Staying a Step Ahead Of Threats

With the threats to networks and data getting increasingly more sophisticated, security products companies need to get ahead, and provide even more sophisticated solutions on integrated platforms, to protect IT and IP.   Palo Alto is a step ahead, says Anil Bhasin, Managing Director, India and SAARC region Palo Alto Networks.

1. How is Palo Alto Networks positioning itself in India?

In India, we are positioning Palo Alto in the same way as we are positioning it globally. We are a market leader and are in a position to evangelize the security imperatives, focusing on remediating the enterprise security posture. We believe that world has changed dramatically especially on security landscape, accordingly we have adopted the “protect and prevent’ approach. Globally, we are seen as an apex brand of network security and a pioneer in next generation firewall for platform. India too, has the same stance for us.

2. Which are the potential markets within India for your solutions? Which are the potential verticals for Palo Alto?

We are looking at India as a whole to be the potential market for us. It could be a small customer for crucial integrated property, intellectual property. We are not limited to only metros but tier 2 and 3 cities are also potential markets for us. Our strategies cover smaller customers as well as mid market segments. In fact, the SME is the most vulnerable and easy picking target for us, especially since in the recent years hacking in these sectors has increased manifold.

Palo Alto has 21000 customers globally. Each quarter we are adding customers from across verticals, and today we have lot of clients from BFSI, Telcos, PSU, government, manufacturing, retail, gaming industry and IT/ITES.

3. How many channel partners do you have in India? How do you select your partners?

We started operation in India 3 years ago with 15-16 senior resources, and about 40 partners. Today, we have more than 100 partners with different partner categories. We also have partners from tier 2 and 3 cities.

We choose partners who have a niche in security market, with a focus in the domain and knowledge of security architecture as well as the ability to provide solutions in security. We also ensure that a partner should have skills to service customer through life cycle. We have very stringent criteria of selecting channel partners.

4. What are your partner programs?

We have professional courses running for the partners and post on boarding, it is mandatory for them to do the courses. The program helps partners to focus on ability to understand the customers’ point of view. We have post sales, backline programs to give support for tier 1 services or direct services to customers. We are also running CNSE program to enable our channel partners become certified security experts. We incentivize our partners and take care of their margins, which are profitable activities for them, also offering reward programs for partners.  We also have after sales support programs that give them an expertise for providing the best service for their customers.

5. Cyber security today is the biggest threat across verticals. Firewalls clearly are yesterday’s news. Under the changing circumstances, what role do you think policies will play at mitigation? Or does having effective applications do the trick alone? 

We are trying to protect intellectual property and this is not limited to end point. When you look at the enterprise from a cyber security threat perspective, I think there are three layers to protect the enterprise.  The first is Network traffic in itself, which is largely applications and most of the enterprises traffic goes to these applications. So we need to first understand applications not based on votes and protocols but based on applications themselves. Like, Firewalls do not have the intelligence to identify applications because they are dependent on protocols. We are not dependent on ports and protocols; we are dependent on our ability to identify applications.

Applications are of different types like business application, social application, applications that get encrypted or even homegrown applications, so we understand all types of applications that are the first constituents that we address. Second is the net itself because everything is connected to the network like PCs, server, voice, storage and Video etc. so we provide complete control of network to the customer. We understand the applications,   provide complete visibility on the network but we also know that network should never be allowed to be a free target. Hackers target the network so that is why we have end security solutions. An approach that uses next generation security platforms   will protect intellectual property better in case of attacks.

6. What does Palo Alto offer the market for the emerging threat of APTs?

Most of the attacks that are emanating today are increasingly sophisticated.

What is therefore required is a solution that understands sophistication, can also bring sophistication   in terms of protection.  The older, legacy systems are not equipped to handle them.  We offer a solution,   integrated with the platform, called Wild Fire.  It does not allow threats to pass to the network, and that is only possible when we have next generation security platforms at the same level as the threat.

We understand the threat scenario within the network, analyse the intelligence and share it among the constituents – applications, network and the end point.  Second, we ensure the attacks are prevented by our unique ability that even in case of a day zero attack,   we can offer a 15-minute revolutionary solution.  Today, we are the only company in the market that can do that.  Wild Fire is the most advanced APT detection and prevention offering in the market.  Overall we have 3000 customers using APT solutions.

7. Cyber attacks like DDOS and APTs have become more common with social media taking over a large part of enterprise communication as well as communication. What do you think is the best strategy to handle the risk of exposure while leveraging the advantages social media brings to enterprises?

Social media is nothing but applications like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter etc.  The only thing is that these applications are getting encrypted. It is difficult to study content and look for known and unknown vulnerabilities in content.  Most of these applications are encrypted because they have encryption of what comes underneath.  Therefore, it is important for social media or us to protect them- whether it is instant messaging, we have unique ability to decrypt traffic.  There is a solution to actually de-crypt an application with which we can control unknown traffic.