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Updated Mar 27, 2023 | 06:53 PM IST

Harish Kumar GS, Head, Enterprise & Government, Check Point Software Technologies, India & SAARC

Excerpts:

Siddharth: There has been news of a lot of cyberattacks lately in the country. More companies are getting targeted, so whats your outlook on the current cybersecurity landscape in India?

Siddharth: Do you see state sponsored threats becoming a trend this year?

Siddharth: How is Checkpoint positioned? In what all areas is the company currently present in and how is the Indian market shaping for Check Point?

Harish: India is one of our very important markets in the world. We've invested significantly in the country. If you look at it, we operate the network protection, which is where we invented the state full inspection firewall concept. We were one of the early proponents of protection as a mechanism in the world. As we complete 30 years of existence, we are proud to share that we are one of the oldest cybersecurity companies in the world, which has survived and flourished.

Apart from the network, Cloud is another big focus area for us and our product is called Cloud Guard. Nowadays, if a customer or an organization wants to move into the cloud, security must be a priority right from the start. We are one of the first prevention based CNAPP architecture and we cater to the four Cs of the cloud. Gone are the days when servers and storage were installed in a data center and one could physically view them, now even infrastructure is on a code and Check Point protects the code, the Kubernetes clusters, containers, and the cloud hosting war.

We also manage access and access points. Post-pandemic, with the remote workforce endpoint and access protection has grown big. We provide secure access to corporate networks and applications. Hence, SSE or SASE is a very fast-growing area for us. Another big area is EDR- XDR which is to protect your devices in the network, whether it is remote or on the premise, and drawing out the intelligence from what's happening in each of these devices. That host of products is called as Harmony, and we are doing well in that segment.

Overall, the key differentiator for us is the single pane view we offer to our customers. If you take any organization, theres the network, workload on the cloud, and a mobile workforce. In such a scenario, having a single pane of view across these three aspects of your organization becomes crucial and we provide that to our customers. We refer to this architecture as Infinity and we are seeing a lot of positivity in the market around such an offering.

Siddharth: You have a lot of solutions and products for the industry what do you think is the current awareness levels and requirement and demand for cybersecurity in India?

Harish: The awareness is quite high, even small and medium organizations are aware of threats online. However, one of the barriers to cybersecurity adoption has been the high cost. For instance- For an organization of 1000 - 2000 employees that has a turnover of around 200 crores. If you have to protect yourself and invest in all the technologies which are available. In such a scenario, two issues arise. Firstly, cybersecurity is a very fractured market, and there are multiple products for accomplishing multiple things which makes it a big challenge. Secondly, if a company is setting up a basic SOC for an organization, it's going to cost you anything upwards of one and a half million dollars a year and a team of four to five people. There are additional products and licenses that will have to be bought, investments in SIEM, endpoints, and so on and so forth. All these pose the biggest barrier in the path of widespread cybersecurity adoption.

To cater to this issue, Checkpoint offers managed direction and response service for such organizations. Companies dont have to invest in separate products, we monitor and track all the fields. This service has seen a great demand amongst mid-sized corporates in India.

Siddharth: With newer emerging technologies like 5G, IoT, and Metaverse coming in, the threat landscape has widened. How is Check Point addressing this emerging landscape?

Harish: With the introduction of advanced technology like 5G, Web 3.0, metaverse, AI generative software and IoT adoption, we can expect that this is going to make the industry more prone to sophisticated Gen V and Gen VI attacks. These advanced technologies are going to decentralize the data, shift the physical infrastructure to cloud-based platforms and operate on edge computing. Therefore, the cyber security posture for companies is going to be more pronounced than ever with the expansion of multiple attack vectors for organisations.

In India, the stage is set for the launch of 5G technology. Consumers and companies are at high risk as the dynamic software-based systems of 5G include many more access points for traffic routing than the current centralized hub-and-spoke structures of 4G. Apart from this, security for IoT devices is intrinsically weak and simple to hack. Therefore, companies need to deploy a prevention-based response system rather than an incident-driven response system.

Siddharth: India is up there in software development but how is it in terms of skilling and re-skilling people for cybersecurity?

Siddharth: What are Check Points plans for 2023?

Harish: We have launched a host of products including the next Generation Management or Titan which gives you a single pane of view across network, cloud and endpoint. We also launched a new set of branch devices called as Spark Pro, which gives better bandwidth and comes with 5G and Wi-Fi. We launched our own SD-WAN portfolio which will run on top of the quantum devices which we already have. We also launched the MDR services and repackaged them as Horizon. Horizon is a service that can be used for threat hunting and to look at what's happening inside companys network packet by packet.

Overall, it's quite an exciting time for us. We promised the four Cs of cloud to be covered, the no prevention based CNAPP to be launched, it's already being adopted by clients. Similarly, our newer products will be immediately adopted by clients in the next couple of months.

More here:
Exclusive Interview with Check Point's Harish Kumar: Insights on India's Cybersecurity Landscape and Plans for - Times Now