Securing our Government

Milroy also said that giving healthcare, emergency and law enforcement workers access to networks was becoming an issue as they demand mobile devices and access to data from wherever their jobs took them.

Entering the fray

Those channel players looking to enter the government space must be able to differentiate themselves from the competition and be aware of the rules governing the game as they can be burdensome.

"Anybody dealing with government really needs to understand the realities around procurement rules," MessageLabs partner account director, Richard Bowman, said. "There are guidelines and there are hard and fast rules. Being able to differentiate your services and being able to talk about new and topical areas of IT is also essential, especially if you are not known as the defacto supplier."

Moreover, as the nature of threats becomes more complex and their numbers multiply exponentially it is also vital the channel demand vendor partners provide up-to-date research and educational materials if they are going to be able to provide total solutions for government agencies.

"I think from a channel perspective resellers need to keep up to date with changes and find solutions that are integrated to fulfil the whole of a government agency's requirements but without having too many product sets or management consoles," Sophos' Nicholson said.

Trend Micro's Biviano agreed and said channel players could leverage the knowledge and expertise of vendors as new threats came to the fore.

"Security problems are solved these days in part by technology but definitely in terms of policy and procedure," he said. "The channel can help their customers define their policy and procedures and understand how their information is moving around the network. All this is very services intensive so represents a massive opportunity for channel partners to make incremental revenue.

"The margin they can pick up on the sale of the technology should pale in comparison to the amount of money they can make on services with helping customers define how information flows around their network because most customers don't have a solid grasp of it."

In fact, many vendors contend there are several misconceptions in the market about whether organisations are security compliant or not and thus there is ample scope for a services play.

"I think the key thing to be aware of is compliance issues," AVG's Borrett claimed. "An opportunity for the channel is to provide security monitoring services and compliance audits, awareness and compliance checks on a regular basis, and then to act on the outcomes of those to update [a customer's systems]."

And although attacks on governments often reach the headlines the lessons of this sector are not entirely unique and can easily be applied to other verticals like telecommunications, banking and manufacturing. In many cases if channel partners drill into one vertical to specialise and become the trusted advisor they can garner significant business, Symantec's Lancaster said.

"Where they add a great deal of value is from their consulting," he said. "A government or corporate isn't going to throw out a piece of software because a new copy has come out. Where the channel can add in this area is by being the people on the street, so to speak, to add value around that consulting area."