In May, Hammer Distribution and Stormshield formed a strategic partnership to distribute the European cybersecurity leader’s range of Next Generation Firewalls in the UK and Ireland. In this conversation with Technology Reseller Editor James Goulding, Dominic Ryles, Director of Cyber and Cloud at Hammer, and Julien Paffumi, Head of Product Management at Stormshield, explain why the company’s firewalls are such an interesting proposition for MSPs and resellers at a time of escalating cyber threats and greater focus on IT sovereignty.
Technology Reseller (TR): Julien, please could you give a quick introduction to Stormshield for those who don’t know the company.
Julien Paffumi (JP): Stormshield is a European trusted cyber security products provider. We are a wholly owned subsidiary of the cyber division of Airbus Defence and Space Cyber Programmes (formerly Airbus CyberSecurity) and for more than 20 years our mission has been to ensure cyber serenity for our customers.
We protect traditional IT infrastructure for diverse organisations, public and private, large and small. In addition, we have a dedicated product line to protect OT (operational technology) in industrial environments, hospitals, utilities and the like.
We protect nationwide public infrastructure, like communications for the emergency services, and do projects in the defence sector. For example, we have an extra ruggedised firewall product with very specific connectivity designed to be put into helicopters and planes.
TR: In what ways are you not just another firewall vendor?
JP: The first thing that differentiates us is European sovereignty. We are the largest and the most experienced European firewall vendor, which makes us a great alternative to technologies that come from, say, the US or Israel.
Then, there is the matter of trust. More and more cyber-attacks are getting into organisations through the firewall because of a vulnerability in the firewall at the conception level or at the implementation level.
I’m not saying we have never had a vulnerability or that we never will, but we have a strong continuous process of hardening the firewall through security by design, at the conception level, in the general infrastructure of the code and the different modules within the product, and in how the product is coded.
The fact that the code is audited by third-party national agencies as part of our products’ certification and qualification process is quite a differentiator for us. Regarding the OT sector, we are not just a firewall doing some network segmentation between the different zones of the network. We are able to perform deep packet inspection, what we call DPI, allowing us to analyse network messages in depth and choose which to accept or reject.
Lastly, I would say we are not just another firewall vendor because we don’t only provide firewalls. We also have a Stormshield client to protect users and assets wherever they are, especially when they are not behind a firewall but in a home office or mobile, or where devices are spread over a large area, like IoTs.
We have another product range, Stormshield Data Security, which is all about protecting data with encryption anywhere – within emails, on user devices, on file servers, in the cloud, especially in cloud collaboration platforms like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
TR: What attracts you to the UK market now, and why is this a good time for Stormshield to expand its presence in the UK and Ireland?
JP: In the UK as well as in the rest of Europe, there is great concern about relinquishing control, not having sovereignty and being subject to decisions that powerful foreign countries may make to suit their own agendas, which might be inimical to UK or European interests. Today, there is a more pressing need to have a European sovereign solution accessible to UK government bodies, the public sector and private organisations.
TR: You mention sovereignty as a growing trend. Please, could you explain in what ways Stormshield firewalls assist with that.
JP: We assist with that on different levels. First, our own code, embedded in our products, is developed by our R&D, which is based 100% in France. The external code that we also include in the product is mostly open source. So, we have very good control over the code we put inside the product and the external code that we bring in through technology partnerships, mostly with European vendors. We have a very, very small dependency on non-European organisations and vendors.
This is very important because with the American Cloud Security Act even if you use something on European soil someonein America can access your data without your knowledge. That’s why our services supporting the firewall and other products are only hosted in Europe.
The second way in which we ensure sovereignty is by investing in certifications and qualifications provided by independent third parties. We are certified and qualified by the French Cybersecurity Agency, the ANSSI, and by other countries like Spain. We are also approved by the EU and NATO. We are the only firewall vendor to have this level of certification and qualification.
Our code is the only file code reviewed by a third party, the ANSSI, and that is a strong marker of trust. We speak a lot about zero trust – trust nothing and then gain proof of trust. I believe that proof of trust from a national agency is important, especially when it’s from multiple agencies.
Lastly, we know that our customers don’t just use a firewall; they use different cyber security solutions and IT products that have nothing to do with cyber security. To help raise the level of sovereignty for customers, we try to develop partnerships with other European vendors so that the customer can achieve a true sovereign architecture.
