Monthly Firewall Services Option for Simplicity and Scalability

SonicWall has spent the past several years expanding its portfolio and capabilities, staying ahead of supply-chain disruption, continuing to deliver industry-leading TCO to our customers, and using an outside-in approach to support and enable our partner community.

To better match the way that MSPs and MSSPs go to market, SonicWall is now offering a monthly firewall security services option for our bundled protection tiers. With this new procurement option, partners can better serve customers who are price-sensitive, desire greater scalability or simply don’t want to be bound by the usual services’ contract terms. Customers can now pay one monthly price for the cybersecurity services bundle that best fits their needs — all with no commitment.

In the past, customers would purchase firewall security services with their firewall and enter into either a year-long or three-year service agreement. But today’s businesses, confronted with volatile economic forces, fluctuating work-from-home arrangements and mounting cybersecurity requirements, wanted greater scalability and flexibility. And their MSPs and MSSPs, many of whom are members of our partner community, wanted to be able to meet these needs.

This new pricing structure offers a number of benefits to our partners, but one of the biggest is simplicity.

Unlike with some competitor programs, there are no complicated point systems to keep track of and no minimum credit upkeep needed to maintain licenses. In fact, partners don’t need to make any upfront purchases at all: billing is done in arrears — with post-pay rather than prepay. In other words, partners are charged based on their consumption at the end of the month, and end users only pay for what they use.

Here’s a summary of all the ways our SecureFirst MSSP/MSP partners can benefit by leveraging the new monthly firewall services option:

• Bundle and Bill the Top Cybersecurity Services: SonicWall-approved MSPs and MSSPs can now bill customers monthly for SonicWall’s popular cybersecurity services included in three cost-effective protection tiers for Gen 7 appliances: Threat Protection Security Suite, Essential Protection Security Suite and Advanced Protection Security Suite (see below).
• No More POs: Standard processes often require a purchase order and sales cycle. This works fine for one-time or long-term purchases, however, it doesn’t align with modern MSSP and MSP strategies and adds complication, overhead and roadblocks. SonicWall’s monthly firewall services option offers a no-commit, in arrears billing option for bundled firewall security services by providing integrated billing and license provisioning — all while reducing upfront costs.
• No More Missed Renewals: With bundled firewall security services conveniently billed each month, MSSPs and approved MSPs never need to worry about missing the renewal period for multi-year agreements. This results in a smoother customer experience — and since it reduces the chance that essential protections can lapse, a safer one as well.
• Bring or Buy the Hardware: MSSPs/MSPs now have the option of either adding monthly security services to existing current-generation TZ and NSa Series firewalls or provisioning licenses on new firewalls for customer deployments. This ensures partners won’t need to wait until it’s time for an equipment upgrade to offer this option to their customers.
• Automate Routing Billing Processes: To further simplify billing, SonicWall partners can integrate and automate monthly customer billing for supported professional services automation (PSA) tools, such as ConnectWise and Autotask.
• Leverage Powerful Reporting and Analytics: When SonicWall Network Security Manager (NSM) Essential or Advanced licenses are added to firewall security services, partners can leverage additional management, reporting and analytics capabilities while still staying on a convenient monthly billing structure.
• Expand Service Offerings: New monthly firewall security services join Managed Endpoint Security, Managed Remote Access, Managed Cloud Application Security and Managed Email Security to form a deep and comprehensive security platform offering for MSSPs and MSPs.

Protection, Procurement and Pricing: How Customers Benefit

SonicWall firewall security services offer popular cybersecurity technology such as Intrusion Prevention Services (IPS), Application Control, Content Filtering Services (CFS), Gateway Anti-Malware and SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with patented Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI^TM).

These services protect customers in real time, safeguarding them from threats such as malware, ransomware, viruses, intrusions, botnets, spyware, trojans, worms and other malicious attacks. And with no opportunities for services to lapse, customers retain around-the-clock protection from the most advanced and persistent cyberattacks.

Customers who want to leverage monthly firewall services don’t even have to purchase an SKU: By simply visiting the SonicWall portal and pressing a couple of buttons, they can enable the services they need in an instant.

Which Bundle is Best for Your Customer?

Three bundles — Threat Protection Security Suite, Essential Protection Security Suite and Advanced Protection Security Suite — are available for monthly billing.

Here’s a short breakdown of the bundles:

• Threat Protection Security Suite: The most basic level of protection, this bundle is capable of stopping known threats. It offers IPS, Gateway Anti-Malware, Application Control and more, and is available on TZ Series firewall appliances only.
• Essential Protection Security Suite: With the addition of Comprehensive Anti-Spam and Capture ATP with RTDMI, this bundle is capable of stopping both known and unknown threats. Capture ATP is a cloud-based, multi-engine sandbox designed to identify and block never-before-seen and zero-day attacks at the gateway.
• Advanced Protection Security Suite: This bundle is capable of stopping unknown threats at scale. The management capabilities offered with Network Security Manager (NSM) Cloud Management and NSM Cloud Reporting are game-changing for MSPs or customers with multiple units. NSM delivers a single console for managing every SonicWall firewall in an environment, including the ability to deploy a standard configuration to all units. NSM also helps with keeping firmware up to date — saving hours spent addressing each appliance individually and the worry that a missed appliance could serve as an entry point for attackers. These efficiency gains free admins up to focus on more important tasks, such as preventing threats and addressing attacks when they do occur.

Regardless of which bundle is chosen, end customers will have access to 24/7 support, including firmware updates, hardware replacement and a world-class online support portal.

How to Start Offering Monthly Firewall Security Services

The new monthly billing option is available now for SonicWall MSSP Program partners. Existing SonicWall SecureFirst MSPs and MSSPs may apply for monthly billing models through the Partner Portal.

To learn more about SonicWall Firewall Security Services, read the solution brief.

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Sorosh Faqiri

Product Manager for MSP and MSSP Enablement | SonicWall

Sorosh leads product management for MSP & MSSP Enablement at SonicWall. His background includes solutions engineering, technical account management and support roles at different security vendors. He started off his career with a brief stint in the MSP world and is passionate about making SonicWall the most MSP-friendly vendor in the ecosystem.