Indian organizations are betting big on Digital Transformation and embracing the next-gen technologies to elevate their efficiency. The advance technologies have apparently empowered organizations to grow at accelerated speed. However, the increasing number of cyber-attacks proving to be an absolute barrier in the digital transformation journey of organizations across sectors. Therefore, it is important for the CTOs/CIOs to regularly evaluate their security posture, to ensure that they are using the right products with best capabilities to proactively detect the vulnerabilities and targeted attacks before any cyber incident occurs. Sophos is a leading security solution provider in India currently and develops robust solutions to help organizations prevent any kind of cyberattacks. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal recently interacted with Sunil Sharma, Managing Director - Sales, India & SAARC, Sophos. Sunil Sharma put across his views about the cybersecurity landscape, their offerings, and much more. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How do you look at the ever-increasing cyber incidents in India?
Sunil: The cyber incidents have advanced exponentially in the last couple of years. Cybercriminals are launching complex attacks on Indian organizations of all sizes.
Attackers are constantly changing their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) to launch sophisticated cyberattacks like ransomware. To make matters worse, the ransomware business model is continuously shifting and expanding, with Initial Access Brokers (IABs) selling network access to any potential ransomware attacker. Even “unskilled hackers” can get into the ransomware business – by buying the network access, encryption code and other bespoke pieces needed to do so.
On the other side, Indian organizations are going big on digital transformation and cloud adoption. This has increased the IT landscape that needs to be covered under security, which in turn has brought more load to already stretched IT security teams. Sophos’ recent survey, the future of cybersecurity in Asia and Japan, revealed that 75% of Indian organisations believe recruitment of cybersecurity professionals will be a challenge in the next 24 months.
Consolidation of adversaries as a community, and cybersecurity skills gap faced by defenders have given rise to increased cyber incidents in India.
Rajeev: What role Sophos is playing in securing digital journey for large customer base across India?
Sunil: Since its inception, the prime focus of Sophos is cybersecurity. We live cybersecurity as a lifestyle and take pride in protecting our customers from cybercrime. Sophos provides advanced network and endpoint solutions that prevent threats and unwanted software from infecting devices and networks even in the cloud environment. We also have Sophos XDR that helps organizations to improve their detection and response.
Next, we provide a managed service like Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) that provide threat hunting, detection, and response to neutralize attacks that use legitimate tools to break into networks and maneuvering around to steal data, evade detection and drop ransomware. Lastly, we provide insight into various ransomware and adversary tactics, and advice on how to best protect businesses through our important research like the “State of Ransomware reports”
Rajeev: Do you think that regular cybersecurity awareness training can help organizations in avoiding the attacks?
Sunil: Gone are the days when cybersecurity was all about preventive solutions. These solutions were enough to stop adversaries from entering the network of organizations. Today, the scenario has changed. Adversaries are able to deceive preventive cybersecurity solutions. They are using legitimate tools, exploiting vulnerabilities, and using stolen credentials.
They are exploiting end users through phishing, social engineering, and business email compromise to get required credentials. Regular cybersecurity training along with simulation tools will help organizations to build a security aware culture, which will make it tougher and tougher for adversaries to crack and get entry into an organization’s environment.
Rajeev: How are your pre-sales team trained to help organisations of all sizes in deploying best Sophos solutions according to their requirement?
Sunil: Our pre-sales team’s main objective is to empower our partners on our technology. They are well trained to be technology trainers. Our pre-sales team not only vigorously train the partners on our entire solutions range, but they also provide training on cybersecurity best practices, mechanism of different cyberattacks and ways to combat them.
Rajeev: How do you see the role of channel partners in making Sophos India’s Best Cybersecurity company?
Sunil: Sophos is a channel first company, which means we do business only through our channel partners. They are our extended team and Sophos and its partners have together achieved a leadership status in India. We feel proud that today our partners are looked up as security consultants by their customers. We could protect so many organizations from cybercrime only because of our partners.
