The current proportion of Censys revenue generated through partners should climb quickly with the AI-powered vendor now ‘going channel-first for all of our new business,’ CRO Sarah Ashburn tells CRN.
Censys unveiled an expanded channel program Tuesday that includes a major shift in its sales strategy in the direction of partners, with the aim of accelerating growth for its Internet intelligence platform through the channel, Censys CRO Sarah Ashburn told CRN.
The vendor—whose AI-powered platform can be used by security and threat investigation teams to gain greater real-time external visibility—is now committing to derive 100 percent of its new business through partners going forward, according to Ashburn.
The current proportion of Censys revenue generated through the channel, which is already more than 70 percent, should climb quickly with the vendor now “going channel-first for all of our new business,” she said in an interview. “There are no exceptions. This is what we’re doing.”
The shift in strategy comes as Censys rolls out an expanded channel program featuring partner benefits such as new demand-generation investments, enhanced enablement and expanded support from subject-matter experts, according to the vendor. Censys is also providing partners with early access to its platform roadmap and upcoming AI capabilities, the company said.
The Censys platform works by mapping public Internet infrastructure as a way to provide improved external visibility, which can then be used for driving better exposure management and threat investigations—ultimately allowing organizations to modernize their security operations practices, according to the company.
Censys—which recently promoted Celestine Jahren to vice president of strategic alliances and channels—disclosed that it saw 186-percent growth in partner-sourced bookings during the first half of 2026, from the same period a year earlier.
Since Censys’ founding in 2015, “we’ve always been very channel-friendly. We’ve always been very channel-focused,” said Oliver Wai, vice president for product marketing at Censys.
With the new channel program and strategy, “this is us doing more than what we’ve done before [with partners],” Wai said.
Partner Perspective
For cybersecurity powerhouse GuidePoint Security, the revamped channel strategy at Censys has already bolstered the partnership between the two companies, according to GuidePoint’s Mark Thornberry.
It’s clear that Censys executives from the top down are committed to “not just a channel-first [approach], but really to evolving to be channel-only,” said Thornberry, senior vice president for partnerships at Herndon, Va.-based GuidePoint, No. 32 on CRN’s 2026 Solution Provider 500. “That’s been great to see. It’s been a boost and a shot in the arm for the partnership, just to see it grow.”
For GuidePoint and its customers, a major part of the appeal from the Censys platform is that it can complement tools that customers are already using—instead of requiring the replacement of existing technologies, he said.
“They are sitting at the cross-section of AI and intel. They really have a compelling story, and it’s something that can be sold alongside—and with—existing technologies,” Thornberry said.
For many customers, it’s increasingly important to “look at the existing tech stack and glean further ROI from it”—something that Censys excels at enabling, he noted.
At the same time, the visibility offered by the Censys platform can provide partners and customers with a big advantage as customers demand better context for their adoption of AI-powered security approaches, according to Thornberry.
Ultimately, at Censys, “they just have something that is unique in terms of their view of the internet and how they’re viewing data and traffic,” he said. “There’s not a lot of companies, if any, that have their breadth and scale of what they have visibility into. So it gives them a leg up.”
Rethinking Security Operations
The moves by Censys are aimed at enabling partners to capture surging opportunities as AI and the intensifying threat environment continue to shake up security operations, according to Censys executives.
Right now, “everybody is rethinking security operations,” said Ashburn, who has served as CRO at Censys since 2023, and before that was vice president of sales at SentinelOne.
The issue, however, is that using AI to accelerate existing security operations may not lead to improved outcomes if the system is lacking the right external intelligence, she said.
“AI needs context to work, and that is [what] we are,” Ashburn said. “And I believe that is where the power of us working with the channel will help our customers get the outcomes they want.”
