This is an excerpt from the
article on crn.de

Over 500 system houses and MSPs use the security services of Cologne-based Anqa. Karsten Agten says that the firewall specialists’ business model is ‘unrivalled’. It offers 360-degree IT security, which would probably not be such a well-rounded affair for many, especially smaller IT service providers, without Anqa.

There has always been and continues to be much speculation about this ‘gap’. How sustainable are IT companies with fewer than ten to around 25 employees? There are many thousands of such system houses/MSPs, the classic, often owner-managed IT SMEs serving around 3 million German SMEs. Both sides, IT service providers and their customers, are in the same boat and navigating stormy seas: a shortage of skilled workers, increasing cyber security risks and rapid innovations such as AI are driving digitalisation. Alone on the high seas, you won’t get very far. You will encounter limitations and, almost daily, pirates – virtual ones, who hijack data and IT systems.

‘We are seeing very high demand and growing very well,’ says Dariush Ansari. Many in the channel still remember the managing director of Anqa as ‘Network Box’, the firewall provider founded in 2014. A year ago, the Cologne-based company changed its name. Ten years ago, ‘Box’ was still a very good name for firewall protection. Now, however, the focus is no longer primarily on hardware, but on services, on managed security services. Anqa provides ‘360-degree IT security’ primarily for smaller system houses with up to around 25 employees as a security service provider for the channel. The end customer relationship remains with the system house.

‘The concept is unique and unrivalled on the market,’ Karsten Agten tells CRN. That’s according to the founder of the system house IT-On.NET, who sold his company to the Medialine Group a few years ago. Not because Agten (*), who is based in Cologne, is doing Ansari, who is also based in Cologne, a favour. Agten knows from his own experience how difficult it is to set up an efficient managed services model, why technical teams in particular need a different mindset, and why it is even more important to nurture customer relationships when you go from being a supplier to a provider of more or hopefully less smooth IT operations.

Anqa’s workshops, which begin next month, will focus on practical concepts for current challenges such as firewall and endpoint security, awareness training, incident response and managed security services with flexible rental models. The first workshop will take place on 16 May in Cologne, followed by Hanover (28 May), Berlin (30 September) and Stuttgart (19 November).

The agenda includes the development of sustainable maintenance and service contracts, sales and argumentation strategies, legal implementations such as NIS2 and GDPR, and requirements for cyber insurance. Time for the all-important exchange with other system houses is also planned. Speaker Karsten Agten, who supports the Cologne-based company as a consultant for Anqa, will provide insights into his experiences and success strategies from his everyday work. As the head of a system house, he was 100 per cent focused on managed services, and he continues to be so at Managed Security Services.

In the 10 years since its founding, Anqa has grown to around 40 employees who serve approximately 500 system house customers, who in turn have more than 10,000 user customers under contract with Whitelable Security Services. Security awareness training, vulnerability scans and individual IT security consulting complete Anqa’s range of services.

Looking at Anqa’s technology partners – Enginsight from Jena, Servereye from Saarland and WithSecure, headquartered in Finland – the Cologne-based company could also benefit from the currently much-discussed trend of digital sovereignty: ‘Security services – made and hosted in the EU’. IT risk assessment is not an issue exclusively for large corporations. Small and medium-sized enterprises, and even more so public authorities, which are already much more targeted by cybercriminals than large companies, are also critical of their dependence on US technology providers in particular. What if the EU decides to impose a digital tax on AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other US corporations, and Trump pulls the ‘internet plug’ and shuts down the clouds in Europe? Such scenarios, conjured up on LinkedIn, are currently triggering heated and highly controversial discussions.

Source: https://www.crn.de/news/2025/anqa-it-security-schlie-t-die-lucke-bei-systemhausern

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