Overe targets MSP and SMB security gains with former Sophos CSO appointment

Former Sophos chief security officer (CSO) Simon Reed has joined Overe as a strategic advisor in a move CEO Paul Barnes believes will supercharge engagement with managed service providers (MSPs).

Launched three years ago, Overe offers a cybersecurity platform designed to help MSPs and small businesses secure Microsoft 365 and SaaS tools.

Speaking to ITPro, Barnes said the inspiration for launching the firm came after his experiences with a previous venture, endpoint security startup Prevx. At its height, before being acquired by Webroot, Prevx had more than 15,000 MSPs using its product.

With Overe, Barnes hopes to build on that success and bolster support for what he said has traditionally been a market overlooked by larger vendors.

“We’re very much focused on the MSP market because that’s been something which I’m extremely passionate about,” he told ITPro. “We know how underserved that market is and those clients which the MSPs serve.”

According to Barnes, the state of the security vendor market in 2026 requires a rethink. Large organizations such as Microsoft, for example, typically focus on larger clients, leaving a vacuum where smaller businesses are “kind of left to manage themselves”.

Combined with traditional challenges such as costs and skill capabilities, this places organizations at great risk amidst an increasingly perilous threat landscape, he added.

“Typically an MSP client is only small, like 10 users, clients, and the technologies that they are there to try and support them [with] are either far too expensive or far too complex, [and] hard to manage,” he told ITPro. “They make it inaccessible in the sense that you need expertise to really take advantage of that.”

“There are capital costs, staff, and the actual buying of the technologies,” Barnes added.

With Reed joining Overe, Barnes said this marks a “big win” for the company. The industry veteran brings a wealth of experience, having come from a software engineering background before moving into the cybersecurity industry in 2001.

Working on the vendor side with roles at McAfee and Sophos, this gives Reed a unique insight into this market, Barnes said.

A challenging environment

Speaking to ITPro, Reed said his appointment at Overe comes amidst a challenging period both for MSPs and end-user enterprises, many of which lack key technical capabilities and require continuous support.

“It used to be that cybersecurity was an install and forget capability,” he said. “The product updated itself and kept you protected. That’s not the case these days you need continued expertise in partnership with [a] decent product and capability.”

“If you think about a smaller company, where are they getting their cybersecurity expertise? Generally, they’re getting it from the MSP, and it’s that partnership between product and the MSP that’s the most crucial link.”

Combined with rising cybersecurity threats and the advent of generative AI, these dynamics are placing huge pressure on both enterprise end-users and MSPs alike, according to Reed.

It’s here that Overe aims to plug gaps and provide support, with a particular focus on cyber resilience. Indeed, it’s this focus that drew Reed to the company in the first place.

“We’re at a sort of sea change in thinking about cyber where just building defenses is just not adequate on its own,” he told ITPro. “You will see people working a lot hard on what I call resilience in that market

“This is why I’m passionate about it [Overe] because it’s not just a sort of defensive play for MSPs. It’s a resilience play. It’s about have you got your estate configured, have you got this tool set up, do you have the coverage in the place you think you have the coverage,” he added.

“It plays into that growing need in the market for more resilience, and we definitely need more resilience in smaller medium businesses.”

Looking ahead, Barnes said Overe intends to build on early success so far and the company has built a “solid team” that operates in several regions.

“We’ve got some great early angels and built a solid team around us,” he said. “We’re in a few regions and having someone like Simon advise us it’s a massive win for us.”

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