What problem does Media Sonar solve?

The Internet is a threat vector that cannot be ignored and is an integral part of today’s enterprise network. Being able to identify and mitigate risk and threat info from the Internet comes with its challenges. We are trying to address the time to value formula of taking something big, complex, and fast and getting the meaning out of it.

• Risk – 85% of security practitioners have little or no training in engaging with this type of data.
• Complexity – The Internet is vast, unstructured and often highly manual
• Cost – 83% of practitioners use web intelligence and over 50% spend half of their time collecting and analyzing this information.

Security practitioners out there recognize they have to wrap their arms around these things, but only have so much time to do it. The problem we solve is to help practitioners maximize the time to value formula of identifying web threat indicators and incidents, be able to enhance their context, and assessing relevance within their threat management frameworks. This allows the gems of the Internet from a threat perspective to be arranged in a better fashion.

For partners specifically, we help broaden their scope of brand protection coverage and standard of care for their clients. 

The Internet is a threat vector that cannot be ignored – it really is the new enterprise network. Being able to identify and mitigate risk and threat info from the Internet comes with its challenges. We are trying to address the time to value formula of taking something big, complex, and fast and getting the meaning out of it.

Where did Media Sonar start?

Since the start, our mission has been to transform the world’s information into insights that make a positive difference. This has truly continued to drive both our company and technology direction decisions. We started working in the public sector using social media data to assist in the public safety space. As the industry evolved, we moved into broader data sets from the deep and dark web and found our fit applying it to corporate use cases guided by a positive difference.

It can’t be emphasized enough that digital threats start out on the Internet. No matter what we are all digital people. Our craft is to harness that Internet information so that it serves a positive purpose.

When has a client used Media Sonar for a positive outcome?

We had a scenario where we had a client who was running custom queries on the deep and dark web to find mentions of assets associated with their brand such as addresses and usernames. Low and behold posts started coming up on the deep and dark web that included PII information such as first and last names, email addresses, sign-in keys, phone numbers, etc.

Our one-click data augmentation capabilities helped pinpoint that the information was being kept in a staging server environment that did not have the same network protection that existed with their core applications. There were no negative repercussions for the company, but the ability to have found that and say we have to do something about that and then move on.

There is a vast amount of information to wrap your head around. It’s not always a save the day moment. One of the key things in terms of using this type of information is really making sure that you can do whatever you can to improve your security posture and trying to minimize the “what if” scenarios.

What’s involved in deploying the platform?

It is pretty simple. We are a SaaS-based cloud platform. We operate on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), all data is encrypted with AES-256 or better symmetric keys, and we follow Auth0 for client authorizations. In the simplest version of it, if you have access to the Internet, we can set you up. 

Additionally, we also do have a Firehose API and all clients have a dedicated client success manager and technical support that provide implementation support to clients through their onboarding. 

From an MSSP perspective, most of the setup comes from the core knowledge that they bring to clients in terms of the threats they need to address. They build and customize what they want in terms of a query and monitoring with the product. 

What should MSPs know about Media Sonar?

There are three important things for MSPs to know about Media Sonar:

1. One piece of feedback that we’ve consistently received from all of the partners and customers is that we work with is that we are a great vendor to work and collaborate with. There’s a huge value in us being a smaller company on the growth trajectory. It’s very much shaped our product direction and our business model. 
2. The second piece is that when we look at anything, from a product development perspective to our business operations, our focus is always on maximizing time to value. We try to use that as a governing principle. Whatever we’re doing in terms of what we’re delivering, we’re trying to deliver time to value to the end-user. At the end of the day, we’re striving to provide a relevant security solution that is profitable as a business opportunity for us and our partners.
3. We’re very committed and interested in developing an effective market development model that supports our partner’s business objectives. While we may be newer to the channel space, we are eyes wide open and really trying to ensure what we’re doing is truly an effective model. 

What are the pricing models and potential revenue opportunities for MSPs?

Our scalable solution is flexible and provides revenue opportunities across a diverse set of partner business models. 

From an end-customer perspective, we have a tiered package offering where it really depends on the services that they want. When you get into the MSP space, our pricing is based more on their tenancy approach. The majority of MSPs are looking for a multi-tenant solution and we’re pricing our product for that. As you bring on tenants, that is what triggers the cost.  Your first tenant is your most significant investment but then after that, the product is scalable in terms of delivering value. That implementation of tenants is fairly straightforward. 

MSPs, MSSPs, and MDRs servicing a broad range of customers can add web intelligence and investigation into their managed service delivery for their customers – bundling it into their existing solution stack and billing it as part of their existing service package.

Alternatively, other service providers that we’ve worked with have offered our product as a stand-alone engagement-based professional service. This is dictated by current events, specific risks, projects, or initiatives related to their clients. 

If we go beyond MSPs to the VARs side which is a more transactional model. They may wish to sell Media Sonar to their larger self-sufficient clients who have skilled security threat teams that have gaps or need to enhance their Web threat detection and investigation capabilities.