Emt Distribution has inked a deal with United States privileged account management solution vendor Thycotic which sees it become the company's master distributor for Asia Pacific.

The deal will see the distributor, which has its Asia Pacific headquarters in Adelaide, providing Thycotic's privileged account management solution exclusively through resellers, managed services providers, systems integrators, security and compliance consultants and outsourcing companies, across Asia Pacific.

Thycotic says it has more than 7,500 customers worldwide, with a customer base that includes Fortune 500 enterprises.

Emt says it has added five new sales and support members, including pre-sales engineers, based in Australia and dedicated to Thycotic, to meet demand.

Simon Azzopardi, Thycotic international vice president, says privileged account management is one of the top four mitigation strategies used to meet the needs of the Australian Signals Directorate's Top 4 Strategies to mitigate targeted cyber intrusions, alongside application whitelisting, patching applications, patching operating systems.

Combined, the four solutions mitigate more than 85% of intrusion techniques the Australian Cyber Security Centre responds to.

“It is the perfect opportunity for our channel partners in the region to be seen as trusted advisors,” Azzopardi says.

Scott Hagenus, emt chief marketing officer, says demand for privileged account management solutions is growing rapidly among government and enterprise organisations, with SMBs and mid-tier enterprises not far behind.

“Organisations are waking up to the fact that traditional cyber security defences like firewalls and anti-malware are struggling to combat the rising tide of targeted attacks,” Hagenus says.

“Privileged accounts are the keys to the kingdom. Organisations need to know how many human and non-human privileged accounts they have, who has access to them, restrict that access and lock down the passwords that protect them.

“Putting it in plain terms, you can have the best locks in the world, but they won't help if you leave the keys under the doormat.