ThreatDown's Channel Revolution: How a 40x Leap in Partner Business is Reshaping Cybersecurity Sales

SANTA CLARA, CA – April 28, 2026 – In a move that signals a seismic shift in its go-to-market strategy, cybersecurity firm ThreatDown has announced a staggering transformation of its sales model, growing the share of business transacted through distribution partners from a mere 1% to approximately 40% in just the last year. The dramatic pivot underscores a deliberate and aggressive company-wide overhaul designed to place channel partners, including distributors and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), at the absolute center of its growth engine.

ThreatDown, which spun out of the corporate business unit of the well-known Malwarebytes brand, has not just tweaked its partner program but has fundamentally rebuilt it from the ground up. This strategic redirection is more than a simple change in sales tactics; it represents a core philosophy aimed at building a more scalable, predictable, and partner-centric route to market, particularly within the highly competitive mid-market security space.

“We’re focused on building a partner model that is easier to work with and designed for long-term growth,” said Kendra Krause, General Manager of ThreatDown. “Shifting to a distribution-led approach reflects the confidence partners have placed in this model and the value they see in working with ThreatDown.”

A New Playbook for Partner Engagement

The architect of this transformation is a redesigned channel program, supercharged by new leadership and a novel organizational structure. The company brought in Kendra Krause as General Manager in July 2025, a move that signaled its serious intent. Krause is a channel veteran with a formidable track record, having spent over a decade at Sophos, where she was instrumental in leading its transition to a fully channel-first model, and previously held senior channel roles at Fortinet. Her expertise is now being leveraged to reshape ThreatDown's market approach.

At the heart of the new strategy is the Nexus Partner Program, an initiative designed to eliminate common points of friction between vendors and their partners. A key feature drawing praise is its commitment to “genuine deal registration.” ThreatDown has established strict rules of engagement, vowing not to take registered deals direct—a practice that has long been a source of frustration and mistrust in the channel community. According to industry observers, this single policy has become a significant differentiator, rebuilding trust and encouraging partners to invest in bringing opportunities to the table.

The program is further bolstered by competitive renewal discounts, margin retention guarantees, new performance-based rebates, and market development funds (MDF) to fuel partner-led marketing and growth initiatives.

To support this partner-centric framework, ThreatDown has also restructured its global sales organization into dedicated “pods.” Each pod functions as a cohesive unit, pairing a channel manager with a renewals account manager, an MSP specialist, a systems engineer, and a customer success resource. This team is aligned around a shared set of partners, ensuring a consistent and coordinated experience across the entire customer lifecycle, from new business and renewals to upselling opportunities. The entire pod is financially incentivized based on the success of their assigned partners, creating a powerful alignment of interests.

Targeting the Resource-Strapped Mid-Market

ThreatDown's aggressive channel pivot is strategically aimed at capturing a larger share of the mid-market and MSP segments—a corner of the market characterized by significant security needs but limited internal resources. According to a 2023 IDC report, a staggering 60% of mid-market companies operate with IT teams of just one to four full-time employees. These small teams are tasked with defending against the same sophisticated threats—from ransomware to zero-day exploits—that plague large enterprises, but without the corresponding budgets or specialized staff.

This resource constraint creates a powerful demand for security solutions that are both effective and simple to manage. ThreatDown’s strategy appears to be resonating. The company reported a 14% growth in bundle deals for its Advance, Elite, and Ultimate tiers in the second half of 2025. This suggests customers are increasingly consolidating their security stack with a single vendor rather than managing a complex patchwork of disparate tools.

Simultaneously, MSPs—a critical channel for delivering security to smaller businesses—increased their usage of ancillary ThreatDown products like DNS filtering, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), and cloud security by 12% over the same period. This indicates a deepening of the relationship, where MSPs are not just reselling endpoint protection but are building comprehensive security services on the ThreatDown platform.

“ThreatDown truly stands out in the industry,” commented Scott Larson, Managing Partner and Owner at Technology By Design, in a recent statement. “Backed by an innovative, intuitive security platform, ThreatDown genuinely listens to the partner community and turns feedback into meaningful action from sales enablement to deal protection to platform support.”

Forging a New Identity, Powered by a Legacy

This channel-first transformation is also a crucial part of ThreatDown's journey to forge its own identity while leveraging the formidable legacy of its parent brand. Rebranded in late 2023, the company now operates as a distinct business unit focused entirely on business, partner, and MSP customers. The consumer-facing products remain under the Malwarebytes brand, creating strategic clarity for both markets.

The tagline “powered by Malwarebytes” is a constant reminder of the technological foundation, ensuring partners and customers that the platform is fueled by the same world-class threat research and proprietary AI engines that built the Malwarebytes name over nearly two decades.

This strategy of separating the brand while retaining the technological heritage is paying dividends in the form of industry validation. In 2026, CRN, a leading authority on the channel, bestowed a prestigious 5-Star Partner Program Award on ThreatDown. The publication also recognized the impact of its leadership, naming Kendra Krause, Dave DeHaven (Vice President, Channel Sales Americas), and Brian Kane (Vice President, Global MSP and Distribution) to its annual Channel Chiefs list.

Online reviews from platforms like G2 and TrustRadius echo this positive sentiment, with users frequently praising the platform’s ease of use, rapid implementation, and the efficiency of managing security from a single, intuitive console. While some technical users in online forums note that it may not have all the advanced threat-hunting features of more complex competitors like CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, the consensus is that ThreatDown excels in its mission to deliver powerful, uncomplicated security for IT-constrained organizations.

Looking ahead, ThreatDown plans to deepen its partner collaboration by launching a Partner Advisory Council in Fiscal Year 2027, giving its most strategic partners a formal role in shaping future program investments. With a presence planned at over 40 industry events this year, the company is signaling that its aggressive push into the channel is not a temporary campaign, but a long-term commitment to a new way of doing business.