMon’s Security Intelligence Platform is a much expanded version of a solution that was used by security integrator FishNet, so it integrates well with many other solutions.

Westcon logoDistributor WestconGroup has expanded its distribution relationship with security intelligence vendor Firemon to include North America, building on previous work together in Latin America.

Westcon sees the addition of Firemon as a significant upgrade to their portfolio, in large part because it plays nicely with their offer offerings.

“The great thing about FireMon is that they offer technology that is complementary to other security vendors in our portfolio,” said Sean Simmons, Senior Product Manager, WestconGroup. “By bringing this technology out to our partner community, they’ll have yet another premier solution to leverage and protect the business of their end-users.”

FireMon’s Security Intelligence Platform provides a highly scalable and context-aware insight into network firewall configuration, policy and workflow, including predictive analytics. It began its life as a firewall ruleset tool developed by prominent security integrator FishNet for its own professional services. The FireMon tool was so successful that a new company, Secure Passage, was spun out around it, with the company name later changing to that of the product. Not surprising, given its origin as an integrator’s tool, it provides direct integration with a broad array of industry-leading firewall, network security, and vulnerability assessment solutions.

“FireMon provides cross-platform management for a range of multi-vendor environments, so it can integrate with our broad range of technology partners across our entire portfolio,” Simmons said. “In addition, a major issue for many vendors, is that they simply don’t offer management consoles like FireMon, which is critical.”

Simmons indicated that FireMon is an enterprise offering.

“The platform really starts to make sense for end users once they have more than five devices, such as firewalls, load balancers, or networking equipment,” he said. “

“It is very much a strong horizontal play and fits well into most verticals across healthcare and retail to telco, financial services, and energy,” Simmons added. “This is especially true for vertical customers with really strong compliance requirements such as HIPAA, PCI, and SOX.”

Simmons indicated that Westcon’s existing successful relationship elsewhere with FireMon was a key element to the deal. He also said that FireMon will get strong support from the distributor.

“We have a dedicated team working specifically with new and emerging vendors around the world, ensuring FireMon gets the attention they need to grow through our channel,” he said.

Simmons said that since FireMon is ramping up its own presence in Canada, they are optimistic about the FireMon business that will be done by Westcon Canada.

“We are seeing demand for this type of offering growing in all regions and FireMon is making investments in expanding their coverage in Canada,” he said. “So we anticipate seeing strong growth in Canada.”