Passwordless Security – Patrick McCue, LastPass

This is techstrong tv. Well, the great pleasure of being joined by Patrick McHugh. Patrick is Global VP of Channel Partners at LastPass.

Welcome, Patrick. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

You bet. We're talking about, uh, a recent announcement that LastPass made, uh, around a, uh, LastPass Allegiance partner program. Um, of course, most technology vendors have partner programs.

You're in charge of partners. Mm-hmm. Curious, tell us about it and um, what some of the goals of it, why you created this and what you're hoping to accomplish.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're pretty excited about this because unlike a lot of companies, this isn't an iteration of a program that's been around. This is a brand new from scratch, uh, partner program.

And the reason for that is, if you look back historically, we've always been part of LogMeIn. So our product was a component of the go-to partner network, which is what they called it. And as we've separated into our own company, LastPass, we've come to realize that in the security space, we have a very different go-to market than say, you know, collaboration or remote support.

Mm-hmm. So we started about nine months ago to build out a brand new partner program, and it's going to be one program to manage all of the different go-to markets that our partners could have solution providers, which can resell or refer MSPs, which obviously do this as a managed service, a component of their, uh, offering. And then technology partners creating integrations so that, for example, a partner like Okta can work with us so that we can integrate our solutions with them.

And so the program was basically necessity. We had to have something, but the other nice piece was we were able to design it specifically for the go to markets that we were entering with these partners. So we had the opportunity to take some of the partnerships that we were working with as LogMeIn that they had been doing some last pass, and go and talk to them like, what's important to you?

What's gonna move the needle on this? Why would you sign up for this program if you didn't know about LastPass? So it's been pretty exciting, um, as we've launched it and, uh, we're starting to see some pretty good traction.

The one thing that's o o obvious to you, you know as well, better than I do, the audience you're talking to in terms of customers, yes, they're end users, but a lot of security people and they're different kind of buyers, right? Mm-hmm. And so the kind of, I'm guessing the kind of partners that you're talking about, solution providers, managed service providers, they also know how to talk to that audience.

And so that might not be something that, uh, go-to kind of program would necessarily specialize in. And now you can really own into what those partners, but also those end customers are looking for and how to communicate and understand what you can provide them. Yeah, absolutely.

And that was a big key component of it, is we, when we were part of LogMeIn, we tried to use the same partners to take LastPass to market. And it's a different language and the buyer is different. A CISO is very different than someone that's managing, you know, infrastructure, those types of things.

So this allowed us to kind of build those benefits out based on what that partner needs to serve their customers. And I think it's a great point. The customers in security rely on partners.

You know, many of these security companies, some of the biggest security companies in the world are a hundred percent channel. Mm-hmm. And that's because the technology changes every single day.

And a ciso, even at a large organization, cannot keep up with that. So they rely on these partners to actually be there to talk through what's coming up next, what's exciting, what do we need to be thinking about to ensure our environment is actually safe? And that's like for us right now, we're hearing a lot about passwordless.

Mm-hmm. And so people, it's a buzzword, right? And everybody thinks, oh my God, passwordless passwords are going away.

Well, we know that's not gonna happen overnight, but we need our partners to understand what we're doing on password list and how it's different than our password management, but a component of it so that they can start looking at like their experts in that space. And then once they say, yeah, we need a solution for passwords and for password lists, that's when they can introduce LastPass. Yeah.

Some, it's easy to equate passwordless with a specific technology, right? You could say it's pasky. That's passwordless.

Mm-hmm. But it really isn't. It's a, it's a much bigger spectrum, right?

Because not everything can move to that, nor is that necessarily the right solution for everything. Mm-hmm. Either.

I'd love your perspective on when you say pass, cuz you're talking to a broad audience, right? So mm-hmm. When you say passwordless, what, what does that mean?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a combination, just like you just said. So a lot of people think of passwordless as biometrics, so the ability to log in with your thumbprint, your facial recognition, those types of things.

And that is a key component to password lists. And currently at LastPass on our phone, so our mobile app, you can do that. You can log into LastPass and into your password vault with your fingerprint.

So we're gonna evolve that. So that's also at the desktop and we're gonna kind of move forward with that. Then I think the second piece is these 5 0 2 compliant, you know, technologies.

