Written by Mark McDaid, Head Alliances and GTM at SEP2.
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When I joined SEP2 in summer 2024, I knew I was joining the best independent MSSP in the UK. That’s a big claim but hear me out!
Boasting the highest number of Check Point Certified Security Masters of any partner in the UK, winning Check Point Partner of the Year in 2024, becoming the fastest growing Google SecOps partner in the UK and being awarded the CrowdStrike Partner of the Year from our distributor Westcon — all the signs are pointing in the right direction.
After getting my feet well and truly under the table, I was even more convinced that I was now part of something special. I learned that we were on track to onboard over 50 new customers in 2024 and were growing our ARR at a rate of over 100% year-on-year.
Despite all these key indicators and all this success, many of my peers within the industry still carried a view of SEP2 as the ‘plucky underdog’: reselling vendor solutions, focusing on SME and constantly pivoting to win business wherever we could… Perhaps five years ago that would have been fair, but now it no longer reflects what we’re building and is something we needed to address.
Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy and Vendor Portfolio
A key part of my role (clue is in the title!) is our ongoing GTM strategy. This can be defined as:
- What we sell (Value Proposition and portfolio)
- Who we sell it to (Ideal Customer Profile)
- How we sell it (Channels, Pricing, Marketing etc)
Although we had a clearly defined strategy internally, we also had several legacy practices, technologies and approaches that needed to be reviewed and potentially removed so that we could focus on what we are good at. The problem with building a 100+ person enterprise of significant value from scratch (with no investment, debt or third party funding) is that you need to move at break-neck speed. An unfortunate by-product of this is that we don’t always find the time to let the market know what we’re up to behind the scenes.
This is something I want to address as part of my role. I want our GTM to be crystal clear for all our partners, customers and peers so that the opportunity to work with SEP2 is there for all to see. As a result, we have completed a full review and redesign of our vendor portfolio, restructuring and focusing on only those vendors that we deem to be best of breed and the best fit for our technical teams and customers. We have also introduced an incubator program so that we have a formal review process and can execute a clear plan for new vendors to join the portfolio.
Essentially, we needed to focus on what makes us great, how we differentiate from other MSSPs in our region and remove anything that doesn’t support this or distracts from it.
Wingman Rebrand
Possibly the most daunting and drastic change we made to our GTM is the rebrand of our Professional and Managed services offering. In January 2025 we launched seven core service offerings under the brand ‘Wingman’. There were a few key reasons for taking this action, and I’ll list the main ones below.
- Brand Awareness: SEP2 have a fantastic brand as a business. Our ‘Tech Driven, People Powered’ ethos runs through the entire organisation and our values are clear. However, when it came to the services we offer, it was clear that we need to establish a well-defined brand that customers, partners and vendors can get behind.
- Broadening Engagement: As with many MSSPs some of our customers and partners know us for one of our core offerings. Usually, this is the service that there was an immediate need for when we were introduced. By adopting the Wingman brand across all seven core services, we can more easily open up discussions around our key capabilities to our customers, partners and prospects and avoid being single threaded or pigeon-holed in a single area (as “the Firewall guys” for example).
- Partnerships: My personal ‘Big-Bet’ in 2025 for SEP2 is our third party partnerships. For many years, we’ve had tactical partnerships with VARs, SIs, Consultancies, GCP partners and others to meet customer requirements (usually through a framework smooth procurement process). However, in the last couple of years this has become much more strategic, and partnerships is now our fastest growing lead-source.
By adopting the Wingman brand across our core service offerings we are able to adopt the role of the ‘vendor’ and provide the clarity our partners need around discounts, pricing, protection and competition.
We are also able to make a clear distinction between SEP2 and Wingman to enable partnerships to flourish. - Market Changes/AI: It wouldn’t be a cyber security blog without mentioning AI... But seriously, one of the key considerations for the rebranding of our core services is the ability to go into more depth when talking to customers and partners about what we actually do and, just as importantly, what we are developing. Previously, we would talk about SLAs and then lean into the stats and features or the vendors that we were supporting. In 2025, we find that our customers and partners are more interested in what we can deliver over and above the technology we’re powered by. Creating a separate brand allows us to clearly define a service offering, split it into different options to fit the customer requirement (Standard, Enterprise and Premium) and build in bespoke functionality such as AI/ML, attack surface management, automation, incident response, and deep and dark web monitoring, to ensure we are ahead of the market and our competition and providing a best in class service for all of our customers.
What’s Next?
Hopefully it’s now clear why we have made these changes, and you can see the direction that we’re moving in. We won’t forget what got us to the dance, and will remain agile, customer–first and, most importantly, Tech Driven and People Powered. As we move to being a 100+ person organisation, we are excited double down on our laser–focus GTM. As our partnerships grow, as does our access to new customers and so our ability to scale needs to keep pace. The best way for us to do that is to focus on the things we do better than anyone else: our Wingman services.
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