SMX partnership with Microsoft leads to NTT recognition

SMX has captured the attention of NTT after receiving positive reviews from businesses across Australasia and beyond for its email security.

In addition to its existing partnership with Microsoft, SMX will now collaborate with NTT through the Microsoft global network to protect businesses from a range of threats worldwide.

NTT operates in more than 200 countries and regions, serving approximately 5,000 clients.

The company is also recognised as a Microsoft Global Gold Partner, an Azure Expert Managed Services Provider, Exclusive Azure Networking MSP and has an SAP on Azure advanced specialisation.

NTT has also won a variety of partner awards throughout the years.

"Both NTT and SMX are aligned on advanced security solutions. Partnering with SMX gives our customers access to the latest technologies, premium technical support and the ability to join our team offering specialist technology solutions, helping our customers continue to safely and securely grow their businesses, whilst minimising cyber security threats," NTT digital transformations general manager Dan Owen says.

"Since the Covid pandemic, we've seen more and more businesses turn to hybrid working.

"Now is the time to be investing in cyber security and so it is great to be able to work alongside other Microsoft partners, such as SMX, to be able to offer advanced security solutions to our customers.

SMX notes the significant shift in electronic messaging.

It says that where once the main issue was figuring out how to send a message directly from one computer to another, one of the major challenges for today's approximately 3.9 billion active email users is preventing particular emails from getting through.

Phishing emails have caused various issues such as business and reputational damage and lasting financial impacts.

Microsoft's Digital Defense Report states that phishing comprises roughly 70% of global data breaches.

However, as ongoing customer demand amid the pandemic has pushed so many companies around the world to digitise in response, all sorts of cybercrime is on the rise.

The current state of the threat landscape is such that email and domain security has shifted from being seen as an optional 'cost' to an essential part of maintaining business operations.

SMX has more than 17 years of experience developing, deploying and supporting email services for business and email providers throughout Australasia.

Further, the company makes migrating to the cloud more straightforward, which allows hundreds of public and private sector businesses to adopt Office 365 email and archive faster, protecting their IP.

SMX is also working to address security workarounds, a common problem that regularly exposes organisations to risk.

Noting a greater uptake of Microsoft 365 throughout Australia and New Zealand amid rising cloud computing, the companies say this has changed the way organisations provide cybersecurity.

Moreover, they say a lot of the email security offerings available interfere with and compromise Microsoft 365's security protections, asking users to turn off certain security features on their firewalls.

SMX says it saw an opportunity to use its specialist email security to address these issues by partnering with Microsoft to develop and provide a multi-layered email security service that seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365.

Combining advanced threat detection with artificial intelligence technologies means SMX can deliver a robust offering for organisations that want complete protection without having to modify any background settings.

"The difference with SMX 365 is that it works 'with' Microsoft 365 security features, rather than asking users to turn them off, providing a much stronger level of protection against cybersecurity," SMX CEO Richard Fraser says.

"SMX 365 uses a 'better together', in-depth defence approach, combining SMX and Microsoft 365 security features.

"This ensures businesses can use and optimise Microsoft 365's security features with an added layer of SMX security, which can be managed within one dashboard.

SMX 365 is able to recognise a range of threats, such as a senior manager making a request that is, in fact, a scammer in disguise and triaging security signals with the latest technology to distinguish between spam and essential emails.

In doing this, SMX 365 allows every message to reach the correct inbox so that employees no longer need to check spam and junk mail folders to find important emails.

The Azure-based cloud management portal affords easy access to reporting and assists in managing complex workflows and rules so companies can get up-to-date analytics on how their email threats are being supported by SMX 365 and manage their email flow for themselves.

SMX has seen substantial growth since this latest offering was developed, such as becoming a Microsoft ISV Partner, which has allowed it to build its offerings alongside Microsoft 365 and receive support to market its products to other partners in Microsoft's network to reach millions of cloud customers through the tech giant's commercial marketplace.

Microsoft New Zealand partner lead Matt Bostwick is excited to see partners working together so well.

"So many of our conversations these days are about collaboration, and the importance of creating a tech ecosystem that shares knowledge and expertise to create something even better than any one business alone," Bostwick says.

"What this deal shows is that there are huge opportunities for New Zealand tech companies to partner for success and deliver more to their customers," he says.

"SMX is a highly valued and trusted innovator with Microsoft IP, and to see our other partners taking advantage of and working with their expertise in cyber security is fantastic.

"We hope to see both SMX and NTT grow even further together.