Cybersecurity vendor Censys announced Tuesday it will derive 100 percent of new business through channel partners going forward, abandoning direct sales entirely as it expands its Internet intelligence platform. The AI-powered vendor, which provides security teams with real-time external visibility into public Internet infrastructure, disclosed the strategic pivot alongside the rollout of an expanded partner program featuring enhanced demand-generation investments, enablement resources, and early access to platform roadmap updates and upcoming AI capabilities.
The company reported 186-percent growth in partner-sourced bookings during the first six months of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. Channel partners already generate more than 70 percent of Censys revenue, a proportion the company expects to climb rapidly under the new approach. The vendor recently promoted Celestine Jahren to vice president of strategic alliances and channels to support the transition.
According to Censys CRO Sarah Ashburn, who joined the company in 2023 after serving as vice president of sales at SentinelOne, the shift is absolute. "There are no exceptions. This is what we're doing," she told CRN in describing the channel-first commitment for all new business. GuidePoint Security senior vice president for partnerships Mark Thornberry, whose company ranks No. 32 on CRN's 2026 Solution Provider 500, said Censys executives from top to bottom are committed "not just a channel-first [approach], but really to evolving to be channel-only." The vendor's platform maps public Internet infrastructure to improve external visibility for exposure management and threat investigations, allowing organizations to modernize security operations practices.
The strategic transformation aims to position partners to capitalize on rising demand as AI and escalating threats reshape how organizations approach security operations, Censys executives said. Organizations across industries are rethinking their security operations frameworks, but deploying AI to speed up existing processes won't deliver better results if systems lack the right external intelligence, according to Ashburn. The Censys platform addresses that gap by providing context AI requires to function effectively, she explained. For partners and customers, a key advantage is the platform's ability to complement existing tools rather than force technology replacements—allowing organizations to extract greater return on investment from current security stacks while gaining visibility few if any competitors can match at comparable breadth and scale, according to Thornberry.
Looking ahead, Censys believes its combination of AI-powered capabilities and comprehensive Internet visibility uniquely positions the company and its partners to help customers adopt AI-enhanced security approaches with the proper context. The vendor sits "at the cross-section of AI and intel," offering a solution that integrates alongside existing technologies rather than displacing them, Thornberry noted—a critical capability as security teams demand better intelligence to support AI adoption while navigating an intensifying threat landscape. For security solution providers, the message is straightforward: exclusive access to rapidly growing opportunities in Internet intelligence now runs entirely through partnership, with no workaround for firms hoping to transact directly. That reality may accelerate partner recruitment but also raises questions about whether channel-only models can preserve the customer intimacy and product feedback loops that direct sales traditionally supplied.