Cybersecurity is rewriting the technology advisor playbook
Cybersecurity is rewriting the technology advisor playbook
Publish Date: 2026-07-14 14:56:00
Source Domain: www.channeldive.com
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AI security fears and booming MSSP sales are pulling technology advisors into cybersecurity, as telco-focused holdouts weigh whether to jump in.
Cybersecurity vendors have historically gone to market through resellers, but TAs and tech services distributors are increasingly gaining share with their brokerage model. AI governance concerns, momentum for TA-aligned managed security service providers and ballooning TSD sales volume are drawing both customers and vendors to the agency motion. Devan Adams, principal analyst at Omdia, Channel Dive’s sister company, estimated that TSD security billings grew by 40%, from about $200,000 in 2021 to roughly $800,000 in 2025.
“Just a few years ago, we were launching security with practically no sales,” Avant Chief Strategy Officer Alex Danyluk told Channel Dive. “Now we have hundreds of trusted advisors engaging in security opportunities.”
It has been a long journey for the commission-based, vendor-managed route to market model that originated in telecom, and many TAs are still resistant to security.
It doesn’t make sense to Cynthia Ferrell, who has been sourcing security since she founded Team KC Telecom in 2020.
“I just cannot believe that you’re out here like, ‘I’m gonna get this client’s circuits and their voice and all these other things, but I’m not gonna help them protect their house,’” Ferrell said. “That just is mind blowing to me. I see that as my personal responsibility to protect them.”
The cybersecurity adoption gap highlights the generational differences in the TA market. The oldest remaining TA firms, born in the 90s and early 2000s, were almost all founded by former employees of telco carriers and ISPs, who carved out a lucrative niche selling long-distance telephone services, hosted voice and now unified-communications-as-a-service.
A telco background is no longer a given for TA leaders. Accelerate Partners CEO J.P. Panzica, for example, was the CRO at MSSP Thrive before starting his agency in 2020. The newest crop of partners aren’t beholden to nursing a large base of declining network revenue and aren’t solely known by their customers as the telco partner.
Many legacy firms have chosen to be sold to a national TA platform rather than pivot into cybersecurity and AI. Others have hired security experts and lined up strategic partnerships to catch the security wave.
For ChoiceTel, a ShoreTel reseller that evolved into a TA and a consultancy, hiring engineers was a key step in the journey that not all partners are willing to take.
“You really need to have some security expertise for sure,” ChoiceTel CEO Diane Smith said. “Just like when we resold ShoreTel as a reseller, we brought out engineers to our team to support it.”
Other firms, like Team KC Telecom, have leaned on their TSD partners to augment their engineering capabilities. Ferrell has counted on Intelisys sales engineers to help her with customer discovery.
“You ask the questions, you get copies of their bills, take it back to your internal sales engineer or your TSD, and they’ll know exactly what to do with it,” Ferrell said.
The trick is pressing hard enough, Ferrell said. TAs may ask the client if they have cybersecurity needs and be told no. Partners needn’t be afraid to challenge customers, because many don’t fully understand their own security posture, he said.
“You really have to push. You have to say, ‘No, man, I would really like to talk to you about it, see what you have and do a free audit for you,’” Ferrell said. “I don’t have a cybersecurity background. None of my clients have a cybersecurity background. That is a statement of fact. That’s not an insult. When they think they ‘got it,’ 99% of the time they don’t.”
Ferrell’s SMB and midmarket clients often underestimate the cyber threats facing them. Intelisys security evangelists are good at delivering the bad news, while Ferrell can be positioned as the helper.
“The almost weekly narrow escapes that I hear from my clients is unbelievable,” she said.
From AI to security
Marching orders from the C-suite for generative and agentic AI projects have raised security concerns for IT leaders.
Matt Caponi, cybersecurity architect for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Opkalla, said his team is trying to ground clients in core ideas about identity, data and zero trust.
“Trying to understand how to secure AI can feel cumbersome,” Caponi said. “It can feel very intimidating because of how fast it’s changing, but if we can bring it back to principles that we’ve been working around within frameworks like zero trust architecture… those are principles that people can understand.”
Accelerate Partners’ cybersecurity practice is interwoven with its AI practice. The firm developed professional services to help clients build acceptable use policies for, secure and fact-check LLMs. The firm is now earning pro services revenue that’s rare in the TA market, but the services often help grease the wheels for procurement.
“We’re getting professional services revenue now as a TA for doing this work, and at the end, it’s resulting in a sale,” Panzica said. “Maybe it’s a point solution, maybe it’s a managed service, but it’s really interesting to go down that route and figure out how they could use it.”
