WatchGuard Recognized as 2026 CRN Annual Report Card Winner for Network Security

WatchGuard® Technologies, a global leader in unified cybersecurity, has been recognized as a 2026 CRN Annual Report Card (ARC) Award winner in the Security: Network Security—SMB category by CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company.

The recognition is based on direct feedback from solution providers across North America, who evaluated technology vendors on product innovation, support, partnership, and managed and cloud services. WatchGuard achieved an overall score of 92.8, ranking first in the category. The company received particularly strong scores for product innovation (95.4) and partnership (95.8), while also ranking first across all four evaluated areas.

The CRN Annual Report Card Awards recognize technology vendors that demonstrate excellence in supporting and enabling their channel partners. The 2026 awards cover 23 technology categories and are based on evaluations from solution providers across North America.

Advancing network security for distributed environments

The recognition comes as the network security landscape continues to evolve. Organizations increasingly need to protect users, devices and applications across traditional networks, cloud environments and remote locations, requiring security technologies that combine strong protection with greater visibility and simpler management.

WatchGuard has continued to invest in its network security portfolio to address these changing requirements. Recent innovations include the expansion of Network Detection and Response (NDR) capabilities across the Firebox platform, enabling organizations to detect and respond to suspicious network behavior without deploying standalone NDR sensors. WatchGuard has also expanded its offering with Managed NDR and Total NDR, integrating network detection with ThreatSync™ XDR to provide broader security context and response capabilities.

At the same time, FireCloud extends WatchGuard's network security capabilities into the cloud. FireCloud Total Access combines Secure Web Gateway, Firewall-as-a-Service and Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), helping organizations secure distributed users and provide identity- and device-aware access to private applications. Managed through WatchGuard Cloud, it also gives MSPs a scalable way to deliver cloud-based security across multiple customer environments.

WatchGuard is also continuing to strengthen the performance and capabilities of its Firebox platform, including the introduction of its high-performance Firebox rackmount appliances for demanding network environments.

Together, these developments reflect WatchGuard's broader evolution of network security — from traditional perimeter protection toward an integrated approach spanning network infrastructure, threat detection, cloud security and Zero Trust access.

Innovation designed for the channel

For WatchGuard, innovation is closely tied to the needs of its MSP and solution provider partners. The company designs its security technologies to be centrally managed, integrated and scalable, helping partners deliver advanced protection without adding unnecessary operational complexity.

The 2026 CRN ARC recognition provides external validation of this approach. Solution providers ranked WatchGuard highly not only for its product innovation, but also for its partnership, support and managed and cloud services.

As organizations continue to adapt to increasingly distributed IT environments, WatchGuard remains focused on helping its partners deliver security that is powerful enough to address evolving threats, integrated enough to provide greater visibility, and simple enough to manage at scale.

Learn more about WatchGuard's network security solutions and how they can help MSPs protect their customers across network, cloud, endpoint and identity environments.