Building on its roots as a fast-growing VAR, the company is continuing its evolution into a provider of automation-driven technologies with the launch of its security posture as a service offering, executives tell CRN.

IP Pathways is continuing its evolution into a provider of automation-driven technologies with the launch of its security posture as a service offering, executives told CRN.

The new offering aims to continuously identify vulnerabilities and compliance gaps and is available as a monthly subscription model, the company said.

Through a combination of automation and manual consulting, the approach differs from standard one-off assessments by providing ongoing assessments throughout the year, according to IP Pathways.

The offering builds on IP Pathways’ acquisition in November of Tenax Solutions, according to Sheldon Speers (pictured), president of Tenax.

Currently, “there are a lot of traditional security consulting companies that are still doing it the PDF / Excel spreadsheet kind of way. And then there are a lot of automated and testing tools, and a lot of automated compliance tools,” Speers said.

However, “there’s not anybody to my knowledge that has encompassed manual verification, manual testing with automation for vulnerabilities and compliance, and put that inside of one platform. And then is actually putting manual work and consultants in that [virtual] CISO component into the platform as well,” he said. “I don’t believe that there’s another platform out there like that.”

Ultimately, the offering, which became generally available this month, allows customers to “get a better feel of the real operational state of security in their environment,” said IP Pathways CEO Joe Shields.

At Visual Edge IT, a North Canton, Ohio-based MSP, the new security posture as a service offering is providing a major boost to the company’s vCISO service, according to an executive.

With the offering, “you’re identifying where you are now so that you can strengthen your posture over time,” said Peter Avery, vice president of security and compliance at Visual Edge IT. “We establish the baseline with the customer. And then once we’re done with that, then we go and continue to remediate.”

The approach also offers a major difference to customers compared to other point-in-time assessments, Avery said.

“Most everybody else will perform the examination in January and give you the report. It’s got a list of things that you need to remediate. And they say, ‘I’ll see you again in a year,’” he said. “With this service that Tenax provides, it’s ongoing. So you can rescore at anytime that you want to. And that shows to leadership, shows to investors and shows to customers your improvement over time — and lets them know that you’re on top of your security game.”

The launch of the offering also continues to advance IP Pathways as a provider of a portfolio of technologies, building on its roots as a fast-growing VAR, according to Shields.

That heritage means that IP Pathways understands the needs of SMBs in a way that many others don’t, he said.

“Most security vendors build for the enterprise and then try to scale down,” Shields said. “The nice thing about what Sheldon has done and what we’ve done is, we grew up with a lot of these services in the small business. And what we found is, with a little bit of tweaking, it scales all the way to the enterprise.”