Leading the expansion of the Zix Global Partner Program into Europe

I became fascinated with technology during my early 20s. I think it was how much I enjoyed the fast pace and constant rate of change which forced me to keep challenging myself. It was that and the fact that technology is always on this evolutionary trajectory with the driving force being the creation of solutions to problems. 

It makes sense that I would find my passion in the cybersecurity industry, where the rate of new problems increases exponentially each year. In the UK alone, up to 88% of companies have reported breaches in the last 12 months, with Germany’s breaches reported to be 2% higher and France’s 6%. When Zix acquired AppRiver three years ago, I headed up channel sales for the UK and Ireland market and was appointed to spearhead the now merged Zix|AppRiver’s growth further into the European Market.

In the last two years our presence across Germany and the UK has expanded and we’re proud to this week announce the expansion of our Global Partner Program into these territories. The convergence of email security and cloud backup following Zix’s acquisition of Israeli built CloudAlly has also further enhanced our product offering and ability to meet demand for these services for European MSPs.

I’ve been lucky enough to make a career out of my passion for problem-solving and am honoured to work among equally passionate members of our sales and technical teams. Together we’ve built tailored, localised solutions for the European market including a dedicated Partner Portal and Advanced Threat Protection for the German market, and Data Archive Residency for the UK market. These product updates have already increased revenue for our resellers and given our MSPs added competitive advantage.

With increased growth comes increased challenges, the most obvious of which has been the pandemic’s impact on the ability for companies to manage the threat risks of remote workforces. Add compliance regulations, decreases in global revenue due to the pandemic and increased demand for all-in-one solutions to cover multiple needs and we’ve got our work cut out for us. 

With the announcement of our expansion and these challenges in mind, here are some of my core focus areas for the year ahead.

Nurturing and growing our local European teams on the ground

The fact that we’re able to announce an expansion into Europe despite being amid a global pandemic, is a testament to the dedication and expertise of our local teams. Zix went fully remote in March 2020 not long after it acquired CloudAlly and AppRiver and my appointment as VP of International Sales. While we were all working remotely for last year, I’ve relied on the education and support of our European teams to learn what they know about each market and understand where they need support from me. They’ve shown me the importance of building local teams and reminded me that  listening is a fundamental management tool. Our European teams’ understanding of each country’s evolving digital, cybersecurity, and privacy regulations is deep and it has been this invaluable homegrown knowledge that’s added to the planning and strategies which led to this expansion.

GDPR and European Regulation

The European Union's new Cybersecurity Strategy for the Digital Decade released in December last year, is an acknowledgement by foreign security leaders in Europe that with the increased digitisation of various industries, cybersecurity threats are on the rise. Zix's growth into the UK and EU markets and our partnerships with the world's leading software brands seeks to address the need for expanded cybersecurity suites for businesses wanting to stay protected.

Across the region, government departments, healthcare institutions and finance houses are having to comply with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which calls for companies to meet data privacy standards or face hefty fines. Similarly, the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office is finalising the UK’s own GDPR post-Brexit. This week members of the ICO appeared before the UK parliament to debate the country’s data-sharing practices and which regulations should be enforced to uphold the safety of its citizens. Across the world governments are calling for companies to protect the information of their consumers and my answer is that protection against cybercriminals wanting to steal this information is the best defence. 

Human education

When I was appointed Vice President of International Sales at Zix I announced that education was going to be another of my core focus areas. Although we might want our efforts to be directed towards educating resellers on how to market our products, I believe that there’s even more value in direct one on one education with employees of companies in our new territories. In the industry we often hear it said that the majority of cybersecurity breaches are due to human error, mostly originating outside of the IT department.

 Zix partner education is fundamental to ensuring that there is thorough understanding of where security weaknesses lie. Our security audits use data extracted from their channel tenets to understand where there are vulnerabilities and from then we work with our partners and customers to build customised solutions that remediate and optimise security solutions. The pandemic has removed the option of face-to-face meetings with new teams but I am currently conducting online cybersecurity education workshops.

We worked with Osterman Research last year to conduct an extensive survey to understand organisational preparedness for the pandemic and uncovered some pretty interesting findings around that. Here's a link to the full whitepaper.

To book an educational session with me register an appointment at (booking link/email address) 

About Zix Corporation

Zix Corporation (Zix) is a leader in email security, productivity and compliance solutions. Zix delivers a superior experience and easy-to-use solutions for email encryption and data loss prevention, advanced threat protection, unified information archiving and cloud backup and recovery. Focusing on the protection of business communication, Zix enables its customers to better secure data and meet compliance needs. Zix is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol ZIXI. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.