Welcoming Chris Bell to Lead the Next Evolution of Sophos Global Channel Strategy

Partner Program•Channel Leaders

Chris Bell, Senior Vice President of Global Channel, Alliances and Corporate Development, is focused on empowering partners and driving business growth

Apr 08 2025 By

In February, we announced that Chris Bell has started as senior vice president of global channel, alliances and corporate development, where he will lead the evolution of Sophos’ global channel strategy. Now, two months later, we’re excited to share how this key appointment reinforces Sophos’ channel-first commitment to deliver a world-class partner experience.

Chris joined Sophos following our acquisition of Secureworks, where he served as chief strategy officer, responsible for long-term vision, strategic partnerships, corporate development and strategy. Building on his career of more than two decades working in the technology industry, including nearly a decade in cybersecurity and channel; Chris’ leadership will focus on developing and executing a channel strategy that prioritizes expanding reach, empowering partners and driving growth.

Chris’ key priorities will include:

  • Enhancing Sophos partner experience to make it seamless for partners to do business with us at high velocity, while streamlining operations.
  • Continued innovation for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) with Sophos’ industry-leading cybersecurity platform, enabling superior cybersecurity outcomes for customers, enhancing operational efficiency for security analysts, and boosting profitability for partners.
  • Fueling partner growth with service delivery competencies, expanded partner enablement programs including persona-based training and fast-track training to expand partners cybersecurity expertise.
  • Increasing Sophos’ market reach by leveraging the unified portfolio of Sophos and Secureworks to deliver best-in-class security technologies and services, empowering partners to enhance cybersecurity and strengthen the security posture of organizations, from commercial to enterprise.
  • Expanding routes to market to align with organizations preferred routes to market by expanding Sophos’ presence across technology alliances, marketplaces and the cyber insurance ecosystem while maintaining our focus across resellers, service providers, and OEM channels

“Partners need adaptable strategies that prioritize flexibility to stay ahead of the increasingly complex threat landscape,” said Chris. “Unifying Sophos’ and Secureworks’ portfolios presents a unique opportunity to accelerate a future-ready channel program that arms partners with the technology, services, insights, and enablement needed to protect customers and fuel long-term growth.”

A core piece of our channel strategy is to better equip you, our valued partners, in addressing the evolving security challenges faced by businesses of all sizes. By aligning more closely with your needs and prioritizing an open ecosystem, we aim to create a stronger partner network that supports customers from strategy to technology and deployment.

“Evolving our channel business to consistently deliver excellent customer outcomes is at the core of our partner go-to-market approach,” said Torjus Gylstorff, chief revenue officer at Sophos. “We are thrilled to have Chris’ strategic vision and deep channel and cybersecurity expertise to shape Sophos’ channel strategy and build programs to empower partners to scale their security business.”

We consistently expand our service delivery capabilities and are recognized for our leadership in implementing partner feedback into our products and enablement offerings. Following the acquisition of Secureworks, we are the leading pure-play cybersecurity vendor of managed detection and response services, protecting more than 28,000 global customers. We also strive to streamline partner operations through initiatives like Sophos Partner Care, a 24×7 team dedicated to providing quoting, licensing and general partner account support, and Sophos Customer Success, a single point of contact for maximizing customer onboarding, retention and growth throughout the post-sales experience.

Sophos Channel Recognition

We’re honored to have been recognized as a Champion in the Canalys Global Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix 2025, underscoring our excellence in channel management and market performance. Additionally, we recently received the coveted 5-Star Award in the 2025 CRN Partner Program Guide again – for the 12th consecutive year. The CRN Partner Program Guide is a key resource that helps solution providers identify vendor programs aligned with their business goals and committed to delivering high partner value.

To learn more about the Sophos Partner Program, visit: www.sophos.com/partners.

About the Author

Sophos is a global leader and innovator of advanced security solutions for defeating cyberattacks, including Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and incident response services and a broad portfolio of endpoint, network, email, and cloud security technologies. As one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity providers, Sophos defends more than 600,000 organizations and more than 100 million users worldwide from active adversaries, ransomware, phishing, malware, and more. Sophos’ services and products connect through the Sophos Central management console and are powered by Sophos X-Ops, the company’s cross-domain threat intelligence unit. Sophos X-Ops intelligence optimizes the entire Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, which includes a centralized data lake that leverages a rich set of open APIs available to customers, partners, developers, and other cybersecurity and information technology vendors. Sophos provides cybersecurity-as-a-service to organizations needing fully managed security solutions. Customers can also manage their cybersecurity directly with Sophos’ security operations platform or use a hybrid approach by supplementing their in-house teams with Sophos’ services, including threat hunting and remediation. Sophos sells through reseller partners and managed service providers (MSPs) worldwide. Sophos is headquartered in Oxford, U.K. More information is available at www.sophos.com.