The company’s endpoint detection and response offering for iOS, Android and ChromeOS is positioned to help fill a major gap for MSPs, Lookout CEO Jim Dolce tells CRN.

Lookout disclosed Thursday that it has become the first provider of mobile endpoint detection and response (EDR) to join the Pax8 cloud marketplace, in a bid to help MSPs more fully protect their SMB customers against changing threats.

The company’s mobile EDR offering protects iOS, Android and ChromeOS devices, filling a major gap for the large number of MSPs served by the Pax8 marketplace, executives from Lookout and Pax8 told CRN.

[Related: CrowdStrike Widens Its Strike Zone With ‘Something Better’ For SMB Security]

While Lookout already serves 3,000 large enterprise customers, “with this [Pax8 partnership], we’re looking to just bring that down and make it accessible and available to small and medium-sized businesses — who should have the same kinds of protections,” Lookout CEO Jim Dolce (pictured) said.

For SMBs, “there hasn’t been a lot of focus on mobile to date,” Dolce said.

Lookout’s mobile EDR offering leverages threat insights from the 220 million devices already protected by the company, according to the vendor.

The company offers protection against attacks that are increasingly seeking to exploit mobile devices, according to Dolce.

Currently, “when you look at the most effective way to steal credentials, it’s generally done through that mobile device using some kind of a phishing attack,” he said.

Compared to attacks of prior years that focused on targeting PCs, “now the tactics, techniques and procedures are much more sophisticated. They’re multi-stage, multi-step,” Dolce said. “And mobile is very much a component — oftentimes now, it’s the earliest link in the [attack] chain.”

For Pax8, it had become clear that extending its marketplace to offer mobile protection was the next place to go in terms of security, according to Nick Heddy, chief commerce officer at Pax8.

“As Pax8 is mapping out that digital journey for these small businesses, there was a gap,” Heddy said. “Lookout is a critical next step in making sure that our customers are protected end-to-end.”

The move into mobile detection and response is also a natural move for Pax8 following the growth of its partnerships with major EDR vendors such as CrowdStrike and SentinelOne, executives said.

Notably, Lookout “has always been a cloud-based solution,” Dolce said. “We took an approach to mobile that was very much the same as the same approach that the CrowdStrikes in the SentinelOnes took to Windows and macOS.”

Ultimately, “customers recognize that — they’ve been through the upgrades to next-gen Windows and Mac [EDR],” he said. “So it’s a very recognizable technology to them now.”