Mm-hmm. So we have to have integrations into those technologies. If someone's plugging in A U S B, I was actually at Iver a few weeks ago and I saw a company that had a ring and that's how you identified, you would scan your fingerprint on a ring and that's what they were doing to identify you.

So you have to have those phyto two integrations so that you can actually get into the system. Then there's the pass, you know, the pass keys. And what's interesting about the pass keys is that is all the buzz, but there's only about 20 sites in the world that actually use pass keys.

So it's going to take time to get there. So what we're doing in q4, we're launching a new product that will allow you to manage your pass keys right alongside your passwords. And when I presented at Iver, I talked about the fact that 30 some years ago when I took a job at Coca-Cola to manage their mainframes, people said, you're crazy.

Like mainframes are, they're done. It's all client server, it's all internet. Well, 30 some years later it's a 14 billion recorded business for ibm, right?

Mm-hmm. So this will take time to do that. And so when we designed our program, we specifically made sure we were thinking of the future and how is Passwordless going to affect our partners and how are they gonna position and upsell and cross-sell that?

And how do we build the enablement around it? Because I think that's an important thing. Yes, we have the tiers, we have all of that that everyone would expect in a partner program, but we've also had the ability to build from scratch all of the enablement from kickstart sales to solution engineering to implementation that now we've built into our last past university that our partners will have access to through our brand new portal, which also has all of the marketing that they'll need, the deal registration, if they need a service ticket, they can enter all of that.

So, uh, doing this from scratch, it was a whole different world for us versus just relaunching something, making a tweak to the name, you know, changing gold to, you know, uh, blue or something like that. This was a big undertaking for us. It's not a restructuring of a program.

You, it sounds like you're really as well as design the whole thing, again from the ground up, but the delivery and the content, the communications purpose of it, all of it. So I I I have some appreciation That's a big, a big undertaking. Well talk a little bit about the reception both from partners as well as from customers.

Yeah, it's been really good from a partner perspective. So we've already to date had over 400 partners actually sign up for the program. That's mostly gonna be your MSPs and your solution providers.

Cuz obviously on the technology side there's some integration and some talk points and things like that that need to be developed. Um, I think what they've really appreciated is that we've done all of the signup through an automated fashion where once we approve them for the program, we send out an email, they click on a link, it goes to the portal, they accept the agreement and they're good to go. Like that takes them into the portal.

So there's none of this waiting weeks or months to do things. Mm-hmm. Um, we actually had one partner who we'd been talking to for quite some time, but they wanted to actually wait until we had our program.

They didn't want to sign up on the go-to partner program cuz they weren't gonna do anything over there. And we were able to within about an hour and a half, get them in the program, logged in and they registered to lead that day. Right.

So it shows kind of the power of that, um, having that a fully automated system from that perspective. And what's interesting is we're already getting questions about a lot of the benefits. Like, hey, when we signed up, we know we're at this level because we'd been working with you before.

How do we take advantage of that M D F, how do we take advantage of these types of things that were in there? So they're not just signing up, they're actually looking and engaging and, and really trying to drive the program for what it was set up to do. Give them benefits so we can jointly sell more solutions.

Very good. Very good. Um, any, uh, any thoughts on what's next?

I'm not asking to pre-announce what you can if you want, but kind of where, where do you want to go next with this? Obviously you're not done, there's more work to do, right? Yeah, a lot more work to do.

I think the, the three big areas that we'll really be focused on is, um, making sure that we have the technology piece built out, trying to standardize how we and engage and work with distribution, especially globally. And then also taking this to a much bigger audience than historically what we've had. So we've just started in, uh, Latin America.

We're a hundred percent channel, so only channel only through distribution. We're doing the same in Ajon, so Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, those areas, a hundred percent channel. And we're now looking at where else can we go a hundred percent channel Now that we have a program, how do we take that to partners in Europe, for example, where we may not have an entity in France, we have some activity there, we've done deals.

How do we turn that into a partner first partner only by leveraging the partner program. And then I think the other big thing is just continuing to enhance the portal and the training and the benefits. So right now most of our training is accreditations and we look to move those to true certifications where people will wear that as a badge of honor.

Excellent. com/partner, I just googled it so it takes your right, the page can sign up right there. What just what you were talking about before.

It's been a pleasure. Uh, Patrick, I hope you'll come back. Patrick McHugh, who is global, excuse me, global VP of channel partners at LastPass.

Thanks for joining us today. Excellent. Thanks for having me.

Take care. You bet.