TR: This must enable resellers to have different conversations with clients.
JP: Choosing Stormshield allows resellers and MSPs to have a very different message, with a strong value proposition around trust and sovereignty. If they are a European company, they can provide the customer with a fully sovereign and trusted offer featuring our products with their own services on top.
For resellers and MSPs, sovereignty is an opportunity to make the strategic choice to be less dependent on foreign organisations and to keep control over the tools you use and the data you have. You could say that’s a vague fear but just look at what happened when Anthropic announced its advanced AI models Mythos 5 and Fable 5. Within a few hours, the US government decided that non-American people and non- American organisations shouldn’t be allowed access to them. Maybe in the future they will decide that some security solutions or updates shouldn’t be made available to certain companies. By choosing Stormshield, partners are investing in a long-term solution that doesn’t carry the risk of being disabled or made less efficient due to uncontrolled foreign decisions.
TR: Dominic, are your resellers talking to you about sovereignty?
Dominic Ryles (DR): It’s a big focus for us. Some of the regulations and supply chain obligations that are coming into force, both in the UK and Europe, are forcing a very different conversation from a customer perspective, which is working its way through to the channel and to distribution and the vendors themselves.
In the firewall market, over the last 18 months there have been many issues with other firewall brands, vulnerabilities that have been detected, data breaches, attacks. A firewall is the backbone of any organisation. Irrespective of whether people are working in a hybrid or a fully remote location, you still need a firewall, and to have that level of vulnerability is a serious problem for a lot of organisations.
There are also challenges around refresh cycles, which are becoming even shorter. Customers are having to keep pace with more frequent refresh cycles, and everything that’s happening from a geopolitical perspective, such as supply constraints and rising costs, are detrimental to that.
There’s a huge USP for us in terms of that refresh cycle, which is often shortened due to the reliability of firewall devices and the technology underpinning them. What Julien’s said about ANSSI certification and Stormshield’s underlying technology has helped partners unearth opportunities with customers. It’s almost creating an additional revenue stream and giving them a different way to position a conversation with customers.
Stormshield’s broad reach across different markets and verticals, from B2B organisations to defence and aerospace and everything in between, is giving our partners more opportunity to enter different markets as well.
TR: How does Stormshield’s portfolio fit into your wider product offering?
DR: We’ve got 26 or 27 years’ experience distributing next generation firewalls. It’s our pedigree. It’s what we’ve always done. So we have highly skilled sales and commercial people that know exactly how to position that broader Stormshield offering.
Then, from a pre-sales and post-sales tech support perspective, we’ve got people that understand this technology implicitly, so we’re able to support partners in either creating a second revenue stream or, in some instances, replacing their current firewall vendor.
Our mission moving forward in this joint partnership with Stormshield is to radically grow the UK&I market for them.
TR: How are you planning to work together to maximise the opportunity?
DR: In the early stages of this partnership, because Stormshield is owned by Airbus, there was lots of paperwork and compliance to go through, but we got through that. It was a great experience. I and Brandon Madeley, our Head of Tech, who’s been pivotal in getting this relationship off the ground, have both been over to France to the head office. We’ve met with a lot of the team; we’ve done strategy meetings; we’ve put all of that into a business plan; and we’re now engaging with partners.
We’ve launched our proof of value concept to the channel, which is all about giving our partners the opportunity to touch and feel the device. They test it for 30 days. We help to onboard them. We support them as well. Once they understand the technology and are comfortable with it, we have a commercial conversation and get them to a position where they can have more meaningful and better conversations with customers.
We’re not talking about firewall refreshes. We’re not talking about vulnerabilities. We’re talking about this being a unique sovereign approach for the UK&I market with an established distributor that’s been doing this for a very, very long time and with the backing of Stormshield who have also been doing this for a very, very long time and are experts in the field.
TR: How might the partnership develop in the future?
DR: The leadership team at Stormshield has real ambition to expand into the UK&I market. They see it as a big growth opportunity, and we’re excited to be part of that. I’m confident that this relationship will grow in strength as we move forward. Stormshield has lots of exciting technology that’s available today, with more on the horizon.
JP: The conversation today is about firewalls. But, in the future, I see partners growing with the other solutions I mentioned – data security, mobility. That’s how I see this relationship developing.
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