Channel investors, Content, MSSP

Top 100 MSSP Foresite Receives Venture Capital Funding

Foresite, a Top 100 MSSP, has received venture capital funding from Elsewhere Partners. Foresite will use the money to accelerate organizational growth, marketing development, sales, geographic expansion and product development, the company says.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Also, Elsewhere didn't indicate whether the funding involves a majority or minority stake in the MSSP.

Foresite has attracted multiple rounds of investment dollars. The company inked an equity partnership with Fishtech back in 2016. Under terms of that deal, Fishtech Labs CEO and Founder Gary Fish and Co-Founder Dan Thormodsgaard joined Foresite's board. We are checking to see if or how the Elsewhere investment impacts Fishtech's stake in Foresite.

VCs, Private Equity Firms Target MSSPs, MSPs

Private equity funding is increasingly common in the MSP market, where investors are looking to roll up service providers that support SMB customers. Electric.ai, for instance, has raised $38 million to out-automate and disrupt traditional MSPs in the SMB sector.

Some PE and venture capital has also flowed into the MSSP market, though much of the cybersecurity industry typically attracts venture capital dollars. In particular, Managed Detection and Response (MDR) providers have attracted considerable funding dollars.

Foresite has also been poking around the MSP market -- mostly exploring partner and channel opportunities. The company in October 2018 introduced ConnectWise Manage integrations for MSPs. ConnectWise MSP partners can use these integrations to resell Foresite’s cyber testing, compliance assessments and audits and incident response offerings, the companies said.

ConnectWise began distributing Foresite's MSSP, compliance, cybersecurity and security operations center (SOC) capabilities to MSPs and technology solution providers (TSPs) in December 2017. At this time, ConnectWise and Foresite provided MSPs and TSPs with incident response, monitoring and alerting and testing and assessment solutions.

Foresite Managed Security Services: A Closer Look

Foresite's managed security services portfolio includes:

  • Incident Response: Helps organizations stop cyberattacks, retrieve cyberattack data and analyze the impact of cyberattacks.
  • Security Device Management: Offers fully and co-managed security infrastructure solutions.
  • Security Monitoring and Alerting: Provides outsourced monitoring and management of security infrastructure and systems.
  • Threat Intelligence: Enables organizations to craft security policies to comply with data security mandates.

The company delivers its managed security services via its ProVision Platform, a security monitoring and analysis system. ProVision allows organizations to customize their security management environments and track security events, logs, threats and other relevant data.

Foresite: Assisting With Corporate Compliance

Foresite also offers a variety of cyber consulting compliance services, including:

  • HIPAA Compliance Services: Empower healthcare organizations with data collection and storage policy guidance and systems for collecting, storing and transferring sensitive data.
  • PCI Compliance Services: Enables organizations to develop and deploy PCI-compliant payment solutions and cardholder data collection and storage best practices.
  • Security Testing and Assessments: Provides security vulnerability identification and patching.
  • Social Engineering: Helps organizations identify social engineering attacks and other security vulnerabilities and establish processes to mitigate internal threats.

Foresite also offers a channel partner program. MSPs, systems integrators (SIs) and value-added resellers (VARs) can join the Foresite partner program to offer the company's managed security services to their customers, as well as capitalize on white-label and joint promotion opportunities.

Additional reporting by Joe Panettieri.

Dan Kobialka

Dan Kobialka is senior contributing editor, MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E. He covers IT security, IT service provider business strategies and partner programs. Dan holds a M.A. in Print and Multimedia Journalism from Emerson College and a B.A. in English from Bridgewater State University. In his free time, Dan enjoys jogging, traveling, playing sports, touring breweries and watching football.