Sophos celebrates top performing ANZ partners

Sophos, a global provider of network and endpoint security, has awarded its top-performing channel partners across Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) for their dedication and success over the last financial year.

The award winners were announced at the ANZ leg of its partner conference, Sophos Discover, in Sydney on Friday.

The award winners are:

Partner of the Year – HD IT / Exigo Tech

MSP of the Year – SureBridge

New Partner of the Year – The Missing Link

Distributor of the Year – Bluechip Infotech

Salesperson of the Year – Karl Yuan, Datacom

Sales Engineer of the Year – Jimmy Harden, Aryon

Partner of the Year – SSS - IT Security Specialists

MSP of the Year – IT Partners

Distributor of the Year –  Exeed

"Congratulations to all our partners for their success over the last year. At Sophos, we are lucky to work with such dedicated and tenacious partner organisations across Australia and New Zealand," says Sophos ANZ channel director Jon Fox.

"Our partner network is filled with partners that we trust and depend on, which is important given Sophos is a 100 per cent channel-driven business. This means we rely on the success of our partners and do everything we can to ensure we're adequately supporting them, to help them deliver the best outcomes possible to customers. That's why we have these awards every year—to celebrate our partners' successes.

Sophos recently released a report that highlighted the IT security challenges that Australia is facing.

The report, titled The Future of Cybersecurity in Asia Pacific and Japan, was commissioned by Sophos and surveyed 200 business decision-makers in Australia.

According to the report, inadequate education, leadership and funding are major barriers to cybersecurity preparedness and success lies in more than buying technology.

Of the business leaders surveyed, 60% believe lack of security expertise is a challenge for their organisation, with 65% observing recruitment of skills to be a struggle.

According to Sophos, this comes down to the set-up of cybersecurity within organisations, which commonly sees IT staff tasked with security in addition to their other responsibilities.

There is also a wider corporate cultural issue, relating to attitude and behaviour, impacting corporate cybersecurity, Sophos says.