WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners – Dedicated Contact, Onboarding Help

What is included in WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners?

Named service manager – A dedicated WithSecure expert assigned to your partner organisation.
Technical advisory – Guidance on deployment decisions across your whole customer base.
Case escalation – Complex support cases routed to senior WithSecure specialists.
Environment monitoring – Your manager watches the environment and flags emerging issues.
Upgrade coordination – Upgrades are planned, communicated and executed without service disruption.
Important – Contains no software licences, agents or management console.

What are the main benefits of WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners?

WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners is an advisory and support service rather than software: a named WithSecure specialist works alongside your team on the customer environments you already administer in the Elements Portal. WithSecure has used this name since the corporate security business of F-Secure was relaunched as WithSecure in March 2022, so older internal documentation and price lists may still refer to F-Secure Business.

Faster case resolution – Escalations reach senior specialists without repeating the background.
Fewer failed upgrades – Version changes are planned before they reach customer systems.
Single point of contact – One person owns your technical relationship with WithSecure.
Advance release information – You hear about product changes before your customers do.
Regular business reviews – Recurring check-ins and an annual review of service usage.
Lower escalation load – Your staff spend less time chasing vendor support tickets.

Which company size is WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners suitable for?

The table below refers to your own organisation as a reseller or managed service provider, not to your end customers. The decisive factor is not headcount but partner level: WithSecure assigns a dedicated Technical Service Manager to Gold, Platinum and Strategic partners. A two-person reseller with high volume can qualify, while a larger IT house at entry level may not.

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Does WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners meet the requirements of Swiss cybersecurity legislation?

The reporting obligation introduced by the revised Information Security Act applies to operators of critical infrastructure, who must report a cyberattack to the Federal Office for Cybersecurity (BACS) within 24 hours of discovery. If you are a service provider, the obligation normally sits with your affected customer, not with you, although your contract may make you the party who has to supply the technical facts. A Technical Service Manager helps in exactly that narrow window: you have a named WithSecure contact who already knows your environment, so you are not opening a first-time support case while the clock runs. What the service does not do is equally important: it performs no attack detection, produces no forensic timeline, generates no log evidence, and cannot file a report on anyone's behalf. Detection and evidence must come from a product such as WithSecure Elements Extended Detection and Response or from a managed detection service, and the report itself remains the operator's legal responsibility. This description is general information and not legal advice; whether your organisation or your customer falls under the reporting obligation should be clarified with qualified legal counsel.

Does WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners meet the requirements of European cybersecurity legislation?

No product and no service makes an organisation compliant with the NIS 2 Directive, because the directive addresses organisational risk management rather than a shopping list of tools. NIS 2 requires categories of measures including incident handling, business continuity, supply chain security, security in the acquisition, development and maintenance of network and information systems, and cyber hygiene and training. This service maps to two of those categories in a concrete way: planned upgrade coordination is part of maintaining systems securely, and a named vendor contact with documented escalation routes is evidence of managing a supplier relationship rather than merely buying from one. It contributes nothing to the remaining categories. Incident handling still needs detection and response tooling, business continuity still needs backup and recovery, and training obligations are not met by having an expert available to your administrators.

Does WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners help with security questionnaires from large customers?

Partly, and only on the supplier management side of the questionnaire. It gives you a defensible answer to items asking whether you have a named contact at your security vendor, a defined escalation route for critical technical issues, a change and upgrade process that is planned rather than reactive, and a recurring review cadence with the vendor, since check-ins and an annual review are part of the service. It answers nothing on the technical side. There is no log retention, no SIEM or syslog export, no incident detection, no penetration test result, no encryption or patch management evidence, and no independent certification attached to this service. It also carries no service level agreement of its own, so a questionnaire item asking for a documented response time cannot be answered from this line item. To close those gaps within the same vendor family, the Premium support package supplies a documented response target for business-critical incidents, and the Elements detection and response products supply the telemetry and reporting that questionnaires actually ask for. Buying a second vendor for evidence you can obtain inside the WithSecure portfolio usually costs more and creates a second integration to explain.

What is the difference between the Technical Service Manager and WithSecure Elevate?

The decisive difference is continuity: the Technical Service Manager is an ongoing relationship with one named person who learns your environment over time, whereas WithSecure Elevate is on-demand access to specialists drawn on through pre-purchased tokens when a single hard case appears. The two are complementary rather than alternatives, and neither replaces a support package. The support packages govern how quickly WithSecure responds to a ticket; Advanced covers business hours with a defined response target and is the default level for Gold partners, while Premium adds round-the-clock coverage and a one-hour response target for business-critical incidents. If your problem is that nobody at the vendor knows your setup, choose the Technical Service Manager. If your problem is that tickets sit too long during an incident, the support package is what you need to change.

Which limitations should you know before buying?

Availability is governed by partner level rather than by country: WithSecure documents the dedicated Technical Service Manager as a benefit for Gold, Platinum and Strategic partners, so confirm your current level with your distributor before ordering. The service contains no software, no protection licences and no management console, and it does not upgrade any customer to a higher product edition. It is not a managed security service either, so nobody monitors your customers' environments for attacks or responds to incidents on your behalf, and it does not cover backup, recovery or data loss. Working languages, time zone coverage and the response time of the manager are not published as a service level agreement, which is the point most partners raise afterwards, so agree these expectations in writing at the start. The most common follow-up purchases are therefore a support package upgrade for documented response times and a detection and response product for the evidence that customers and auditors ask for.

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Frequently asked questions about WithSecure Technical Service Manager for Partners

Does the Technical Service Manager replace your own first-line support?

No. Your team remains the first point of contact for your customers, and routine tickets continue through the normal Partner Portal ticketing route. The Technical Service Manager is the layer above that, for cases your own engineers cannot close and for decisions that affect several customers at once.

Do your end customers get direct access to the Technical Service Manager?

The service is described by WithSecure as support for the partner organisation, with the manager acting as your advocate inside WithSecure. Direct end-customer contact is not part of the published service description, so treat the manager as an internal resource for your own staff unless you agree otherwise in advance.

Do you still need a support package alongside this service?

Yes, and they do different jobs. The support package determines how fast a ticket is answered and whether coverage runs outside business hours, while the Technical Service Manager determines whether the person answering already understands your environment. Gold partners receive the Advanced package as their default level, which includes a defined response target and around-the-clock Gold partner phone support.