‘We’ve put in the work of building an OT security practice so our partners don’t have to start from scratch. They can adopt it, standardize it and hit the ground running,’ says Chris McCormick, director of partnerships at Dispel.
Dispel’s new MSSP partner program can turn previously out-of-reach operational technology opportunities into scalable, repeatable revenue as remote connectivity is now increasingly expected to secure systems.
“OT connectivity is expanding quickly,” Chris McCormick, director of partnerships at security vendor Dispel, told CRN in an interview. “What that means is more remote technicians, more third-party vendors and more distributed operations. The attack surface is growing faster than most MSSPs can respond to.”
According to McCormick, many MSSPs have walked away from potential deals not because they lacked expertise but because their existing tools couldn’t effectively support OT environments.
“They had customers ready to sign, but they passed because they couldn’t responsibly deliver with VPNs and shared credentials. That’s revenue walking out the door,” he said.
At the center of the partner program is Dispel’s Secure Remote Access technology, which McCormick said deploys in under three hours per facility and is standardized across multiple customer environments.
“MSSPs don’t want a treadmill of professional services,” he said. “They need to deploy quickly, scale seamlessly and centralize management so they can move customers efficiently while still maintaining strong security.”
He added that Dallas-based Dispel was built SaaS-native from day one, “and that’s not a marketing distinction, it’s an operational one.”
“Most of our competitors started as on-premises products and are now mid-migration to the cloud,” he said. “That means their MSSP partners are managing the growing pains of that transition alongside them [with] inconsistent multi-tenancy, deployment complexity and architecture decisions that weren’t designed for scale.”
The new partner program is structured into five tiers, allowing MSSPs to expand their capabilities over time. As partners progress, they gain access to additional resources such as training, co-branded marketing and dedicated support.
But the biggest shift may be in how they package and sell OT security. To simplify the delivery process, Dispel introduced three service tiers built on its zero-trust platform.
“It’s about helping MSSPs land the engagement, prove the model and then grow with the customer,” he said. “That’s what turns this from a one-off project into recurring revenue.”
For Sam Alva, that difference is vital.
“Most MSSPs are built for IT environments, and it shows the moment you ask them to cover an OT network,” Alva, director of OT at Wichita, Kan.-based MSSP Novacoast, told CRN in an email. “Partnering with Dispel lets Novacoast close that gap in a way that’s native to how industrial environments actually operate. This is how managed security should work for industrial clients.”
Dispel’s platform also supports features like session recording, audit trails and integration with compliance frameworks. Ultimately, it aims to give partners a blueprint for building a scalable OT security practice.
“These environments are under pressure, and MSSPs are in a position to help but only if they have the right tools,” McCormick said. “We’ve put in the work of building an OT security practice so our partners don’t have to start from scratch. They can adopt it, standardize it and hit the ground running.”
