Guardz has announced the appointment of Rob Rae as a strategic advisor to enhance its cybersecurity solutions aimed at Managed Service Providers, or MSPs. Rae, a veteran in the IT channel and MSP community, will contribute to the company’s strategies for ecosystem development and industry engagement. According to Guardz, MSPs face increasing pressure to deliver robust cybersecurity solutions as small and mid-sized businesses become prime targets for cyber threats. In his new role, Rae will leverage his extensive experience to help shape strategies that address the evolving needs of MSPs and their clients, ensuring that Guardz remains a vital player in the cybersecurity landscape.
I reached out to Guardz with one question – Is Rob being compensated? The answer: “Guardz will not be disclosing that information at this time.”
Why do we care?
Here’s the part people don’t like to say out loud.
This is not about Rob’s integrity. His reputation is earned.
But money changes gravity. And undisclosed incentives create asymmetric information.
It doesn’t need to corrupt you to influence you. It just needs to exist or even plausibly exist. And in this case, Guardz has chosen not to clarify whether compensation is part of the relationship. That choice transfers evaluation risk from the vendor to the MSP.
Guardz brought Rob in for influence, not implementation—and influence requires disclosure to remain credible. But when a vendor refuses to clarify incentives in an influence-driven role, they are asking the market to supply trust without information.
That’s not transparency. That’s ambiguity by design.
Now layer in Pax8. Marketplaces live or die on structural neutrality, not perceived goodwill. If senior ecosystem figures are allowed to take advisory roles with suppliers—and the financial terms are explicitly not clarified—you’ve created a standing bias vector. Not a scandal. A governance problem. And governance problems don’t explode overnight; they leak credibility over time.
Here’s the concrete harm path: An MSP hears positive framing. They shortcut evaluation.
They deploy a tool assuming “community vetted.” A control fails. The MSP owns the incident, not the advisor, not the marketplace.
Influence without accountability widens that gap.
So the discipline gets sharper now, not softer. When someone you trust takes on a formal advisory role—and the incentives are left undefined—you don’t ignore them. You don’t attack them either. You recalibrate aggressively.
If you don’t, you’re outsourcing judgment in a domain where judgment is literally the product.
Influence without disclosed incentives isn’t a scandal. It’s a governance failure—and MSPs pay for governance failures before anyone else.